By Jim Grossfeld
“You need to be bar mitzvahed!” my London-born, Orthodox grandfather bellowed. I was taken aback. After all, even though I was 13, I’d been raised a suburban, ham-eating Jew whose only religious instruction was watching the Ten Commandments on TV.
“But I don’t understand Hebrew,” I answered. “It doesn’t matter,” he shot back, “just go up and say the bloody words!”
When I think about the relationship between labor leaders and their young, more upscale Democratic brethren I’m often reminded of that encounter. Like my grandfather, many in the labor movement hold firm to their Orthodox trade unionism and expect younger Democrats to honor it regardless. And, like me at 13, many of those Democrats see it as an empty ritual; something you do it to make the old guys happy. And that’s a tragedy, because labor and Democrats could both gain if only more in the Party recognized that old time religion could speak to the needs of white-collar workers with uncertain careers. And it can. This is the principal finding of the recent Center for American Progress study of mine, “White Collar Perspectives on Workplace Issues.”
The study, based on polling data and focus group research by Lake Research Partners, underscores the extent to which young technical and professional workers are as bewildered by the “new economy” as manufacturing workers have been for a generation. For them, Bill Clinton’s 1993 prediction that they “will change jobs eight times in a lifetime” is an unquestioned fact of life. As one focus group participant put it: “Our parents, they were able to keep their old jobs for 25, 30 years. They were very secure, and if they wanted to move over to another job they pretty much could, but if you find yourself out of work at age 50 in this day and age and you need to change fields because your industry has been eliminated and you don’t have training; no one will want to hire you.”
“I’ve been actually pretty much covering three people’s jobs,” another worker said. “Two people are out on disability so I jumped in the spot where I’m covering three people’s jobs. Then when they bring in the temp into the office I have to take time and train him, but I don’t have the time because I’m covering three people’s jobs!”
There was a time when more than a few of us would have cited comments like these as evidence of a nascent proletarianization–often justifiably so. For example, the California Nurses Association has been winning the support of some RNs with a message as militant as anything to come out of the United Mine Workers. Yet, as unstable and stressful as their jobs have become, few white collar workers will tell you that they’re being ground down under the boot heal of capitalism. Instead, they will say that instability and turmoil are unavoidable in today’s economy. And employers? They’re just doing what they have to do. In the words of another focus group member:
“Most owners want to maximize their investment out of every employee and they’re going to push you beyond your limits until they can reach some sort of capacity that’s going to support one more person or whatever. So there’s that time frame in there that you’re way overworked and that’s just a part of getting to the next level…. No it’s not fair, but unfortunately the economics plays into that.”
Long ago Seymour Martin Lipset described how white-collar workers see their interests as the same as management’s. Notwithstanding the challenges they face today there’s little reason to suggest that’s changed. This is especially so in the attitudes many voice about unions. “Certainly at one point when the unions were formed they were very important,” remarked one worker, adding: “I mean workers were horribly treated and not paid, you know? Child labor and all sorts of things. I think at that point the unions were very, very important. I think there are other avenues that are available, now that workers in general have a better voice in most situations, to address those same problems that don’t necessarily have to involve a union.”
It’s not that U.S. workers share a deep-seated animus toward unions. To the contrary, by some measures public approval of unions is as high today as it’s been in 40 years. Few Americans doubt that unions improve wages and working conditions. Yet, according to one 2005 Harris poll, 55 percent also believe unions stifle individual initiative and 60 percent agree that unions are more concerned with resisting change than helping to bring it about.
Of course, the labor movement has a huge stake in turning these attitudes around and more than a few believe the way to do it is to present unions as a movement that fights for social justice. In fact, a search of the AFL-CIO’s website finds that the words “fight” or “fighting” appear almost 2,900 times: that’s more than twice as frequently as the words turn up on the website of The Boxing Times. Don’t get me wrong: being seen as standing up for worker rights isn’t a bad thing. Efforts to organize janitors, hotel employees, farm laborers and other poverty-wage workers routinely win the sympathy of many technical and professional workers. But it hardly follows that those workers will then choose to unionize, too. Some white collar workers may want to join a struggle for justice on the job, but most just want to advance in their careers. Even if labor laws were made fair, many of these workers would still feel that unions have become eight-track tapes in an iPod economy.
Is all this to say that white-collar workers are ready to send unions to the Hefty bag of history? Not necessarily. In truth, white-collar workers do see the value in having some kind of workplace organization, just not the kind they think the labor movement is offering. When asked to describe the kind of group she would create for herself and her coworkers, one focus group member said it would promote “a safer workplace, better pay, opportunities for advancement, improving morale, bringing more revenue to our company, more training for the employees and more employee recognition.” Another said his would focus on employee recognition to help retain workers. A third added that she would have her group create child-care options for workers and join with employers to lower health-care costs. Another summed up the attitude of most when she said there needed to be an organization that would work to “create an environment where people want to come to work.”
It should not come as any surprise then that they sat up and took notice when they were presented with examples of existing unions who seem to be doing just that. Focus group members who had rolled their eyes at the mention of past union achievements were intrigued by case studies of unions joining forces with management to train employees for new tech jobs, working with employers to develop telecommuting policies, and creating a multi-employer pension funds for freelancers. They especially liked hearing how one union worked closely with an employer to turn a failing company around and make it competitive. In fact, they gave a thumbs up to every example of unions and management working together to help companies succeed.
To some, this may seem like labor-lite: less John L. Lewis than Stephen Covey, but whoever becomes its champion stands to make inroads with a new generation of young, career-oriented workers. Just ask the Republicans. “The times in which we live and work are changing dramatically,” George W. Bush told the 2004 Republican National Convention.

