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The Democrat Who Just Wants Her Party to Be 'Normal'

AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib

Elissa Slotkin, former CIA analyst and congresswoman from Michigan's 7th congressional district, defeated GOP Rep. Mike Rogers for the Michigan Senate seat previously held by Debbie Stabenow.

Slotkin won by 18,000 votes in a state Donald Trump won by 80,000. She did it because she “stayed focused on an economic message. Most of my ads were straight to the camera, like, ‘I’m Elissa Slotkin. I want to be your senator, and here’s why,’ ” she said.

Her victory was one of the rare high points for the Democrats in an election that saw the GOP capture both Houses of Congress and the presidency.

And now, "the oldest political party in the world," as The Free Press's Peter Savodnik reminds us, is adrift — out of power with no direction and no purpose. For the last two years, their party campaigned as the anti-Trump party, warning about the grave threat to democracy, to women's rights, to racial progress, and to the planet if Donald Trump were to win the presidency again.

They lost. And on Wednesday, November 6, Democrats woke up, looked around, and had no clue how they got to the position they were in. They had no clue because they weren't listening to voters. They were too busy telling voters how good things were to hear their cries of anguish. An angry electorate slapped them down.

And now comes the soul-searching. And Senator Slotkin wants to lead them out of the wilderness and back to "normalcy." “Let’s be on Team Normal,” Slotkin, 48, told Savodnik. She summarized her recommendation for the party. She said it wasn't "normal" to obsess over race and gender. This alienates voters no matter how "right" you might think you are.

“Identity politics doesn’t work,” she said. “Woke,” she added, has “become kind of a bad word.” She has to say that because most of her radical friends don't understand how toxic the word "woke" has become.

Slotkin says she was shocked by the virulent anti-semitism from the left. “I think the Jewish community, of which I’m a part, was wholly unprepared for that. We’re real prepared for right-wing antisemitism—totally unprepared for left-wing antisemitism, and it threw us onto our heels.”

She called herself a “radical pragmatist.” The old ways of doing battle with Trump, the old ways of posturing and jousting—they were a dead end. “A lot of Democrats see themselves as opposition,” she said. When I asked if that included her, she said, “No.”

She was, it was important to recall, a great-granddaughter of an immigrant from Russia who had founded a meat-products company that became the sole provider of hot dogs sold at Detroit Tigers games. She knew about negotiating—at least, that was who she came from.

“Some of my most important bills were signed by Donald Trump,” said Slotkin, who was first elected to the House in 2018. (Among those bills was the Real-Time Benefits Act, which gives consumers information about the price of their prescription drugs and became law in late 2020.)

Slotkin might not be in the vanguard of a new Democratic Party centrist movement. The party is going to double down on radical in 2026. They may have some success given that, historically, off-year elections favor the party out of power. 

But "normal" is eventually going to win out simply because the working class and the middle class of all races and religions hunger for that kind of "normalcy," and they represent the majority of voters. 

If she’s right, the good news is that Team Normal has a deep bench, many of them, not surprisingly, from Southern states, where Democrats must tack to the center to survive, or swing states Trump carried. The show ponies have huge social media followings and get on the cover of Vanity Fair. The Democrats who actually get things done, those who forge coalitions, dive into all the wonky details, and push bills over the finish line despite all the brand-builders—they’re people like Elissa Slotkin.

Team Normal includes Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro and the new North Carolina governor, Josh Stein, Slotkin said. (“I met him last night at the White House Hanukkah party, and I liked him a lot—we hung out.”)

Trump won Pennsylvania, Michigan, and every other swing state by holding the Democrats up as "abnormal" and demonstrating that simple, everyday meat-and-potatoes politics could appeal to Democrats, too. Slotkin knows how to win those voters back, or at least she thinks she knows.

Until the rest of the party listens to her and not to the radical left, the Democrats will be wandering in the wilderness.

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