Should Harris have continued with her more Populist messaging?

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Saw this post on reddit in response to what the Republican party offers working class people, thought it was excellent:



Honestly? Held emotional space for their pain. As a person in counseling grad school- it amazes me that people still fail to understand that human beings are emotional beings first, and not Vulcans. Very few of us can make reasonable choices when in a heated emotional state. The only way to reach angry, frustrated people (and I said the same thing to people policing BLM activists breaking windows) is to start by contacting the anger and pain.

That looks like this: your suffering is valid, this situation is super hard that you are in.

This is what the republicans do effectively, then once the emotions are validated, they blame the wrong people (immigrants, trans people etc) and claim to be able to fix it.

This is what democrats do: “I don’t understand what the big deal is, here’s a series of facts explaining why your feelings are wrong.”

I mean it’s literally the same dynamic that often gets men in trouble in close relationships. Meeting emotions with intellectual arguments and facts like it’s a high school debate or something.

That’s just literally not how humans operate at a deep level, like millions of years of evolutionary biology.

Bernie Sanders effectively starts by saying “the economy is rigged against you, your pain is valid” … then he blames the appropriate parties and puts forward policy after policy to fix it.

Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been and then point to GDP and jobs numbers like that matters when the quality of jobs available is often not great pay and benefit wise. And quite honestly the Democratic alliance with people like Mark Cuban is out of touch.

Is it bizarre and irrational people fall for Trump’s Everyman con and alliance with Elon Musk? Sure. But it’s also entirely understandable people are angry and fed up with, yes, the death of the American dream, and it’s very human to not be able to think rationally when upset and in the midst of real survival concerns. And if only Trump contacts their anger and creates space for it then he wins. When things reach a point like this, populism will win - and unfortunately if left wing populism of the FDR quality isn’t available, what’s left is right wing populism.

There is a way to contact and hold space for anger and allow it to transform into optimism but it has to start with contacting and validating the pain.
 
Not once have I said the Democrats need to propose more “plans.” That is not how you win campaigns. Saying that healthcare is a human right and that everyone deserves a living wage and housing is not a detailed plan. I, and other progressives like me, call for simple messaging that has broad based appeal on economic grounds. Not complex, technocratic plans a la Warren or HRC.
Health care as an important right, making housing more affordable and accessible, and increasing wages (including by increasing the minimum wage nationally) were all constant parts of Harris's messaging. You hear what you want to hear.
 
Saw this post on reddit in response to what the Republican party offers working class people, thought it was excellent:



Honestly? Held emotional space for their pain. As a person in counseling grad school- it amazes me that people still fail to understand that human beings are emotional beings first, and not Vulcans. Very few of us can make reasonable choices when in a heated emotional state. The only way to reach angry, frustrated people (and I said the same thing to people policing BLM activists breaking windows) is to start by contacting the anger and pain.

That looks like this: your suffering is valid, this situation is super hard that you are in.

This is what the republicans do effectively, then once the emotions are validated, they blame the wrong people (immigrants, trans people etc) and claim to be able to fix it.

This is what democrats do: “I don’t understand what the big deal is, here’s a series of facts explaining why your feelings are wrong.”

I mean it’s literally the same dynamic that often gets men in trouble in close relationships. Meeting emotions with intellectual arguments and facts like it’s a high school debate or something.

That’s just literally not how humans operate at a deep level, like millions of years of evolutionary biology.

Bernie Sanders effectively starts by saying “the economy is rigged against you, your pain is valid” … then he blames the appropriate parties and puts forward policy after policy to fix it.

Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been and then point to GDP and jobs numbers like that matters when the quality of jobs available is often not great pay and benefit wise. And quite honestly the Democratic alliance with people like Mark Cuban is out of touch.

Is it bizarre and irrational people fall for Trump’s Everyman con and alliance with Elon Musk? Sure. But it’s also entirely understandable people are angry and fed up with, yes, the death of the American dream, and it’s very human to not be able to think rationally when upset and in the midst of real survival concerns. And if only Trump contacts their anger and creates space for it then he wins. When things reach a point like this, populism will win - and unfortunately if left wing populism of the FDR quality isn’t available, what’s left is right wing populism.

