[W]ASHINGTON — As Democratic candidates face off in primaries around the country this year, a difference in approach is taking shape.
Some are taking a more moderate approach, hoping to appeal to centrists and erode support for Republicans in the race.
Others, however, contend that the best way for Democrats to win support is to propose a strong platform of their own. Many are embracing progressive approaches to health care, the economy and more.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, for one, feels that the most effective strategy is to mobilize voters.
“I think that Democrats win elections by and large when voter turnout is high and Republicans win election by and large when voter turnout is low,” the Vermont independent said in an interview Monday.
In the wake of Sanders’ 2016 presidential run, candidates in House primaries and other races have adopted initiatives like single payer health care — long a Sanders pillar — as part of their platforms.
“I think in my view what candidates have got to do is speak to the needs of working people not just wealthy campaign contributors,” Sanders said. “When they speak to the needs of working people, when they involve people in a grassroots campaign, they can often expand voter turnout, do well and win elections.”
However, his approach has been met by resistance — sometimes explicitly — by others on the political left, who argue that Democrats have a better chance of flipping currently Republican seats if they adopt a tack more appealing to centrist voters.
A primary contest in one Texas congressional district has become particularly symbolic of a divide in approach that analysts say is playing out in many races across the country.
Voters will go to the polls Tuesday in Texas’s 7th congressional district for a runoff between Laura Moser, a more progressive candidate backed by Sanders’ spin-off group Our Revolution, and Lizzie Fletcher, the candidate favored by more moderates. No candidate got the requisite percentage of votes in the primary in March, kicking the race into a runoff.
Shortly before election day in March, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took the unusual step of releasing opposition research on Moser, and saying that she would not be able to beat the incumbent Republican candidate come November.
Rice University political science expert Mark Jones said he sees “a modest Democratic civil war” playing out, which he likened to divisions within the Republican Party in 2010 when the far-right Tea Party surged.
Generally, recent Democratic primaries in Texas have been more about personal networks than about ideological differences between the candidates, Jones said.
“Traditionally in Texas you didn’t see those types of divides,” he said.
Sanders’ 2016 campaign gave rise to “two different flavors of liberals.” On one hand, there are the more “pragmatic” Democrats, in the mold of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. On the other, he said, are the more “outspoken” liberals, like Sanders.
The split is clear in the Texas 7th, he said.
Moser has run as “an unabashed progressive,” attempting to mobilize voters, Jones said.
Fletcher, meanwhile, has been more focused on winning support of moderates, and potentially eroding support for the Republican candidate that way.
If Moser wins Tuesday’s run-off, that would be evidence that within the Democratic Party in Texas there is an appetite for somebody who effectively takes a more ideological approach, Jones said.
However, he believes Moser would face an “incredibly tough hill” to win in November.
Sanders disputed the notion that there is a Tea Party-style rift within the Democratic Party this cycle.
“In every large political party there are different points of view, and obviously there are different points of view between the people who strongly supported Hillary Clinton and who strongly have supported me, no great secret about that,” Sanders said.
However, he maintained that he sees a sense of unity across the Democratic Party to challenge President Donald Trump and the Republican majority in Congress.
“Will there be primaries where you’re going to have different points of view out there? Yes you will,” Sanders said. “But at the end of the day I think what virtually all Democrats agree upon is the need to defeat right wing extremism in this country.”
Eric Davis, Middlebury College political science professor emeritus, said races like the one in Texas and in other parts of the country can be good tests for seeing where Democratic voters are.
However, he added that a major consideration will be how those candidates fare in the general election.
“How many of these winnable districts to Democratic candidates actually win in November?” Davis said.
If candidates like Moser who are aligned with Sanders and have the backing of Our Revolution win in the general election, it’s a signal of the appetite for Sanders, Davis said.
Meanwhile, as primary season has picked up, doubts have emerged as to how effective Our Revolution is for political candidates. Politico reported Monday on a variety of issues with management within the organization, which is technically separate from Sanders but was spun out of his 2016 campaign.
Kyle Kondik, an analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said there is a pattern of a divide in early Democratic races across the country.
“You could certainly identify in certain places a kind of insider versus outsider dynamic,” Kondik said.
However, he said, in many cases the “establishment-oriented” candidate is tending to win.
As to whether there is a significant rift emerging within the Democratic Party, Kondik said he feels it’s too soon to tell.
“It’s been convenient to compare the Democrats in 2018 to the 2010 Tea Party Republicans,” Kondik said. “I don’t think we’re really at that point yet.”
For instance, he said, Democrats have not adopted the negative tone about party leadership that is found among some in the GOP about Republican Party leaders.
Kondik said the long-term result of Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid may not be that progressive candidates win, but it could be that more moderate candidates embrace more progressive ideas.
“The so-called Main Street of the Democratic Party may be getting pulled left even though the candidates getting nominated are by and large the ones that the party prefers,” Kondik said.
