Affordability lacks emotional content
An angry man in a black pickup hung a firm thumbs down out his window at a tiny street-corner sign protest on Tuesday. He doubled back to shout at two activists, turned down a side street, then came back a third time before leaving the scene. On Wednesday, I heard more than the usual number of incoherent shouts and grunts from passing commuters (assumed to be Trump supporters; friendlies mouth “thank you,” smile, honk, and thumbs-up).
If those reactions are any indication, the Border Patrol killing of a licensed gun owner in Minneapolis has shaken the MAGA faithful as it has shaken the White House. It was a deadly attack on a civil liberty that the right thinks of as its own: the Second Amendment.
Aaron Regunberg writes at The New Republic:
“I Am One Of The People That Doesn’t Want ILLEGAL ALIENS Here Illegally But This Shit Is Out Of Control,” posted a guy I and a few friends follow for anecdata on how swing voters in my home state are feeling. “People Have NO RIGHTS In This Country With Actions Like These,” he wrote. “FUCK Untrained Ice Officers And FUCK YOUR PRESIDENCY If THIS Is How You RULE,” he added, comparing Trump to Hitler and ICE to the gestapo. A quick look around r/Conservative—the Reddit community for conservatives—shows that this reaction is far from isolated. In each of these cases, it seems people who are in many ways as far removed from a resistance demonstrator as it’s possible to be are coming to the same conclusion as your average No Kings participant: that this regime is dragging the U.S. into authoritarianism.
Whether these events mark a MAGA Waterloo, as Regunberg puts it, will depend in large part on whether Democrats convert this Trump 2.0 turnover into meaningful support for reining in his rogue administration. Multiple members of Congress and Democratic governors harshly condemned the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti: Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, California Rep. Ro Khanna, Govs. JB Pritzker of Illinois and Wes Moore of Maryland, and more. But expressions of outrage — even two impeachments — have not stopped Trump’s gutting of constitutional limits and guaranteed freedoms in the past.
Lauren Egan of The Bulwark asks whether this assault is something the country can withstand for three more years, “or is American democracy truly in peril?” Some Democrats now vow not to provide more funding for the Department of Homeland Security without serious reforms. But is that really meeting the moment?
Egan writes:
That’s a significant shift from where Democrats were a little over a year ago, when party leaders had concluded that the Biden administration’s warnings about Trump’s threat to democracy appealed only to an elite audience, and that a narrow focus on affordability was the path back to power.
And yet affordability remains a party mantra heading into the fall elections.
BUT THERE’S NOW AN EMERGING BELIEF among Democrats that voters can be pissed off and motivated by two things at once—namely, the cost of living and Trump’s blatant disregard for the Constitution. In fact, they believe that the connection between the two creates a vulnerability for Trump, that there is a perception among voters that Trump is distracted by his pet projects—from turning ICE into his paramilitary plaything, to gilding the White House in gauche gold leaf—rather than focusing on bringing down the costs of groceries, health care, and housing. Fundamentally, it is all part of the same story.
“Democracy” seems less of an abstraction now. Conservatives seem chronically uninterested in social and civil rights issues until personally touched by them. Alex Pretti may not have been Team MAGA, but as a gun owner with a concealed carry permit, he was “MAGA adjacent.” His brutal killing after being face down and disarmed suddenly makes Trump’s evisceration of the Bill of Rights a live issue for conservatives.
Regunberg urges Democrats to visit Minneapolis to demonstrate solidarity (before DHA pulls back), to grab onto the issue and headlines with it. And not just for a quick photo op. Join observers. Do ridealongs. Don gas masks when fired upon with tear gas. It’s visual. It’s visceral. It conveys seriousness and commitment. Republicans wouldn’t dare match them.
As for “affordability,” it does not get to the nub of voters’ anxieties, especially independents’ worries. Affordability has rubbed me the wrong way for months. Yet Democrats across the board are using it, running on it. I get it. It’s convenient. It’s a one word, a six-syllable shorthand for the economic anxiety voters feel across the country. But it still feels like an abstraction. Clinical. Bloodless. There’s no feeling behind it. It sounds like the kind of policy-speak that turns off potential Democratic voters and tells them that Democrats — to borrow from Bill Clinton — don’t feel their pain.
I wrote in December:
Affordability continues to be a buzzword candidates and the press use as shorthand for the anxiety Americans feel in an economy wracked by a widening gulf between the elite and the rest. I wish Democrats would drop it. “Affordability” speaks to people’s heads when what people feel is more important. The term lacks — What was it Bruce Lee said to his student in Enter the Dragon? — emotional content.
I don’t have a better way to communicate that, but affordability doesn’t speak to people’s felt concerns:
“My paycheck won’t last out the month.”
“I’m buying store-brand foods and my family still goes hungry.”
“I’m having to skip meals so my kids can eat.”
“I had to stop taking my medications.”
“I’m behind on my rent and it just went up.”
“I dropped my ACA policy. It increased six times in January, and I have cancer.”
Voters desperately want to be seen. Democrats need to stop thinking with their policies and express themselves in terms of people’s problems.