There is a way to contact and hold space for anger and allow it to transform into optimism but it has to start with contacting and validating the pain.
Find me one example of Harris, Walz, or any prominent campaign surrogate saying anything remotely close to this: “I don’t understand what the big deal is, here’s a series of facts explaining why your feelings are wrong.” Harris relentlessly pounded the message that she knew times were hard and that people were struggling. and that she wanted to help them.

This entire paragraph is just mind-blowing:

"Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been and then point to GDP and jobs numbers like that matters when the quality of jobs available is often not great pay and benefit wise. And quite honestly the Democratic alliance with people like Mark Cuban is out of touch."


Again, find me one example of Dems "downplaying how bad wealth inequality is." Dems have consistently campaigned on this! They have lost elections campaigning on this! The people they're trying to reach think it's socialism to talk about wealth inequality! You talk like Dems use charts and graphs to claim wealth inequality and wage stagnation aren't bad, but they use charts and graphs for the exact opposite purpose! And the idea that it was "out of touch" for Mark Cuban to be involved in the Harris campaign when Elon fucking Musk was basically the mouthpiece for Trump's campaign is absurd. Clearly using wealthy billionaires as campaign surrogates is not what's turning off working-class voters!

Also, the idea that right-wing populism only wins when left-wing populism isn't an option is simply not true as a matter of historical fact. You could just look at recent European history, if nothing else, to know that isn't true. The sad truth is that people sometimes chose an authoritarian brand of popuiism over any other option in times of stress. The working class voters flocking to Trump are choosing going backwards over going forwards. They are choosing order and security over fairness and equality. The most naive part of socialist/progressive ideology is to assume that of course no one would ever actually choose reactionary conservatism over progressive ideology, so that if people are choosing the former it must be because they weren't effectively given the option of the latter. The sad truth is that people will sometimes choose a warped vision of the past over an uncertain vision of the future. They will choose (perceived) safety and security for themselves over justice for all. Sometimes the message isn't the problem. Sometimes the people just don't want to hear it.
 
Men aged 18-29 shifted to the GOP this cycle. I have to admit I did not see that coming. I thought the Gen Zs were largely left leaning. I guess I was wrong. I guess it all comes down to the fact that most men will not vote for a woman, especially not a black/asian woman. What a shame. I really thought she would win.
 
Men aged 18-29 shifted to the GOP this cycle. I have to admit I did not see that coming. I thought the Gen Zs were largely left leaning. I guess I was wrong. I guess it all comes down to the fact that most men will not vote for a woman, especially not a black/asian woman. What a shame. I really thought she would win.
They will "tell you" it what over economic anxiety
 
Saw this post on reddit in response to what the Republican party offers working class people, thought it was excellent:



Honestly? Held emotional space for their pain. As a person in counseling grad school- it amazes me that people still fail to understand that human beings are emotional beings first, and not Vulcans. Very few of us can make reasonable choices when in a heated emotional state. The only way to reach angry, frustrated people (and I said the same thing to people policing BLM activists breaking windows) is to start by contacting the anger and pain.

That looks like this: your suffering is valid, this situation is super hard that you are in.

This is what the republicans do effectively, then once the emotions are validated, they blame the wrong people (immigrants, trans people etc) and claim to be able to fix it.

This is what democrats do: “I don’t understand what the big deal is, here’s a series of facts explaining why your feelings are wrong.”

I mean it’s literally the same dynamic that often gets men in trouble in close relationships. Meeting emotions with intellectual arguments and facts like it’s a high school debate or something.

That’s just literally not how humans operate at a deep level, like millions of years of evolutionary biology.

Bernie Sanders effectively starts by saying “the economy is rigged against you, your pain is valid” … then he blames the appropriate parties and puts forward policy after policy to fix it.

Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been and then point to GDP and jobs numbers like that matters when the quality of jobs available is often not great pay and benefit wise. And quite honestly the Democratic alliance with people like Mark Cuban is out of touch.

Is it bizarre and irrational people fall for Trump’s Everyman con and alliance with Elon Musk? Sure. But it’s also entirely understandable people are angry and fed up with, yes, the death of the American dream, and it’s very human to not be able to think rationally when upset and in the midst of real survival concerns. And if only Trump contacts their anger and creates space for it then he wins. When things reach a point like this, populism will win - and unfortunately if left wing populism of the FDR quality isn’t available, what’s left is right wing populism.

There is a way to contact and hold space for anger and allow it to transform into optimism but it has to start with contacting and validating the pain.
problem is the second a Democrat tries to point out the cause of it - naked capitalism - they are labeled bad for business, bad for the economy, communists, marxists etc.

so that leaves you with what, lying? I mean it works for the GOP. "It's the illegal aliens that are stealing your future... "
 
Health care as an important right, making housing more affordable and accessible, and increasing wages (including by increasing the minimum wage nationally) were all constant parts of Harris's messaging. You hear what you want to hear.
They were part of it but got overshadowed largely by abortion I think, which only 10% of voters cared about. Also campaigning on Trump being bad didn't work AT ALL. Nobody cared what generals said about Trump or any of that. Calling Trump Hitler, and Nazis just turned people off, that if you like any of Trump's policy's then you're a Nazi.

If her central theme was
- the child tax credit = more money for you every month
- affordable housing = more money for you every month
- increased minimum wages = more money for you every month
- fixing the cost of education (NOT canceling student debt) = more money for you every month

and then just run on human rights and not just going all in on abortion only, I think that's better. But she only had 3 months. It hampered her greatly, and even then, a lot of young Dems hated that she was just picked. It showed them they don't get a voice. Its not her fault, but its what it is.
 
Find me one example of Harris, Walz, or any prominent campaign surrogate saying anything remotely close to this: “I don’t understand what the big deal is, here’s a series of facts explaining why your feelings are wrong.” Harris relentlessly pounded the message that she knew times were hard and that people were struggling. and that she wanted to help them.

This entire paragraph is just mind-blowing:

"Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been and then point to GDP and jobs numbers like that matters when the quality of jobs available is often not great pay and benefit wise. And quite honestly the Democratic alliance with people like Mark Cuban is out of touch."

Again, find me one example of Dems "downplaying how bad wealth inequality is." Dems have consistently campaigned on this! They have lost elections campaigning on this! The people they're trying to reach think it's socialism to talk about wealth inequality! You talk like Dems use charts and graphs to claim wealth inequality and wage stagnation aren't bad, but they use charts and graphs for the exact opposite purpose! And the idea that it was "out of touch" for Mark Cuban to be involved in the Harris campaign when Elon fucking Musk was basically the mouthpiece for Trump's campaign is absurd. Clearly using wealthy billionaires as campaign surrogates is not what's turning off working-class voters!

Also, the idea that right-wing populism only wins when left-wing populism isn't an option is simply not true as a matter of historical fact. You could just look at recent European history, if nothing else, to know that isn't true. The sad truth is that people sometimes chose an authoritarian brand of popuiism over any other option in times of stress. The working class voters flocking to Trump are choosing going backwards over going forwards. They are choosing order and security over fairness and equality. The most naive part of socialist/progressive ideology is to assume that of course no one would ever actually choose reactionary conservatism over progressive ideology, so that if people are choosing the former it must be because they weren't effectively given the option of the latter. The sad truth is that people will sometimes choose a warped vision of the past over an uncertain vision of the future. They will choose (perceived) safety and security for themselves over justice for all. Sometimes the message isn't the problem. Sometimes the people just don't want to hear it.


I think the insistence from the DNC/Dem party spokesmen that the economy is doing really really well while the vast majority of voters are really struggling with prices is an example of this. Yes, there was some talk by Harris and Walz about prices being out of control and going after price gouging but I think more time was spent selling the state of the economy. I know the metrics are great but blue collar America isn't feeling great, they have much less disposable income now than they did four years ago.

