The Circle of Trust

Some observations on where Dems are today, but first, a couple stories from my time on the campaign trail.

Story 1. I was knocking on doors while running for US House in a rural town in my rural state. At one house, a young man answered the door, and after I introduced myself, asked why I was running and what I cared about. I told him our current Rep had been in DC too long and lost touch with people back home, and then - having seen a big wheel in the yard and guessing he had kids - I told him that affordable healthcare for everyone was one of my biggest issues. I obviously touched a nerve. He launched into a long diatribe about how one of his kids had a major illness and the cost was literally bankrupting his family; in fact, he and his wife were about to sell their house to pay their medical bills. After some back and forth, I again reiterated my support for universal access to affordable healthcare. His final response? “I just hope you’re not one of them - I hate socialized medicine”. Ias ked him what he meant by socialized medicine, and he really couldn’t coherently answer.

Story 2. Again with the door knocking in a subsequent campaign for US Senate. The contentious Kavanaugh SCOTUS nomination hearings were taking place. At one house, a middle-aged working-class guy answered the door. We talked for a bit, when suddenly he dropped the bomb on me: “Joe (not my real name), you seem like a nice guy and I remember you from your last campaign. I don’t really like Senator Blowhard (name changed to protect the guilty) but after what I’ve seen on TV with the Kavanaugh thing, I can never vote for a Democrat.” He was not the only person to express that point of view that day and in subsequent days on the campaign trail.

The common thread I took away from those - and other - interactions with voters was that it didn’t matter if we agreed on issues or if voters didn’t like their current electeds. What mattered was whether or not I was able to somehow break into their “Circle of Trust^TM”). If I could not find a way to show we had common values, to break into the Circle of Trust^TM, nothing I said about a specific issue mattered - they didn’t really hear me.

My second takeaway is something I’ve mentioned in a previous post. too many Dems in DC are playing inside baseball. as Jennifer Rubin wrote this morning in her Substack called The Contrarian:

This “arrogance” is based on Inside Baseball - the wrongheaded assumption that most Americans actually pay attention to politics. The reverse is true - my unscientific door-to-door experience (with a very large population covered from three campaigns) tells me that something on the order of 90% or more of voters have no f^*king clue about politics and complex issues.

This is where national - and many state - elected Dems are today. Due to inside baseball, triangulation, living inside the political bubble, kowtowing to large donors, Dems find themselves outside the Circle of Trust^TM , bombarding voters with complex policy prescriptions (which mostly are good) but not being truly heard or trusted.

Dems need to find a way to reenter the Circle of Trust^TM on a mass appeal basis. It starts with education, but this must be combines with taking bold, simple to understand stances that show Dems a) understand most people are unhappy with their current life circumstances, b) recognize that most people view the entire “system” as a failure (on both sides), c) accept that the system can do better and the status quo is not acceptable, and d) most importantly, realize they must find a way to connect with voters on a viscera, values-based Circle of Trust^TM level.

Not an easy task.

Let’s start with new leadership in both the Senate and the House