Washington Free Beacon senior staff writer Elizabeth Harrington said on Fox News Tuesday that Democrats are succeeding in special elections by not emphasizing liberalness or criticizing President Donald Trump.
Harrington joined Maria Bartiromo for a discussion about Tuesday's special election in Ohio's 12th Congressional District, a race between Republican Troy Balderson and Democrat Danny O'Connor.
"I think it is a very localized race that does not have much to do with Trump," Harrington said, pointing out that O'Connor has focused on issues particularly pertinent to the district rather than Democrats' opposition to Trump.
The Democratic candidate has told reporters that some issues that are highlighted in national media, like the Mueller investigation, aren't a common topic of discussion among voters in the district.
"He's not running on a far-left platform, which I think is the really interesting thing. When Democrats have been successful in these special elections and these races, they haven't done the resisting, anti-Trump approach," Harrington said.
"They're not running away from [Trump]," she said.
Harrington argued that while this may upset the Democratic base, it isn't where the power of the party is right now.
"These 'abolish ICE' Democrats that the base, the far left, would like to see the Democrats run on, it's not a winning thing. You see Conor Lamb in Pennsylvania; Danny O'Connor is trying that model, which is a moderate, actually kind of a pro-Trump platform," Harrington said.
"I think you see the civil war going on in the Democratic party that is literally being dragged to the left by socialists like [Sen.] Bernie Sanders and [New York congressional candidate Alexandria] Ocasio-Cortez, who want to abolish ICE, who want to raise taxes, who want Medicare for all, they want socialist-style health care," Harrington added. "That's not where the voters are, and that's not how they're going to win back the white working class who they lost to Trump in 2016."
She said Democrats' midterm prospects rest on what type of candidates the party fields.
"If they run on the far left, if the far left wins out, they're not going to have the blue wave. If they have moderate candidates, they will pick up seats," Harrington said, pointing to the historical trend of the party out of power picking up seats in the midterms.
"If the election is only about Trump, and hatred of Trump is the platform, that is not successful. You need an issue-driven wave," she said.