Cathy Reisenwitz for The New Liberal Bulletin - It’s time for Alabama Democrats to get serious – and get real.
Will Marshall didn’t mince words at the PPI retreat in Denver, Colorado this past April. “There will be blood,” PPI’s president and founder said.
The Democratic Party has abandoned Alabama, along with the majority of the electorate. Over the past four years, the Democratic Party has failed. President Joe Biden presided over a dysfunctional administration that allocated, for example, billions to expanding broadband access, a major problem in many parts of Alabama, which then connected exactly zero homes. He left office with a measly 40% approval rating. Polling from Blue Rose Research found only 7% of voters viewed Harris as more liberal than themselves, suggesting a serious mismatch between the ticket and the median voter.
Once, the parties were split along generational and racial lines. Today, voters are increasingly divided by geography and college degrees. Democrats are becoming the party of white collar, college-educated voters in superstar cities and swing districts.
We lost vote share among young, non-college, and non-white voters in the last election - that’s most of the electorate.
We’ve created an existential crisis. We cannot aspire to win majorities when we only represent a minority of voters.
Getting the Party leadership back on track won’t be easy. The Party establishment is preventing the next generation of Democrats from taking office and delivering the change voters are demanding from the politicians. We need powerful leaders who will upend a status quo that prevents working families from getting ahead.
But in Denver this past weekend, PPI, a center-left think tank based in Washington, DC, brought together a collection of more than one hundred elected officials, staffers, public pollsters, policy experts, and radically pragmatic activists like yours truly to do more than solve our electoral math problem. We strategized on how to expand our coalition and win back the working families the Democratic Party has left behind. Learning how to win back voters in states that like Alabama “is a question of our Party’s soul,” Marshall said.
We used interviews, surveys, and polls to analyze how working families and non-college voters in rural towns and suburban enclaves voted in the 2024 election. Even politically moderate voters and voters who have voted for a Democrat at some point in the past have become disillusioned as the Party has moved away from them and toward a wealthier, more formally educated, more urban set of voters and values.
Alabama’s hardworking families feel unsafe, passed over, left behind, and looked down upon. Winning back this voter base isn’t complicated, but it’s not easy either. We need to put our priorities and pieties aside and listen to their concerns. Are Democrats ready to meet voters where they are?
More than 90% of these voters cite the cost of living as their top priority, no matter what issue it’s up against. Here in Huntsville, average rents have doubled in the past decade, while incomes have failed to keep pace. This is much more true among Huntsville’s non-degreed workers. Meanwhile, Alabama’s elected officials are banning books and dictating who’s allowed to use which restroom.
They don’t want endless government handouts.
They want good jobs and a fair shot at success.
They don’t want one-size-fits-all housing or healthcare.
They want homes they can afford and medical bills they can manage.
They don’t want school vouchers that drain public resources.
They want strong public schools that set their kids up to thrive.
They don’t want reckless trade wars that drive up costs.
They want a global economy that brings prices down and creates opportunity.
Alabama Democratic Party leaders who won’t deliver for all families need to step aside. We need a new generation of leaders who will deliver on promises to rural, working Americans.
A Party united without change means we all lose together. Families in need don’t have the luxury of defeatism.
Donors must step up and put their money where their mouth is, making long-term investments in candidates that will deliver shared prosperity, freedom, and democracy. Organizers need to communicate on a human level, face-to-face, instead of trying to out-radicalize each other online. The time to resist is now, and the place to resist is where you are.
The Progressive Policy Institute – and others across the country – are working to win back voters’ trust and chart a new direction for the Democratic Party.
Let’s make sure that all of us, here in Alabama, are gearing up to meet the moment.
Cathy Reisenwitz is a writer and advocate for individual freedom and urban policy reform. She serves as the chair of the Center for New Liberalism’s Steering Committee, is the founder of CNL’s local chapter in Huntsville, and publishes a Substack newsletter at cathyreisenwitz.substack.com.
SUBSCRIBE
Sign up to get the latest updates from the Center for New Liberalism
