The Minnesota DFL Meltdown: Why it matters, why it is overdue, why it is mostly good

The meltdown of the Minnesota DFL was entirely predictable.  It is  also overdue and mostly good.  The roots of  this implosion  can be located in its failure till now to address significant changes in Minnesota, ranging from structural forces in the state to demographic ones.  But simply the cause is that the DFL failed to gradually reform, forcing an abrupt crisis that is happening now, at a most critical if inopportune time.
The DFL implosion parallels one found with the national Democratic party.  Nationally the Democrats are facing their failures to rebuild the lost New Deal coalition that linked labor unions, working class, and people of color.  Unions are all best decimated and will meet their final fate in a few weeks when the Supreme Court kills them off in Janus v. AFSCME, in part because when given the chance, Obama and the Democrats took them for granted and did nothing to change the law to help them modernize.  Democrats long ago abandoned working class when they became a corporate party chasing Wall Street and rich donors while ignoring the growing gap between the rich and poor in America. Now a new generation expresses disdain for these Reagan and now Trump Democrats, seeing them as ignorant, racists who are not worth courting.  And while yes Democrats still appeal to people of color for votes, how much they really deliver for them versus take their vote for granted is a matter of serious debate.
The crisis of the national Democratic party is one lacking a compelling narrative, it is one  of having a one-size-fits-all campaign strategy well suited to run in urban settings but largely ineffective in rural and often suburban areas.  It is a party facing an existential crisis as the aging Baby Boomers and soon Gen Xers  exit politics and it is unable to talk an agenda relevant  to Millennials and soon Gen Z.  It is a party whose divide and problems surfaced in the 2016 clash between Clinton and Sanders, where many Democrats stayed home because they could not stand to vote for another neo-liberal.  It is a party whose problems are summed up by saying that their rationale or narrative in 2016 was that “We are not Trump,” and who may, if they are lucky, this year, squeak out a victory in 2018 on running against something and not for something.  This is the problem of the national Democrats.  Trump is only the latest external threat to the Democrats, both externally and internally.
The Minnesota DFL faces similar challenges.  It is a party still living in the past, assuming  that the political landscape of the state is the same as it was 20, 30, or 40 years ago when the DFL  was the majority party.  The statistics fail to show that.  It is a Blue state gone Purple and maybe headed Red.  It is a state where the party still pays homage to fallen and past party leaders and lives in their shadow.  Yes Humphrey, Wellstone, McCarthy, and Mondale were great figures, but they represent a different political area.  The Minnesota DFL is an insular party where its one-size-fits-all campaign strategy has reduced its political base to a few  urban cores and no more than maybe 10 or so counties.  It is a party occupied by an ideology of Baby Boomers and some Gen Xers, and it is a party with a leadership looking backwards and not to the future.  It is a party facing an existential crisis.
Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham wrote in his  Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics that every 30 or 40 years American politics and parties are characterized by a critical realignment.  Driven by economic or political crises, American history  demonstrates the need for parties and political to change, forcing changes in party labels, coalitions, and alignments.  For too long too Democrats nationally and the DFL in Minnesota have needed to  critically realign.  Changes in the economy and political changes, driven by racial and generational  demographics, necessitate the DFL to change.  This is what is happening now.
The DFL change began five years ago in Minneapolis with Betsy Hodges.  It was a DFL without the F and L.  Hodges had an opportunity to ride the wave of change but she was simply too inept to manage it.  Jacob Frey and Melvin Carter are a second wave of the change, how they respond is too soon to tell.  Now what has happened over the last few days is another sign of a party torn in lots of directions.  Murphy, Walz, and Swanson at the gubernatorial level represent three wings of the party, three ideologies, and three strategies on how to campaign in the state and forge winning coalitions.  The divide played out at the DFL convention with the fight over the attorney general nomination and subsequent filings for the office, and it plays out in replacing Keith Ellison. 
Much of this is destructive.  Many of the candidates running appear to be in it for themselves and not for the party of state.  Many seem to lack the experience or qualifications for the job, and many in choosing to run seem to have conceded that the State House of Representatives is a lost cause and are abandoning it for higher office.  All of this is unfortunate, coming at a time when control for so  many institutions and levers of powers in Minnesota are at stake. 
But much of this behavior is also understandable.  It comes at a time when the party has sat on reform and change for too many years and where new leaders are demanding that the party reflect  their generation’s interests and needs.  Short term it is not clear how well the DFL navigates  this meltdown, longer term it is too soon to tell the results.   But this meltdown matters, it is overdue, and maybe mostly good.

