Can Democrats reboot their old winning ways?
--Dance with those who brought you. Democratic and labor leaders approached Lamb about running in October, after longtime congressman Tim Murphy resigned in a scandal. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee quietly slipped his campaign an early $1 million, but the campaign deliberately avoided attracting national attention and a possible backlash from the right.
Democrats can hold the blue-collar center -- again. On the issues, GOP super PAC mailers said Lamb opposed new gun laws in the wake of school shootings and that he had broken with his labor supporters by opposing a $15 minimum wage -- because small businesses were against it, Lamb said. He also opposed the brief government shutdown that Democrats hoped would lead to a vote on protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.
On the always incendiary issue of abortion in the pro-choice party, Lamb, a Catholic, calls himself "personally opposed to abortion" but also promises to uphold the Supreme Court and Constitution. On the party's leadership, Lamb also has said he does not support returning Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to her post, which further enhanced his appeal as an outsider.
Yet despite these deviations from the usual party line, there was no apparent liberal backlash. Instead, various analysts noted, his turnout in Democratic Allegheny County was higher than in the more conservative parts of the district.
One caution: We're still talking about special elections, which are very hard to predict or analyze. But the apparent swing of energy and enthusiasm from the Republicans to the Democrats, quite the opposite of 2016, offers little to give Republicans comfort.
Trump's base-oriented presidency has left a lot of room in the political middle. Trump promised everything, including such contradictions as expanded health care at lower cost and tax cuts with deficit reduction. But the self-described "stable genius" is looking more like the "chaos candidates" described by his 2016 Republican rivals.
But campaigning against Trump is not enough. Democrats have to offer voters something -- and someone -- to vote for. Conor Lamb wouldn't be the right candidate for every district. He points the way, though, to the sort of swing voter appeal the party too often seems to forget about -- until its' too late.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