The workers of our parents’ generation typically had one job, one skill, one career often with one company that provided health care and a pension… Many of our most fundamental systems — the tax code, health coverage, pension plans, worker training — were created for the world of yesterday, not tomorrow. We will transform these systems so that all citizens are equipped, prepared and thus truly free to make your own choices and pursue your own dreams.

Democrats and the labor movement should be able to do better than this. And they can. But not by recycling Bill Clinton’s taking points or, for that matter, Henry Wallace’s. Instead, Democrats ought to showcase new approaches to workplace organization — and the modern labor laws that make them possible — as part of a broader plan to help white-collar workers succeed in their careers. For their part, labor leaders need to recognize that few workers, particularly technical and professional employees, want to sign up to join a coalition of victims. Rather than insist that those workers conform to more orthodox approaches to unionism they need to create new structures (dare I say products?) designed to meet their needs. The CWA, SEIU and a few other unions get this. The rest need to.
What should Democrats and labor be saying to younger, white-collar workers? It would be the following:

• New technologies and globalization have changed how Americans work. What matters isn’t what labor unions achieved in the past, it’s how new unions can help employees — and employers — succeed now and in the future.
• That’s why we are seeing the growth of new unions created by professionals who believe in being flexible and working together with management to make firms more competitive and profitable.
• These new unions provide a strong, respected voice so that employees can team up with management to solve tough problems, whether they’re healthcare costs, overwhelming workloads, or the need for leading-edge training and opportunities for advancement.
• The new unions also understand that as more Americans work from home or as contractors and part-time employees, it’s important that they have the resources they need to be successful, such as networking opportunities, ideas for better telecommuting and access to portable health insurance and pension benefits.

Apostasy? No doubt to some it is. But at a time when union membership is in a freefall labor needs a better strategy for organizing younger, white-collar workers than hoping they become class-conscious — and Democrats need to demonstrate that they care as much about helping them succeed in their careers as they do about stem cell research. It isn’t enough to just go up and say the bloody words.

Jim Grossfeld is a veteran of more than 25 years of union organizing drives and contract campaigns. During the Clinton administration, he was a senior aide to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy and, later, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala. Grossfeld later served as Communications Director for U.S. House Democratic Whip David Bonior (D-MI) and as Director of Speechwriting and Editorial Services at the Center for American Progress in Washington. Based in Bethesda, Md., he is now a public affairs consultant for unions and non-profit groups and a frequent contributor to the American Prospect magazine.

