Democrats are not even a national party, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, laments. He wants to make his party great again in flyover country by taking over from Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., as House Democratic leader. He’s campaigning on a promise to give Democrats who represent the Heartland more input into how the party works.
“We’re not even a national party,” Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday. “We’re a coastal party.”
Ryan is right — and incidentally, that is why neither Ryan nor anyone like him could ever become the Democratic leader by making such promises. The constituency he’s appealing to just doesn’t exist — at least not among Democratic members of the U.S. House.
Of the 194 House Democrats who will serve in the next Congress — the ones who will be voting this week for House Democratic leadership — 50 come from the three West Coast states, 19 represent New England, 20 represent New York City and its suburbs, four (or perhaps five if you count Delaware’s at-large seat) represent Philadelphia and its suburbs, seven represent D.C. and its suburbs, three represent the Baltimore area, and 10 represent urban or suburban constituencies in South Florida.
That comes to 115 out of 194 House Democrats — well over half the caucus — representing coastal districts. And we didn’t even have to debate whether Democrats’ districts in Boulder or suburban Chicago or Denver should really count in the “Heartland” category.
If you look for Democratic districts specifically like Ryan’s — the kind full of the white, working-class voters who just ruined Hillary Clinton’s year — they’d mostly turned Red before this election. Since 2009, (and mostly in 2010, before the last round of redistricting), about three dozen relatively moderate Democrats representing such seats (especially in the Midwest, Appalachia, and the rural South) either retired or lost re-election. As the Democratic Party’s social values shifted leftward, those districts went to the GOP.
There used to be dozens of Ike Skeltons, Tim Holdens, John Murthas and Alan Mollohans in Congress. Now there might be 10, if you’re lucky.
The average Democratic House member in the new Congress will be representing upper-income white professionals who read the Huffington Post and used to watch the Daily Show — which frankly, has been the Democrats’ target audience for the last three election cycles. Even combined with the significant bloc that represents majority-minority districts in coastal cities, that’s not a big enough coalition to win a House majority. But it’s probably good enough to elect a House minority leader.
