Opinion
The Jewish Democrat who defied political gravity
Elissa Slotkin straddles the line between red and blue america
November 28, 2022 09:00
3 min read
Elissa Slotkin straddles the line between red and blue america
November 28, 2022 09:00They’ve barely finished counting the votes from this month’s US mid-term elections but already thoughts are turning to 2024.
On the face of it, the Democrats have more to look forward to. They enjoyed an unexpectedly strong, precedent-defying performance in the mid-terms and are now salivating at the prospect of Donald Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis tearing strips off one another for the next two years.
However, the Democrats still face some formidable challenges; not least the continuing erosion of its traditional strength among blue-collar voters – graphically demonstrated by Hillary Clinton’s narrow but fatal defeat in “blue wall” states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in 2016.
And whether or not Joe Biden – who was picked by Democrats in 2020 precisely because of his “Rust Belt” appeal – chooses to run for re-election, the party need to look beyond the self-proclaimed “scrappy kid from Scranton” to a younger generation for new thinking about how it wins elections in America’s heartlands.
Step forward Elissa Slotkin, the 46-year-old, Jewish Democrat who defied political gravity to win a third term in the House of Representatives earlier this month.
Slotkin, who worked at the Pentagon and as a CIA analyst in Iraq before winning her Michigan district in the Democrats’ 2018 landslide, sits on the faultline between “red” and “blue” state America. She is one of only seven House Democrats to win a seat that voted for Trump in 2020 [NYT].
But despite highly unfavourable national headwinds and a huge Republican push to oust her, Slotkin managed to hold the district by the largest margin she has achieved since her first victory four years ago. In response, Politico magazine described her triumphant re-election as “the one race that shows how the Democrats beat the red wave”. No wonder the media tout https://www.reuters.com/world/us/hakeem-jeffries-launches-bid- lead-us-house-democrats-2022-11-18/ Slotkin as a rising star in the new congress.
As Politico detailed in a recent study of the contest, Slotkin’s winning strategy was based around a plan to “lose better”. Instead of writing off the most staunchly Republican parts of the district, the congresswoman and her team went into the lion’s den to appeal for votes. In a tight race, they figured, picking up handfuls of additional votes in areas the party had previously steered clear of might make all the difference.
Of course, Slotkin’s ability to reach out to disgruntled and wavering Republicans rested on her political profile as a fiercely independent, bipartisan centrist who sticks to her principles and eschews the ideological virtue-signalling beloved of left-wing Democrats. One of Slotkin’s first acts after arriving in Washington in 2018, for instance, was to join with a handful of other moderates in refusing to support Nancy Pelosi’s election as Speaker of the House of Representatives.
And while left-wingers have responded to voters’ concern about crime and migration by banging on about abolishing ICE – the US immigration service – and defunding the police, Slotkin called for her party to plant its flag firmly in the centre ground. This year she and fellow moderate “New Democrats” like New Jersey’s Josh Gottheimer drafted an agenda which pushed bipartisan bills aimed at tackling inflation, reducing healthcare costs and “fighting crime and investing in law enforcement”. While strenuously opposing https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/01/michigan-abortion-congressional-race-elissa-slotkin the Republican effort to roll back abortion rights, Slotkin was also always sceptical that the issue alone would carry the party to victory.
During the election campaign, Slotkin showcased her ability to win respect and support across the aisle by running ads featuring a former member of George W. Bush’s National Security Council and staging a “patriotism and bipartisanship” rally at which she was endorsed byLiz Cheney, a former top House Republican rejected by her party for refusing to be silent about the 6 January assault on Congress.
There is, however, nothing mushy or soft-edged about Slotkin’s politics. Despite fierce political blow-back back home, she was one of the first moderate Democrats to call for an impeachment enquiry into Trump’s attempt in 2019 to embroil Ukraine in his re-election campaign. Slotkin has also become one of the leading voices in Congress on the need to confront domestic extremism.
Crucially, Slotkin is clear-sighted about the Democrats’ political weaknesses, particularly its seeming elitism on divisive cultural issues. “We sometimes make people feel like they aren’t conscientious enough. They aren’t thoughtful enough. They aren’t ‘woke’ enough. They aren’t smart enough or educated enough to just understand what’s good for them,” she argued in an interview after the 2020 election. “It’s talking down to people. It’s alienating them.”
More than many other Democrats, Slotkin’s also willing to recognise why Trump appeals to some voters. “You know, the one thing I will say about Donald Trump,” she has suggested. “He doesn’t talk down to anybody … I think that there is a certain voter out there because of that who identifies with him and appreciates him … [They] feel so distant from the political process—it’s not their life, it’s not their world ... Trump speaks to them, because he includes them.”
Slotkin’s message – that parties should seek to understand, and reach out to, those who don’t vote for them – may once have seemed elemental. In today’s age of political polarisation, it’s revolutionary. But for Democrats and Republicans alike, it’s the best way to move on from a politics which has left Americans increasingly split into two mutually suspicious and fearful tribes.