Piper says:
As a red-state Democrat, there's really something that I can't stand to hear, and that's when people will look at me and say, "You get what you voted for." Did you know that 40 percent of Missourians voted for Kamala Harris? Did you know that we worked and put hundreds of thousands of signatures together to put paid sick leave, a higher minimum wage, and to get rid of Missouri's abortion ban on the last ballot? All three things won. And then guess what happened? Our gerrymandered state legislators overturned our will. Again, rubbing our nose in it and saying we get what we voted for -- it doesn't really apply. We're trying. We're gerrymandered. We don't have Democrats running, and we don't have money here to support downballot Democrats. And I'm just putting this out there to remind folks: not all of us are voting against our self-interest. There's a whole bunch of people in Missouri trying to do the right thing. It's just an uphill battle.Donald Trump did beat Kamala Harris in Missouri 58%-40%, while the ballot measures Piper mentions passed: Missourians decided to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution by a 52%-48% margin, and they voted to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour while mandating paid sick leave 58%-42%. (Both issues were part of one ballot measure.)
Yes, the Missouri legislature is working to nullify these referenda, and yes, the legislature is gerrymandered: Republicans hold 70% of the seats in the state Senate and 69% of the seats in the state House of Representatives. Neither Trump nor the victorious Republican gubernatorial candidate, Mike Kehoe, reached 60% of the vote in 2024. Nor did Republican Eric Schmitt in his winning Senate bid in 2022. So the legislature is noticeably more Republican than the state electorate.
But Republican candidates still routinely win statewide elections. Democratic candidates running statewide do much worse than ballot measures featuring Democratic ideas. Remember, gerrymandering doesn't apply in statewide elections.
Missouri is, roughly speaking, a 58%-40% Republican state. And why is that, if the residents believe workers should have paid sick leave, the minimum wage should be higher, and abortion rights should be preserved?
I think I've said this a hundred times here, but I'll say it again: Millions of voters in America regularly vote Republican and don't realize that policies they support are opposed by nearly every Republican. They don't realize that Democrats support these policies.
None of these are radical ideas. None of them involve the world "Latinx" or "equity." Democrats across the spectrum can support them -- Jasmine Crockett as well as James Carville. (Hey, there's another idea: what if Democrats talked about popular policy positions the entire party agrees on? Imagine a Democratic Party in which moderates weren't always fighting with Democrats to their left -- that's crazy talk, right?)
Democrats need to start saying, Republicans oppose all of these policies. If you support them, you need to know that Republicans are on the other side, and Democrats are on your side. This should be a major project for the Democratic Party: making sure that millions of voters in the middle understand the mismatch between the policies they support and the party they regularly vote for.
This won't flip the majority of Republican voters. But it might flip just enough to make states like Missouri, Ohio, Iowa, and Texas competitive again.
