When people are enthusiastic about politicians, they vote. When people vote, the left wins. Our only job as the left is to make sure that our policies are good for working class people — and that working class people believe that enthusiastically.
For some time now, Democrats have failed at that task. There have been a few charismatic individuals (mostly talking about Barack Obama) who have kept the Party alive, but even during the Obama years, Democrats lost over a thousand seats in Congress and state legislatures.
Now, it’s not nearly so simple as “Democrats lost.” There has been a massive effort to gerrymander Democrats out of electoral viability, specifically by clustering as many Democrats into several districts, while leaving many marginally competitive districts with Republican majorities. This process has been further exacerbated by an increased tendency for Democratic constituencies to naturally cluster by living predominantly in cities — particularly in the cases of people of color and young people.
But in 2018, despite that gerrymandering, Democrats struck back hard. It’s not easy, but it’s not impossible, and the number one driver has been enthusiasm (in the case of 2018, anti-Trump enthusiasm). Let us not draw the wrong lesson from that. Democrats cannot run on anti-Trump enthusiasm forever. We must generate our own renewable energy.