The DFL Gamble: Competing Gubernatorial Campaign Strategies

Should the DFL run to the left and mobilize young and urban voters mostly in the Twin Cities Metro
area to win the governorship, or go with a moderate candidate with a regionally balanced ticket in hope of capturing traditional Metro voters as well as picking up support in greater Minnesota, such as the Iron Range?  This appears to be the strategy dividing the leading contenders for the DFL gubernatorial nomination going into the August 14, primary  and beyond into the general election.
There will be an August 14, DFL gubernatorial primary featuring St. Paul Representative Erin Murphy and her lieutenant-governor Erin Maye Quade, an Apple Valley Representative, versus First Congressional District Tim Walz from Winona, and his running mate,  Peggy Flanagan, state representative, from Plymouth.  The two campaigns, while offering nuanced and sometimes real differences on public policy, offer more profound contrasts in terms of campaign strategies and how to respond to changing Minnesota politics in the age of Donald Trump.
There are at least three factors critically defining contemporary Minnesota politics.  The first is that the state has shifted from being a solidly DFL one to that which mirrors the partisan divide found nationally and in many other states. Divided government, shifting of partisan control of the legislature, and geographic sorting and split party control all are traits in Minnesota politics now.  One can also point to a narrowing of partisan identification where as of 2016 the DFL only enjoyed a 37%-35% advantage over the Republicans, down from more than ten points a generation ago.
A second fact is that in 2016 Donald Trump came within 45,000 votes of defeating Hillary Clinton in Minnesota. The question is whether his election was a fluke–sexism toward Clinton, her campaign strategy, or something unique about Donald Trump–or whether the election was a continuation of a trend line of a state tending Republican.  Consider in 2008, of the 87 counties in Minnesota, Obama won 42 of them.  In 2012 Obama won 28, and in 2016 Clinton only won nine counties, including Hennepin, Ramsey, St. Louis, and Olmsted.  Republicans had gained 33 counties over two elections.  In comparison, in the 2014 gubernatorial election, the Democrat Mark Dayton won 34 counties.  In Minnesota, as nationally, Democrats appear to be the party or urban areas and are losing rurally.
From 2008 through the 2012 and then into the 2016 presidential elections, the actual number of votes and the percentage of votes received by the Democratic presidential candidate in Minnesota declined.  In 2008 Barack  Obama received 1,573,454 votes compared to John McCain’s 1,275,409–a difference of 298,045.  In 2012 the gap between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney narrowed to 225,942.  Then in 2016 it was 44,765 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – a steady narrowing of the gap between the Democratic and Republican candidate.  But this narrowing of the gap was not necessarily a sign of Democratic voters switching to vote for Trump, it was DFLers staying home.  From 2008 to 2016 the actual number of votes being cast for the Democratic presidential candidate dropped by 205,638, while the number of Republican voters increased by 47,542.  Conceivably part of this shift was a result of changing voter preferences, and given that CNN exit polls suggested a tightening in the percentage of Minnesota voters who consider themselves Democrats versus Republicans.  Yet when looking at voter turnout in 2016 compared to 2012, it was up in many Republican while down in Democratic areas such as Hennepin County.
A third fact is that there is overall a generational and demographic shift occurring in Minnesota politics, with for the Democrats the base of their party turning increasingly to Millennial liberal voters who reside in the Twin Cities urban core.   Once part of the DFL coalition, the Iron Range increasingly is more mercurial, perhaps less reliable to vote Democrat than in the past.
Given the above, the question is how should the DFL respond? Early on post-2017 the received wisdom was that DFL needed to run a more moderate candidate who could connect with  rural Minnesota while at the same time still mobilize Metro voters.  After all, this is what Mark Dayton successfully did, as well as Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar.  The assumption here is that  a Democrat cannot win statewide office simply on the basis of the Metro vote–it also needed to build greater Minnesota coalitions.  Enter Tim Walz and Peggy Flanagan.  Walz was seen as a centrist DFLer who successfully won in a swing congressional district as being a person who could win enough rural votes–maybe even pick up some of the Trump supporters–and win the governor’s race.  He along with Peggy Flanagan, a Native-American and a liberal state representative from a swing suburb who was supposed to appeal to the metro Millennials liberals, was seen as the ideal ticket.  It featured traditional regional or geographic balance, a moderate-liberal balance, and perhaps  a stance on issues, such as guns, that would be electable.  Early on, de facto the DFL leaders seemed to agree and the Walz-Flanagan soared in terms of fund raising and early caucus support.
But along the way several things happened.  The Me-too movement and Al Franken’s resignation as well as high profile sexual harassment allegations involving Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, and members of the Minnesota Legislature  have activated a record number of women to run for office, portending a female  surge in 2018.   Then there were the Parkland school shootings, potentially radicalizing Millennials and Gen Z into political activism and making gun control a defining issue of orthodoxy for a new  political cohort along with Single Payer (health insurance).  Given these events, and the large population base in the Twin Cities, could someone run for governor by moving to the left, mostly foregoing rural votes, and instead make them up by heavily  mobilizing women and young voters in urban areas, especially in the Metro area?  This is the strategy  it appears in the DFL nominating Erin Murphy for governor and her picking Erin Maye Quade as her lieutenant governor.
Walz-Flanagan versus Murphy Maye Quade offer voters a contrast on policy ideas, but they also offer DFL primary and general election voters a contrast in campaign strategies.  The two offer differing views on how to respond to the changing political landscape of the state and what is  the appropriate strategy for Minnesota in the age of Donald Trump.  This is the DFL gamble, and  selecting the wrong one will have significant implications for both the party and the state.