Trump says to them "You are right, prices are too high, the economy sucks (theirs does), I'll fix that, and this is who you should be angry at". For low information voters his messaging resonates, I think that is the point of the post. Makes sense to me.
 
I know the metrics are great but blue collar America isn't feeling great, they have much less disposable income now than they did four years ago.
Link? If they have so much less disposable income, then why are they spending so much money? Why is consumer confidence so high?

Blue collar America might or might not be feeling great. But I've learned better than to take them at face value when they complain about these things. It's the exact thing you would expect someone to say who gravitates to Trump knowing that, in some sense, it's wrong.
 
A ton of people on this board are insulated from rent pressure that a ton of these working class voters feel.

Macro economic metrics matter to people with money in the stock market and the suits who control the economy. It doesn’t do much when real wages are lower than they were 40 years ago, evictions are up, rent and homelessness are up, income inequality is up.
Income inequality has compressed post-pandemic, at least among people who earn less than seven figures a year.

How does real wages being higher 40 years ago affect whether people feel better about the economy today than they did four years ago?

Macroeconomic metrics are a snapshot of reality. They matter because they tell a story that is informative. They can't tell you everything. I'd just like someone to explain how consumer spending can be so high if so many Americans are having trouble making ends meet.
 
"Finally, they should adopt one central mission: improving Americans’ standard of living. They should abandon policing cultural behaviors, especially since many of their stances aren’t even popular with Democrats in real life. They should also create solutions for men and boys — who are struggling — instead of engaging in identity politics that excludes at least half of the country."

This this this!

I think I'm all in with you Paine
 
I'm with Sarada Peri and Will Stancil.

I just can't understand what they mean when they (in this case, Faiz Shakir) say we need more candidates from working class backgrounds. Joe Biden was from a working class background. Kamala Harris worked at McDonalds and has never come from privilege.

Meanwhile, Dems are losing to hedge fund billionaires. Why is it Dems who have to run working class candidates, when Pubs do their populism schtick with David McCormick, Rick Scott, and Elon Musk?
 
This gets to the heart of cleavage point within the progressive wing of the party as well. I’ve had issues with woke scolds ever since college. It’s like Hillary telling Bernie that it’s racist to talk about economic issues. The infamous “will breaking up the big banks solve racism?”

This identity focused offshoot of progressivism that exploded during Covid was midwifed by the Clinton and Obama wing of the party, and now they try to turn it around on “progressives” as whole.

Said it once and I’ll say it again, none of this means abandoning liberation for gay people or trans people. It means broadening the message to one where every American, regardless of race or sexuality, benefits from the same standard of living improvements.
This is the way. And unfortunately plenty of Democrats have won plenty of primaries and plenty of safe seats by focusing racism and trans issues. It's going to take them a while to learn a different way of doing things but it needs to happen.
 
Super, telling people you know better than them about their own economic situation is never going to work. You can type as many 8 paragraph essays about the consumer confidence index, GDP, etc. as you want. Biden and Harris just ran a campaign saying how great the economy is.

Income inequality was astronomical prior to Covid. Going back to post Covid levels isn’t enough. Trump’s whole campaign is MAGA, and you don’t get how people making less money than their father is frustrating and alienating?
1. I'm not saying that we should message that way. I'm saying that we shouldn't take that shit at face value. That's a strategy issue, not a messaging one.

2. Look, I want to improve standards of living. I'm against income inequality. I'd like to see more progressive taxation and, as a former antitrust attorney (briefly), I'd like to see more of the aggressive antitrust enforcement (though it's doubtful it will work with these courts). But I just don't see that it works politically.

I keep thinking about Michigan because that's where I thought we would do best. One reason for that was that the Democrats in the state government have done a lot for working people. They got rid of right-to-work laws, which was a huge priority for the unions. And the unions won some big contracts that will increase pay for autoworkers by a lot. They did that with Biden's support and not Trump's. Biden, after all, joined the picket line.

