PHILADELPHIA — Democrats’ new message on America’s economic recovery is: We told you so, and we’ll keep telling you so.
The economy is rebounding on nearly every front, even if the middle class still needs help, and it’s time to tell that story loudly, top Democrats say.
That’s the key to reversing their midterm election setbacks, according to a host of House Democrats, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, all of whom came to Philadelphia this week for pep talks and strategy sessions.
“Democrats have to stand up, you’ve got to explain what we did,” Biden said to loud applause Friday. “Be proud of it. … We can’t let the Republican Party rewrite history.”
Obama said much the same the night before. “The record shows we were right” Obama said, referring to the 2009 stimulus, the bank and auto industry bailouts, and other strategies to pull out the great recession of 2008.
If the Democrats’ were so right, reporters asked, why did Republicans clobber them in the 2014 midterm elections? Poor messaging, top Democrats said, which must be remedied.
Even Obama jokingly warned how hard it will be to overcome the Republicans’ 58-seat House majority in next year’s elections.
He said youthful, dark-haired Rep. Ben Lujan of New Mexico — newly named to head their 2016 House campaigns — will end up with “hair like Steve Israel.” Israel, a New York congressman who preceded Lujan, is fully gray.
Israel’s new role is to oversee messaging for House Democrats. He told reporters his colleagues will stick to their well-known priorities: a higher minimum wage, tax increases on the rich, advancing the president’s health care law and other measures largely associated with Obama.
This time, they’re counting on Obama’s rising popularity — and fading headlines on Ebola and terrorist beheadings — to help persuade voters they would be better off with a Democratic-run Congress.
Israel acknowledged that Democrats talked a lot about the middle class in last fall’s elections. But world calamities distracted voters, he said, and Democrats failed to show that their economic policies would directly benefit working-class families.
Republicans scoff at Democrats’ talk of better messaging.
“Updating the packaging doesn’t help if the product is still lousy,” said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.
