There is a notion within some Democratic circles that the more right-leaning a Democratic candidate is, the better they will perform with voters in red districts.
On Sunday night we saw the shortcomings of this strategy. 8 of the most Conservative Democrats in the US Senate betrayed their Democratic colleagues and broke ranks to vote with MAGA on ending the shutdown.
It was especially devastating given that we threw out a winning hand (last Tuesday’s blue wave victory showed that a plurality of Americans blamed Trump for the shutdown) in exchange for a pinky promise with no guarantee that MAGA wouldn’t gut Obamacare.
Here is how the right-wing media is portraying their shutdown victory:
This devastating and unforced defeat shows that we need to have a serious conversation about electing conservative corporate Democrats who will compromise and appease the Trump administration when we need them most.
Trisha Calvarese is an economic populist and labor leader who supports common sense policies like fixing our broken health care system and ending America’s blood soaked foreign policy. She is testament to the fact that even in red districts, Democrats with values overperform their right-leaning Democratic peers.
Lauren Boebert is in Congress because of just 546 votes. After years of running tired conservative Dems in this district, when Trisha faced Boebert in 2024, a red wave year, she had the best performance a Democrat has ever had in this district.
Trisha outperformed Kamala Harris by 6 pts whereas Boebert underperformed Trump in every county.
