There’s an ancient, almost surely apocryphal story about a dog food company executive convening a big sales meeting. A very short version has the exec running through all of the company’s advantages: the best sales team, the best advertising, the best packaging, etc. He then irately asks, “So why aren’t we selling more dog food?”
After a long silence, a small voice from the back ventures a guess: “Maybe the dogs don’t like it.”
The story is a cliché, but a useful one in business and politics. For instance, the prelaunch internal name for Netflix was “Kibble,” a reminder that the customer actually had to like the product itself.
The Democratic Party would be well-advised to launch its own Operation Kibble.
There were hopes — and fears — that the recently released Democratic “autopsy”of their 2024 election defeat would be the beginning of just such an effort. Every Democratic faction wanted a report that either ratified their ideological commitments or proved that the party brass was hostile toward them.
Everyone was disappointed. The autopsy wasn’t a complete mess. It was an incomplete mess, with countless blank sections including a missing conclusion. Also, absent: any mention of President Biden’s age, Kamala Harris’ myriad shortcomings or such relevant issues as inflation, immigration, Israel or politically toxic culture war issues.
There were some defensible points scattered across the report’s nearly 200 pages; the party doesn’t try to win rural voters, it relies too much on identity politics, etc.
Still, critics across the ideological spectrum have closed the partisan divide to tear it apart like so many polar bears agreeably sharing a whale carcass. With so much to feed on, why squabble?
But there’s one criticism I haven’t seen that gets to the heart of the Democrats’ kibble problem. Simply put, the ideological activist base can’t accept that the dogs don’t actually like what they’re being served. This denial has a long history.
From the 1930s until the mid-1980s, Democrats significantly outnumbered Republicans, sometimes by more than two to one. And long after that, Democrats still usually had the edge. Republican presidents — Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, even the Bushes — earned victories by winning over some Democrats, and starting in the 1990s, Democrat-friendly independents. But Democrats clung to the idea that Democrats alone were the path to victory.
Bill Clinton recognized this era was ending, and instead crafted an appeal to the moderate and conservative voters the Democratic Party had been hemorrhaging. His presidency is not remembered fondly by today’s ardent progressives.
Electoral math is only part of the story. Ever since FDR’s administration, both parties have organized around an enduring myth of American politics: If everyone voted, Democrats would win. This idea more than any other explains why Republicans favor tighter controls around voting and Democrats want looser ones.
This idea rests on a lot of different assumptions. First, it seemed plausible back in the days when Democrats outnumbered Republicans. There’s also a kind of Marx-ish assumption that non-voters are a reserve army of the dispossessed, the marginal, the oppressed. As President Obama once put it when making the case for mandatory voting, “The people who tend not to vote are young; they’re lower income; they’re skewed more heavily towards immigrant groups and minority groups.”
Another related assumption by Democrats: We’re obviously right, so we just have to do better at getting our message out. Inversely, the Republicans are obviously wrong, so they must have exploited an unfair advantage to win, in terms of money, media and mobilization.
When right-wing talk radio seemed to help the GOP, the left concluded all they needed was their own talk radio, and Air America was born. When Fox News seemed to fuel GOP success, Current TV was launched, and MSNBC was revamped as left-wing Fox News. Several progressive think tanks were born out of envy for conservative think tanks.
Add in the complementary myth that the candidate with the most money wins, and you can start to appreciate the “cope” of the Democratic worldview.
The recent quest to stand up left-wing “podcast bros” — despite the fact that many such bros had been left-wing until recently (remember, Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020) — is another of numerous examples.
The autopsy offers more of the same, arguing that Democrats need to copy the “always on” media and activist infrastructure of the right — the Koch networks, Turning Point USA, etc. “Democrats and allies must consider how to match and exceed these investments.”
Now, as tradecraft, none of this is indefensible. But in context, it’s the same argument that has hobbled Democrats for decades: There’s nothing wrong with our dog food, we just need a better ad campaign.
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