Since the election, a debate has been raging in the Democratic Party about the best path to electoral victory: appeal to whites who voted for Obama and later Trump, or turn out those who stayed home in 2016, namely black voters?
This group of newcomers’ appeal is in part to white voters, and the attention given to Kander, Ossoff, Perriello and Buttigieg in recent months suggests Democrats are, consciously or not, leaning most toward the plan of winning back white voters. Election results for these men do show certain promising patterns. Though Kander lost his Senate race, he outperformed Clinton’s 2016 and Obama’s 2012 showing in a number of places and outright won counties that neither Clinton nor Obama could swing, namely Platte and Clay, outside Kansas City. Both Platte and Clay are wealthy and white places — each is 87 percent white, and the median income is $68,254 in Platte, $62,099 in Clay — and are in Missouri’s 6th Congressional District, represented by Republican Sam Graves. Graves won reelection in 2016 with 68 percent of the vote in the district.
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