Should Democrats Change Their Message?

After an embarrassing loss in the 2016 presidential race and congressional races across the country, democrats have taken to opposing Trump. It has taken up copious amounts of political capital and much time on outlets such as CNN and MSNBC. Most democrats in Congress have given most, if not all, of the airtime to opposing Trump. But is it good for 2020?

Democrats are quick to forget what lost them the election in 2016, their message, or lack thereof. A lot of congressional candidates took on a platform to the right to try to get conservative voters, but fail in that pursuit while also losing progressive voters because of their right wing message.

Democrats have consistently been losing elections since 2010 because voters are tired of the same old. A slightly progressive message to get into power, and then the only policy that is talked about is the opposition of the other candidate, which is what Hillary Clinton did, trying to ride on the accomplishments of President Obama. No real change was promised in any area from the democratic nominee, no optimism, no hopeful message that could light a passion in the democratic base. More status quo, maybe incremental change here and there in areas that need it, for the next four, likely eight years.

This along with her sketchy dealings with the Clinton Foundation participating in pay-to-play corruption and the e-mail scandal led to Hillary Clinton's downfall in the 2016 race.

Looking at the unfavorable ratings between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, it wasn't a major surprise that she lost. On election day, Gallup released the final unfavorable ratings of the candidates. While Trump was at 61% unfavorable, Clinton wasn't far behind at 52%. These were the worst and second worst unfavorable ratings in presidential polling history respectively.

While when you look at the most popular politician in the country, Bernie Sanders, Vermont Senator and a former opponent of Clinton, is at an 85-87% approval rating among his constituents, while at a 57% approval rating nationwide.

2016 Democratic Debate

Bernie Sanders is known for being very substantive in his speeches and turns a lot of frivolous questions into substance in town halls and debates. His whole career he has had the same stances as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump flip-flopped, sometimes on the campaign trail. With much voter snubbing from the democratic party to get their candidate propped up, the democrats felt the blow back from the Senator's supporters, causing a 'Bernie or Bust' mindset. This caused the write-in of Bernie Sanders, a bit of a voter boost to Jill Stein, or the base to not turn out.

This was not out of misogyny or a millennial tantrum as many in the mainstream media have tried to deem it as, but rather a resistance within the party. Hillary Clinton was the lesser of two evils, but still pretty bad when it came to foreign policy in Syria, corporatism, corruption, healthcare, trade, drug legalization, so forth and so on. The former Sanders supporters couldn't bring themselves to vote for someone so opposite to their previous choice.

Some Democrats have turned to moving to the right in their policies (???) and fewer have tried to appease the voters by adopting one or two progressive policies to seem like a progressive and show no need to be challenged in a primary in their future elections. Most have decided to just criticize Trump as much as possible until it looks like a platform.

But that's not what the people are looking for. Polls from Vox, a source that openly supported Hillary Clinton, found that the major messages in Bernie Sanders' campaign are very popular among Americans.

Positions polled by Vox showing support and opposition.

This shows the democratic party should adopt a progressive policy if they want to win future elections. This will be hard for them, as money from big donors goes against these policies. That is why groups like Brand New Congress and Justice Democrats are nominating not only opponents to extreme republican seats, but also to primary corporate democrats who cannot fully serve the American People anymore.