An interesting interview by Ezra Klein in which he talks about some of the difficult to define problems facing the Democratic party. The person he's interviewing is Jared Abbott, the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics. The conversation opens with a discussion of something Abbott's group has identified called the Democratic penalty.

We were interested in this idea that Sherrod Brown couldn’t win in Ohio. It’s like: Oh, my God — if we’re economic populists, and the greatest economic populist holding on in a red state couldn’t continue holding on. What’s going on there?

So we had these hypothetical candidates who we gave to Rust Belt voters in this survey. We had some of the candidates say they were Democratic candidates and some say that they were independents. They were all economic populists.

And the exact same candidates that had an I versus a D did 10 points better in Michigan, did 15 points better in Ohio. Interestingly, in Pennsylvania, we didn’t see much of a Democratic penalty — that’s something that we’re trying to think more about. But in the other three states — Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin — we see these massive penalties just because of the D next to their name.

So we were just trying to quantify: How bad, actually, is it just to have the albatross of the D around your neck? And it’s pretty bad, especially in those working-class–heavy Rust Belt states.

In short, the Democratic brand is toxic in some of these states. Obviously the next question you'd want to answer is why? And really the rest of the conversation is an attempt to answer that, one which ends but isn't really resolved. But Abbott's group did try to get answers using some open-ended questions.

...we had these open-ended questions that we asked all the 3,000 people in the survey, and we found that there was a lot of that, of course — some people felt that Democrats were out of touch and focused on the wrong priorities and were woke idiots and all that stuff. There was a good amount of that. But it was completely dominated by concerns about the performance of the Democratic Party — having ideas that they don’t follow through on and not being a party that actually is the party of the working class.

That tells me, while there’s a huge mix of things going on, and while we can’t ignore the cultural resonance or lack thereof, the Democratic Party, in all kinds of different ways — not just in policies but in affectation and in style — a big part of the story here is also that people just don’t believe that the Democrats are going to deliver on the things that they talk about. And that’s a huge problem.

As a reader on the right, I'm instantly skeptical of these answers. We've had a lot of talk over the past decade about "shy" Trump voters who intend to vote for the guy but who may not be willing to answer a call or say so when they are surveyed. I'm immediately wondering if there aren't similar shy critics of the Democratic party who really don't like how extreme the party has become on a bunch of social issues but who don't feel comfortable saying so when asked by a pollster.

I don't have any data to support this but it makes sense (at least to me). Democrats who have embraced wokeness, identity politics and cancel culture have made it very clear over the past decade that they are more than happy to make you pay a price for criticizing their party dogma about a whole range of cultural issues. So of course some people, when asked, are going to feel more comfortable blathering about not believing the party stands for anything than they will be saying they don't like what the party stands for.

So, getting back to Sherrod Brown, what are the adds being run against him? They're about trans issues. Klein's remarks are in bold and Abbott's are regular.

I was looking into Sherrod Brown’s campaign for a bunch of reasons, and I was looking into the attack ads that his opponent, Bernie Moreno, ran against him.

Archived clip of political ad: Brown backed Biden, voting to let transgender biological men participate in women’s sports, and supported allowing puberty blockers and sex-change surgeries for minor children.

That attack ad was pure culture war.

But it seemed to move voters enough that Brown had to put a counter-ad on the air...

Is it an issue that Republicans are weaponizing the culture war against Democrats, and we need to allow our candidates in difficult contexts to understand their voters and what they need to do in order to relate to their own specific electorate? And if that means they need to take positions that progressives would get upset about? Then, yes, so be it. Because we need to win way more seats in order to stop the Republicans.

I feel like they are proving my point that these issues are moving more voters than there are voters willing to admit they are being moved. And then they make the point again in a different way. Here's Abbott talking about the new generation of populist Dems focused on pocketbook issues.

And we’re seeing a new crop, Democrats mainly, like Nathan Sage in Iowa, and Graham Platner in Maine, who are all in a similar kind of space of strong economic populists who are completely focused on the cost of living and on the need to center working-class issues and call out economic elites for screwing us over for decades.

So how is that Graham Platner campaign going right now? He's on the verge of being shoved out of the race by his own party? Why? For saying things on social media that code as conservative or insensitive to people on the left. He's not exactly proof that cultural issues aren't that important to the left.

Eventually they get around to arguing over affect.

There’s also this question of affect. One thing human beings are very good at sussing out almost instantly is whether this person is like me in some fuzzy way. It’s how we dress, it’s how we talk and how we look — our haircut, who else we’re around.

You mentioned that the floodgates on this open up with Trump, who, despite being a billionaire who fires people on television, has a very different affect than Mitt Romney or George W. Bush...

Yes. I think it’s hugely important. If people are able to be relatable in meaningful ways and talk in terms that working-class people understand and don’t find off-putting — talking about hard work, talking about family, talking about tradition, talking about patriotism. All these are things that Democrats just don’t like to talk about but are things that most Americans find central to their identity.

To the extent that Democrats are able to talk in those terms and are able to talk like a normal person in their district, it’s hugely important.

All of these things are cultural. Talking about work, family, tradition and patriotism are all things that code right. Why? Because so much of the elite left actively hates these things these days. You can find people badmouthing all of these things at any university or in any major newspaper.

Again, I'm offering my own take here not theirs, but it seems to me they are skating past the clear implications. If Democrats need people (like Graham Platner) who code blue-collar in order to win, that's partly because that bucks the anti-family, anti-tradition, anti-patriotism, and anti-work brand the party has picked up from its own university-bred extremists. The Democratic Penalty is just people knowing who you are.

Solving that problem won't be as easy as finding people who code right but are actually leftists (like Platner). At some point you'd need to be willing to tolerate people who actually have some right-wing views (Pro-life? Pro-religion? Pro-border control?) and run those people for office. Good luck with that in today's Democratic party.

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