The Coming Republican State of Minnesota?

Minnesota Congressman Rick Nolan’s surprise decision not to seek re-election underscores how his state is at a political tipping point.  This most Democratic of states in 2018 could finally turn
Republican, following the path of Wisconsin and other Midwestern states.  What happens in Minnesota this year could also decide which party controls the US House and Senate, making the state ground zero in this year’s elections.
Minnesota is thought of as the liberal state of Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Paul Wellstone, and Al Franken.  It is the most reliable Democrat state when it comes to the presidency; the last time it voted Republican was for Nixon in1972.  Tim Pawlenty in 2006 was the last Republican to win a statewide election in Minnesota.
Yet there are many signs that the state is turning Republican.  Since 1999, the Minnesota House of Representatives has been controlled by Republicans fourteen out of twenty years.  Since 2010 party control of the State Senate has flipped three times.  Since 1999 a Democrat has controlled the governorship only eight years out of twenty.  When Democrat Mark Dayton won the governorship in 2010 he was the first of his party to win that office in Minnesota since 1986.
In 2016 Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 45,000 votes–the closest presidential race in the state since 1984 favorite son Walter Mondale barely eked out a victory over Ronald Reagan. That year Minnesota was the only state in country to vote Democratic.  Her close victory should not have been a surprise–exit polls put Minnesota at 37% to 35% in terms of Democratic/Republican affiliation, similar to the 36% to 33% split nationally.
From 2008 through the 2012 and then into the 2016 presidential elections, the actual number of votes and the percentage of votes received by the Democratic candidate declined.  In 2008 Barack Obama received 1,573,454 votes compared to John McCain’s 1,275,409–a difference of 298,045.  In 2012 the gap between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney narrowed to 225,942.  Then in 2016 it was 44,765 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump – a steady narrowing of the gap between the Democratic and Republican candidate.   In 2008, of the 87 counties in Minnesota, Obama won 42 of them.  In 2012 Obama won 28, and in 2016 Clinton only won nine counties.  In comparison, in the 2014 gubernatorial election, the Democrat Mark Dayton won 34 counties.
As with nationally, the Democrat’s base appears to be eroding, contracting to simply urban areas.  The reasons are multifaceted. There is the Democratic appeal to educated urban liberals, often more affluent who look down on or disdain as stupid their rural and suburban counterparts, or those who are working class because they do not share their same interests or lifestyle preferences. There is also the failure of both parties to pay attention to the class and economic concerns of white-working class America.  They abandoned  class for identity politics.   Democrats seem also to have a one-size fits all campaign strategy that works well with urban populations but which is not tailored to the suburbs and rural areas.  Democrats have also embraced a “demographics with destiny” argument that often assumes that history in on their side and that eventually voters will return to their senses and vote for them.  Finally, Republicans  have well exploited the economic and cultural fears of rural, suburban, working class America, offering a narrative resonates with those who feel ignored.  All this is true nationally, and is being played out too in Minnesota.
Minnesota may be ground zero for national politics this year.  There is an open race for governor and two US senators up for election.  While Amy Klobuchar is favored to win, Tina Smith–who replaced Al Franken after he resigned–faces a tough election and is no shoo-in.  Nationally there are only about 25 swing House seats in the country, but four of them are in Minnesota.  Two of them–Minnesota’s First and Eighth–are currently held by Democrats Tim Waltz and Rick Nolan and neither are running for re-election.  These are open seats that have flipped party control over the years and are leaning Republican; both went for Trump in 2016.  There are two other House seats, the second and third, respectively held by Jason Lewis and Erik Paulsen, that are rated competitive by the Cook Report as competitive, but still leaning Republican.  The fate of the partisan control of Congress might rest with who wins Senate and House races in Minnesota.
Finally, at the start of the year the Minnesota State Senate were respectively 34-33 and 77-57 Republican.  A court fight over whether a Republican state senator must give up her seat when she became Lieutenant Governor to replace Tina Smith (who held that job) may decide in the next few weeks partisan control of it.  Short of a wave election Republicans will maintain state house control.  If Republicans can win the open gubernatorial seat this November, they would perfect their control of Minnesota much like what happened in Wisconsin when Scott Walker won. Such a prospect would then set up all the conditions for major policy change in Minnesota, along with a real possibility that in 2020 it would finally flip Republican in the presidential election.