And despite all that, Trump rolled. So what are we supposed to do? Elon Musk was going around to all the battleground states literally promising temporary economic hardship. Did the blue collar workers hear that and think, "boy, I don't want to vote for that, I'm already stressed enough?" They did not.

The unions know that tariffs are bullshit, and will cause more harm than good. I don't know about autoworkers, but certainly unions in export industries. Did that make a difference? It did not.

3. Think about this: what is the commonality between Trump's claim that "we're going to make foreigners pay for the privilege of doing business here" and "Mexico will pay for the wall"? It's the projection of dominance. It's the idea that we can bully foreigners into giving us money. Trump was not the first candidate to propose a border wall. It's been a staple of GOP politics since the first Bush. Trump was the first to use the idea as a weapon, like when he responded to pushback from the Mexican government with "the wall just got 10 feet taller." It was never a serious idea. It was just an appeal to authoritarian dominance.

That's the same work tariffs are doing here. Trumpism, at its core, is about bullying. It's the narrative that runs through everything he does and says. It is, of course, who he is and always has been. And most of his favored policies are presented as bullying, and that's how people respond to it. Or maybe it's just coincidence that his crowds chant "lock her up" even to this day.

This is why I simply don't believe the economic anxiety thing. It doesn't explain at all what we actually see. Bullying is a theory with a lot of evidence. It also helps explain why Trump appeals to men, and in particular men with a certain belief system about male dominance. The GOP's Senate candidate in Minnesota actually said that women were getting too mouthy. Was that something a Senate candidate would have said 15 years ago, or is that Trumpism at its core?
 
They don’t mean people who were working class 30-60 years ago. They mean people who are working class now. People who are connected with the everyday concerns of the average American. Not someone who has been in politics since the 1970s or someone who worked at McDonalds 40 years ago.

Your point about Trump being a billionaire and surrounded by billionaires is true, but it rings hollow to the voter when there’s no contrast. By and large, voters think both parties are controlled by monied interests (they are), so why would they vote for Democrats if they feel Republicans are speaking to their acute economic concerns and Democrats aren’t?


How long has Bernie Sanders been in Politics?

It's ridiculous to ridicule Democrats for not "being in touch with the everyman" when the everyman just elected a man who shits on golden toilets and has never wanted for anything in his life.

They connect with him because he, like them, has the intelligence level of a potato and talks the way they talk.
 
Because most of the spending is done by a minority of the voters.

"
  1. Since mid-2023, low, middle, and high-income households have all been increasing their real average spending.
  2. As of August 2024, real average spending by low-income households is up 7.9% relative to January 2018, real average spending by middle-income households is up 13.3%, and real average spending by high-income households is up 16.7%.9
  3. Overall average retail spending (shown in red) better captures the spending behavior of middle- and high-income households than it does low-income households. While the overall average suggests consumers have remained resilient, similar to the narrative one obtains when looking at the Census Bureau's Advance Monthly Sales for Retail and Food Services reports, our decomposition suggests consumer resilience has been driven by middle- and high-income households, while low-income households have pulled back since mid-2021 through mid-2023 and only recently recovered to their mid-2021 levels of real average retail spending."
Note that there are a lot more middle and low income spenders than high income spenders. But anyway, maybe the Fed is just making this up. Or maybe the same people who were complaining about economic anxiety in 2016, not complaining about it in the much worse environment of 2020, and are again complaining about economic anxiety today aren't being fully honest about their financial situations?
 
The most frustrating thing about “the Squad” for me is how their economic populism was completely neutered by the Democratic Party.

The party made it clear to progressives that the they would only tolerate their progressivism on matters of identity. Identity politics is not threatening at all to the status quo of the current internal party apparatus or the power structure of the country at-large. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

The Squad is mostly gone. The one who is still around and prospering is the one who talks most about economic populism. Are you really saying that the path for Dems is Summer Lee (I'll just let Cori Bush pass without further mention)?
 
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