How red-state Democrats blew it

These Democratic senators had an extraordinary opportunity in 2018. They've already squandered it.

Sen. Joe Manchin, Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, and Sen. Claire McCaskill.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Alex Wong/Getty Images, AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

For the last several years, the Democratic Party has attempted to make up for its complete lack of an economic agenda — or at least one that is not synonymous with the flourishing of Wall Street, tech companies, and upper-middle-class professionals — with a series of increasingly desperate performatively woke gestures. The transition in the space of less than half a decade from President Obama's solemn disapproval of same-sex marriage to Nancy Pelosi's insistence that having separate men's and women's lavatories in a school or a restaurant is as opprobrious as Jim Crow has not been lost on people.

"It doesn't matter how much we scream and holler about jobs and the economy at the local level. Our national leaders still don't get it," David Betras, the chairman of the Mahoning County Democrats in Ohio, told The Washington Post recently. "While Trump is talking about trade and jobs, they're still obsessing about which bathrooms people should be allowed to go into."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.