Some free advice for the Democratic party

The first thing to remember is that the Democratic party is the oldest political party in the world. It’s had its ups and downs over many years. Under any fair reading of history, it has done many good things for this country and the world. It is not going away any time soon.

But it is in a bad way. Its chances of recapturing the presidency in 2020 depend largely on decisions by Republicans and on events outside anyone’s control.

Democrats currently hold fewer House seats, governorships and state legislatures than at any time since the 1920s. And the signature policies of the outgoing Democratic president — Obamacare and the Iran nuclear deal — are not political assets.

The first thing Democrats need to do is to end the alibi game. Yes, it’s a shattering experience to lose a presidential election which, until the nine o’clock hour on election night, you seemed sure you would win.

But alibis don’t help you win next time. Don’t blame “fake news” when your candidate had lots more money to spend delivering her message. Don’t blame the FBI director when your candidate had violated criminal laws and the attorney general had to disqualify herself after revelation of her secret meeting with the candidate’s husband.

Don’t blame the “racism” of an electorate that twice elected the first black president. Don’t blame the Electoral College when everyone knew beforehand that you need 270 electoral votes, not a popular vote plurality, to win.

Blame instead the Clinton campaign’s “ascendant America” strategy, to reassemble the 2012 Obama coalition of non-whites and millennials, on the assumption that the attitudes of other voters — notably white non-college graduates who cast who cast essential Obama votes in the Midwest — would remain static.

The exit polls showed Trump, supposedly toxic to non-whites, running slightly better among them than Mitt Romney. Their apparent regression to mean, to voting more like the national average, does not support the theory that non-whites, tormented by oppression and seething with grievance, will remain overwhelmingly Democratic forever.

At the same time, demonizing white non-college-graduates (many of whom voted for Obama) as “deplorables” and “irredeemables” stricken with “implicit racism,” as Hillary Clinton did Sept. 9, helped to insure that they would vote more like a grievance-afflicted minority group. You don’t win people’s votes by calling them names.

To recover, Democrats need to take a look at the map. The relevant map in this election divides the nation between coastal America (the West Coast plus Hawaii, the Northeast from Maine to D.C.) and heartland America (the South, Midwest, Rocky Mountains plus energy states Alaska and Pennsylvania). Coastal America casts 31 percent of popular votes and 170 electoral votes. Heartland America casts 69 percent of popular votes and 368 electoral votes.

Hillary Clinton carried all but 1 electoral vote (the Maine 2nd congressional district vote) in coastal America. But in heartland America, where Obama lost the electoral vote 206-162 in 2012, Clinton carried only 63 electoral votes to Donald Trump’s 305. Yes, he won the 46 electoral votes of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin by a combined popular vote margin of only (at latest count) 77,193. But the fact is, he didn’t need a single electoral vote from coastal America to win.

Democrats are even weaker in heartland downballot elections. In races for House of Representatives, Republicans won more than 200 seats there to only 90 for Democrats. Democrats could win half of the Republicans’ 35 U.S. House seats in coastal America and still fall short of a House majority. In state legislatures, heartland Republicans outnumber Democrats nearly 2-1 in state senates (935-464) and lower houses (2,339-1,272).

My advice to Democrats is the advice Justice Louis Brandeis gave to young New Dealers in the 1930s. “Get out of Washington,” he said. “Go back to the states.” Leave the latte-soaked coastal cocoons, return to your hometown or set down new roots, and run for office in the heartland. And not in university towns; in real America.

That’s what many young liberals did in the 1970s, shoring up Democratic congressional and legislative majorities for two decades, learning from constituents rather than instructing them, participating in local civic culture rather than lamenting it. The Democratic party and the nation would be well served if smart ambitious young Democrats started packing their bags and competing where their party has been falling fatally short.