If your team won’t repeat your message, if they won’t repeat or retweet it, it’s not a good message, preaches progressive communications expert Anat Shenker Osorio. The title above does not begin with a shared value. It’s not exactly destined for virality. But it has the merit of fitting on a bumper sticker.
The message spotlights Friday’s assessment from consultant Mike Lux and pollster Celinda Lake that Democrats have reason to believe they will defy the media narrative and common wisdom that they will do poorly in the November elections.
Sen. Joe Manchin notwithstanding, the Biden administration has chalked up a number of wins in its first year:
– the $1400 pandemic relief checks just when they were needed the most
– over 200 million shots in arms, including boosters, which made people far less likely to get sick and die
– stopping the practice of health care providers doing surprise medical billing
– getting high speed broadband delivered to rural America and other parts of the country that have been left behind
– making the biggest investment in roads and bridges since the Interstate Highway System was built
– making major investments in strengthening the electric grid, so that electricity outages are less likely
– making investments in manufacturing and jobs here in America, and
– releasing petroleum reserves to lower gas prices
Solid economic talking points. But it is wise to remember that voters do not vote their economic best interests; they vote their identitites. Catastrophic civil wars start over them. Democrats will need more.
Fortunately, led by a “narcissist with shit hair,” the Republican brand is not exactly gleaming these days. This fall’s contest, say Lux and Lake, will be between a party “trying to meet and solve problems” and one that wants to fight a culture war (see paragraph above).
But Republican candidates will face some bruising primaries in which candidates will argue who’s the Trumpiest.
House redistricting is turning out not to be as bad as expected for Democrats. (It just got better here last week.) The Senate map as well gives Democrats a chance to hold its majority. Depending on the economy in the fall, there could be some tough holds: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and New Hampshire. But:
On the red-to-blue pickup opportunity side, we have some real possibilities. Pennsylvania, a state won by Biden, has an open seat and another ugly, weird GOP primary fight, with two leading candidates who don’t live in state, while an earlier frontrunner had to suspend his campaign after a judge ruled that he had abused hiswife. In Wisconsin, another state won by Biden, the unpopular incumbent Ron Johnson decided to run again,and is a strong target for Democrats. North Carolina, the last state in the country called in both the presidential and Senate races for 2020, is an open seat, with another wild and tough GOP primary.
Ohio, Missouri, and Florida Senate wins are not out of the question.
Republicans are speaking only to their hard-core base. Democrats are still the majority party in the country. They cannot run on Trump, but he will be on the ballot again as he was in 2018 amd 2020.
Democrats build things. Republicans just want to break them.
Lux and Lake offer a few recommendations for how Democrats can win 2022:
1. We need to promote our big accomplishments, specifically the great things we have already delivered for working families (which the Republicans have mostly opposed), but we also must talk about what we are fighting for and against. Our focus should be on kitchen-table economics: the $1400 pandemic checks when people needed them the most, getting roads and bridges built, delivering clean drinking water, getting high speed internet into rural America and other communities left behind, stopping surprise medical billing, creating new jobs in solar and wind power, raising wages more than they have been raised in generations. And we talk about how Big Pharma, Big Oil, Wall Street, the Big Food companies, and Big Tech are profiteering from the pandemic and battling us every step of the way, but how we will keep fighting for you. And again: Republicans have joined these big corporations to oppose every step of the way. Moreover, one of the major problems is that the ultra-wealthy and corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes.
Democrats are working hard to make sure our economy thrives, and that American families thrive. We have delivered a lotof important things since we took power. We have a lot left to do, miles to go before we sleep, but we are getting things moving again in spite of the hard core opposition from huge global corporations and most Republicans. These are the things Joe Biden focused on in winning the 2020 election by over 7 million votes.
And we also need to make clear that Democrats are doing everything in their power to fight for small business. From fighting corporate monopolies that are trying to crush competition from smaller businesses, to helping build the network of child care providers, to helping keep the restaurant industry going with the American Recovery Plan in the worst of the pandemic, to helping boost new solar and wind clean energybusinesses, Democrats are proud to be doing everything they can to help small businesses.
The small business message is crucial in reassuring swing voters, but small business in general is arguably the most beloved institution in America — including by Democratic base voters. Talking about small business is not about a centrist message vs a progressive message: it helps us with everyone.
It can be boiled down to this: Democrats are building things. Republicans just want to break them, and are opposing all efforts to fix anything.
2. Build a broad economic narrative about the changes Democrats are working to make in order to make it help working families more; and how Big Business, in league with the Republicans, is fighting the positive change Democrats are working to deliver. Democrats have delivered important things to theAmerican people through the legislative process, but whether or not we pass more major legislation, we can tell the story about how we are taking on corrupt and abusive big corporations. Even if we don’t win every legislative battle, voters should know we are fighting hard for them, and that the wealthy special interests, CEOs, and lobbyists are doing everything in their power to block us. Democrats must have a compelling, constantly repeated economic narrative.
