The Democratic Party can rebound from devastating loses in the midterm elections and triumph in 2016 by embracing its affinity for big government and offering big-government solutions to middle-class economic concerns, the Senate Democrats’ top political strategist said Tuesday.
“In order to win in 2016, Democrats must embrace government, not run away from it,” New York Sen. Charles E. Schumer, chairman of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Center, said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington.
“We’re a pro-government party. We have been all along. You can’t run from it,” he said.
Mr. Schumer insisted that most Americans yearn for more government assistance to save them from declining income and dwindling economic opportunity, while rejecting Republican ideas of smaller, less activist government.
“Ultimately, the public knows in its gut that a strong and active government is the only way to reverse the middle-class decline and help revive the American dream,” he said. “Democrats lost in 2014 because the government made mistakes that eroded the electorate’s confidence in its ability to improve the lives of the middle class.”
The speech was Mr. Schumer’s first major strategy address since he was re-elected chairman of the DPCC for the next Congress, with the addition of liberal champion Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren to help him fine-tune the party’s message.
Despite the midterm election results, in which Republicans took control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House, Mr. Schumer insisted that the political pendulum was already swinging in the Democratic Party’s direction.
“Over the course of the 20th century, our political pendulum has swung from periods of relative faith in government to periods of distrust,” said Mr. Schumer. “These are the big tectonic plates. They move very slowly over time, but they have drastic and lasting consequences when they do, and they are moving back in a pro-government direction.”
His assessment of the political landscape drew howls from conservatives.
“The failure of big-government liberalism is why liberals were overwhelmingly rebuked at the polls this month, and why President Obama’s approval rating is at historic lows,” said Chris Bond, spokesman for the conservative advocacy organization YG Network.
Mr. Schumer blamed the election results on the Obama administration mishandling a series of issues that he said undermined American’s confidence in government and turned voters against Democrats.
“As 2014 began the parties were in stalemate,” he said. “But when government failed to deliver on a string of noneconomic issues — the rollout of the Obamacare exchanges, the mishandling of the surge in border crossers, ineptitude at the VA, the initial handling of the Ebola threat — people lost faith in government’s ability to work and then blamed the incumbent governing party, Democrats, creating a Republican wave.”
White House spokesman Eric Schultz responded to a reporter’s question about the comment by focusing on health care.
“If you want to have a conversation about the Affordable Care Act, we should, because we believe strongly the Affordable Care Act is working,” he told reporters traveling with the president to Chicago.
Mr. Schumer also faulted Mr. Obama and fellow Capitol Hill Democrats for tackling health care reform in 2009-2010, which was not a pressing concern for a majority of Americans, before doing more to bolster the economy.
“It wasn’t the change we were hired to make. Americans were crying out for the end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs — not changes in health care,” he said of Mr. Obama’s signature legislative accomplishment.
Still, Mr. Schultz backed the senator’s call for Democrats to focus on economic issues affecting the middle class, which Mr. Schumer said was key to restoring voters’ faith in government.
“I saw that he talked about the need to have an emphasis on the middle class, and that is something that drives us and this president every single day,” said Mr. Schultz.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.