Reality Check for 2020 Democrats

This week offered a wake-up call to Democrats convinced that any presidential candidate, no matter how liberal, will be able to beat President Trump next November.

There were two off-year elections taking place in two of the most consequential blue-wall battlegrounds for the upcoming election: a state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin and a state Senate special election in the Pittsburgh suburbs.

In Pennsylvania, the Democratic nominee, Pam Iovino, emphasized her record of bipartisanship, supported cutting the state’s corporate tax rate, and opposed a Democratic legislative proposal that would require registration of firearms. A former George W. Bush appointee in the Veterans Affairs Department, Iovino ran a campaign that was inspired by Conor Lamb, the moderate wunderkind who won a solidly Republican congressional seat last year. Like Lamb, she carried a Republican-leaning district with 52 percent of the vote on Election Night.

In Wisconsin, progressive groups rallied behind Judge Lisa Neubauer in an attempt to move the state’s conservative judiciary in a more-liberal direction. The party’s dominant campaign message was to tag her opponent, Judge Brian Hagedorn, as a religious bigot over his adherence to Christian values. Despite liberal groups significantly outspending their conservative counterparts, Hagedorn stunned Wisconsin’s political establishment by eking out a narrow victory. After a lackluster 2018 showing, Republican turnout in the off-year election was robust.

The lesson from these two concurrent races should be clear. One, Democrats can’t rely on mobilization alone to win elections. When they tack left to energize their base, they inevitably energize the other side even more. Persuading moderates and avoiding the alienation of the opposition are critical elements to success.