The Biden administration has already been moving steadily in this direction, and other Democrats as well asthe broader progressive movement should amplify this narrative every chance they get. Candidates on the campaign trail in 2022 need to be all about fighting corporate corruption. They can talk about how President Biden and the Democrats in Congress are fighting hard to help working families, but that Big Business CEOs and billionaires are spending tens of millions of dollars to fight everything we are working to do. We want to raise workers’ wages and give them more bargaining power; we want to cut the costs of pharmaceuticals and health insurance, of energy prices and groceries. We want to force big profitable multinational businesses to finally pay their fair share in taxes, and help the small businesses that are trying to give them some competition so that prices will come down. But these companies — many of which have been profiteering off the pandemic and jacking up their prices unnecessarily,
out-sourcing jobs to get cheap labor overseas, and trying to stomp out any competition from small business — are fighting us tooth and nail.
3. Use the race-class narrative approach to frame responses to Republican attacks. (Thanks to Anat Shenker Osario and Ian Haney Lopez for their help with this section). Historically, some Democrats have seen the multi-racial composition of their coalition as a weakness. After all, the Republican messaging strategy for the last 50 years has focused on pushing racial wedge issues, most recently, for instance, thesupposed threats from critical race theory. And too often, Democrats themselves believe they must pursue distinct mobilization and persuasion strategies for different racial groups.
But recent work using race and class gives the Democratic Party the power to turn its multi-racial identity into a core strength. Race-class narrative and fusion politics frames racial conflict as a divide-and-conquer strategy that threatens us all, people of every race and across the broad economic spectrum. The real enemy we all face is those who profit by intentionally stoking racial division. The Trumpist politicians fueling group hatred, the media personalities like Tucker Carlson harping on the “great replacement theory,” and the dark money think tanks that promote attacks on affirmative action, welfare, and most recently the 1619 Project. These are the real enemies we face. And by naming them as such, Democrats can shift the basic us-them conflict in American politics. The core opposition in American life is not between white people and people of color. It’s usall, against those who profit by promoting social strife.
There’s good evidence from multiple polls that the race-class narrative works. The reason it works is that it represents to Democrats a single story that can be genuinely owned by everyone in the party. Fusion politicsaddresses the core concerns of those focused on racial justice, speaking powerfully to communities of color while directly confronting racism without calling the voters we are trying to win over racists.
Race-class messages also bring along majorities of white voters and focus attention on the economic issues we have talked about elsewhere in this memo.
4. Telling our story about rising prices. Inflation is probably our number one challenge right now in terms of our success at delivering a positive economic message. It is definitely something voters are worried about and thinking about a lot, and Democrats should not discount or avoid the problem.
Candidates often do not like to talk about tough issues, but in this case we think that approach would be a mistake. In fact, we recommend that they address the issue head on.
Inflation is being caused by two things. First, of course, are the supply chain issues caused by Covid. The Bidenadministration is aggressively moving to unsnarl these supply chain problems. It is going to take a while to solve, but we are making steady progress. For example, most Christmas gifts people wanted to buy were available in time last year after predictions that they wouldn’t be.
And we are working on longer term solutions to keep supply chains in better shape, especially with Biden’s tough, new Made in America Executive Order, which is very popular with voters.
The other big issue is pandemic profiteering: big multinational corporations — many of them with near-monopoly power in their industry — are taking advantage of the situation to jack up their prices on a variety of foods, on energy prices, onconsumer items of all kinds. All while avoiding paying their fair share of taxes. The Biden administration and Democrats in Congress are taking on corporate profiteering hard: we released oil from the Federal Oil Reserve to drive down oil prices; we are helping family farmers and small food processing companies compete against the Big Food companies; and we are having the Federal Trade Commission investigate unjustified price hikes.
Democrats reject the idea that wages should go down to curb inflation. We are working hard to get the prices of prescription drugs, health care, energy, housing, and child care down to affordable levels. We will wrestle this problem to the ground.
5. Non-profit and party organizations have developed voter registration and GOTV strategies targeted to key Democratic leaning constituencies like people of color, young people, and unmarried women that have been proven to work in elections year after year, but they are always underfunded. We are going toneed to fund those strategies at a higher level than ever in this election year, because the media is in a relentlessly negative cycle; Covid has people discouraged and wary; and wherever they have control, Republicans are passing new election laws that will make it more difficult to vote. As we said above, if we turn our voters out, we will win this election, but it will be a big challenge. There is no higher priority in terms of winning the 2022 elections than a strong, well-funded GOTV strategy.
There is time to shift the national narrative, Lake and Lux argue. But it will take doing.
Messaging continues to be a major weakness for Democrats. Good news neither bleeds nor leads. For all their self-assured smarts, the left has trouble finding and repeating bumper-sticker messages over and over until they stick.
Depending on how the Jan. 6 investigations progress, the goal this fall may be to rally voters to save the country and democracy itself. That’s not purely a kitchen-table issue, nor “a broad economic narrative.” But it may define what’s at stake better than both.
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