By Chris Slevin and Todd Tucker
In 2004, the celebrated author Thomas Frank asked: “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” The question sought to get to the root of why Democrats lose in districts and states where low-income and working-class people ought to be in open revolt against Republican economic policies.²
In 2006, we got the answer to Frank’s question. There’s nothing the matter with Kansas, or the rest of “red state” America, when Democrats are willing to run on an economic platform that emphasizes their opposition to corporate-sponsored trade deals and support for policies that address middle- and working-class needs. In the midterm elections, a net sum of 7 Senate and 30 House seats flipped from the anti-fair trade to the fair trade column.³ Moreover, as our research shows, most of those Democratic candidates that made a strong fair trade message a campaign priority won, while most of those that did not–including many high-profile candidates supported by the national party–lost. (A “fair trade” position supports strong and enforceable labor and environmental standards in the core text of trade agreements, is against harmful investment and protectionist pharmaceutical patent rules, and is open to replacing fast track with a more democratic alternative.)
And while nearly all Democrats ran on a platform that emphasized criticism of the Iraq War, the difference between those war-critic Democrats that won and those who lost was the strength of their trade and economic message. War criticism was a necessary but insufficient basis for electoral support; anyone who thought that merely being opposed to a war of choice that is costing American lives would carry the day was proved wrong. It’s not enough to be against something; voters want to know what candidates are for. A fair trade position was an indicator to voters that a candidate was serious about being for the middle class.
WHERE ARE WE ON TRADE POLICY AND HOW DID WE GET HERE?
The increasing diversity of opposition to the NAFTA-WTO model was becoming apparent in 2004 when a University of Maryland Project on International Policy Attitudes poll showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans making more than $100,000 a year rejected actively promoting more trade deals, preferring instead a more passive approach or even a roll back of the status quo. This was the reverse of the group’s 1999 findings that found majority support among wealthy Americans for an aggressive tack.⁴
Polls since have showed growing public anxiety about the course of our trade policy. Global competition and the off-shoring of jobs was the top concern of Americans–no less important statistically than the Iraq War–according to a 2006 poll by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.⁵ Eighty-seven percent of voters were concerned about off-shoring and 81 percent gave the government a C, D, or F in its handling of the issue, according to a 2006 Public Agenda poll.⁶
The public anxiety these polls capture has a clear basis in reality. Despite rising growth and productivity, income for the vast majority of Americans has been stagnant for a generation–leading to levels of economic inequality not seen since the robber baron era. As the U.S. trade deficit approaches $800 billion this year–at six percent of U.S. GDP a level threatening to the global economy’s stability–millions of U.S. manufacturing jobs continue to disappear. The exploding negative balance between what we buy and sell is not only in manufactured goods: in August 2006, the U.S. agricultural trade balance went into deficit, a reality totally at odds with the image sold to Midwestern voters that they will export their way to wealth because the United States is “breadbasket to the world.”⁷
Between the 2004 and 2006 elections, in their voting record and messaging, Democrats reconnected with middle-class economics for the first time since the Clinton administration wheeled and dealed NAFTA through Congress in 1993, a move that blurred the line of economic policy differentiation between the parties. The 2005 vote on CAFTA, a Bush priority expanding NAFTA to Central America, was framed as a referendum on NAFTA’s decade of lived damage both in the United States and in Mexico. The Republican Party became owner of NAFTA’s legacy when just 15 House Democrats supported CAFTA, compared to the 102 Democrats who voted for NAFTA. The Senate CAFTA vote was uniquely tight with 45 senators voting against it. And all congressional Democrats said to be exploring 2008 presidential bids voted against CAFTA–including several who had supported NAFTA over a decade earlier. And in July 2006, most Democrats also voted against a NAFTA-style pact with Oman.
In the actual campaign season itself, fair trade organizations helped translate popular discontent over failed trade policy into electoral gains. In addition to trade playing a prominent role in the political work of organized labor,⁸ newer specifically fair-trade-focused electoral efforts operated nationwide this year–showing again the growing public saliency of the NAFTA-WTO critique. For instance, beginning in 2005, Working Families Win (WFW), a project of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), ran a major 501(c)(3) and (c)(4) field program in Iowa, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin aimed at raising the visibility of economic issues, including fair trade, the minimum wage and universal healthcare.
But the fair trade effort with which we are most familiar was the affiliated political action committee (PAC) formed in 2006 by the Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), a fair trade grassroots coalition initially founded in 1992 by consumer, labor, environmental, family farm and religious groups to fight NAFTA. After collecting trade policy questionnaires from dozens of candidates, CTC PAC endorsed 15 candidates and put paid organizers in seven campaigns that proved instrumental to the Democratic takeover, while making financial or other contributions to the remainder of the endorsed candidates. CTC PAC helped create media and get-out-the-vote operations specifically targeting independent voters considered receptive to a fair trade message. In the end, 12 out of 15 of CTC PAC’s candidates won their races, with a thirteenth race–Democrat Larry Kissell’s challenge of CAFTA and fast track flip-flopper Robin Hayes (R) in what should have been a solid GOP district–lost by just a few hundred votes.
As Table 1 shows, congressional candidates across the country ran and won on a fair trade platform against anti-fair trade incumbents and in open seats, resulting in a net fair trade gain of 7 Senate and 30 House seats.

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Furthermore, at least 25 campaigns ran paid TV ads highlighting fair trade positions. Fair trade was a campaign theme for nearly all Democrats, including those that replaced retiring fair traders and are thus not considered “net fair trade pick ups” in our analysis.⁹
As described in our report “Election 2006: No to Staying the Course on Trade,” the tenor of the fair trade message varied widely across the country. But a remarkable finding is that locally-tuned versions of the fair trade message won elections in “pro-NAFTA” corn belt states, including Kansas, Iowa, and Missouri, where rural communities have seen the trail of broken promises from past failed trade deals.¹⁰ In areas swamped by manufacturing job loss, candidates talked about stopping trade deals that disadvantage U.S. workers. Others spoke about requiring that potential trade pact partners meet EU-style readiness criteria before trade negotiations are completed, and others approached the immigration issue through a trade lens, citing Mexican farmer displacement to the United States following NAFTA. Still others spoke of the need for replacement of the undemocratic fast track process with a better process that allows Congress to fill its constitutional role of conducting oversight and setting the terms of trade policy. But where all candidates agreed was that positive alternatives to the Clinton-Bush trade agenda need to be constructed to ensure that the benefits of trade are widely shared.
Still, there were certainly degrees of fair trade messaging. We graded the fair trade messaging of the Democrats who challenged incumbent Republicans in competitive races, with even the “F” candidates still likely to be better on trade than the GOP incumbent with a pro-NAFTA-WTO voting record.¹¹ As Table 2 shows, the single most common grade Democrats received was an A-plus–showing just how widespread was the fair trade messaging in 2006. Furthermore, in 73 percent of the races where Democrats successfully dislodged an incumbent Republican, the Democrat in the race made a strong fair trade message a campaign priority (receiving either an A+ or an A). At the same time, in 72 percent of the races where the incumbent Republican emerged victorious, the Democrat in the race was much weaker on the fair trade issue, receiving a B, C, D or F.

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Many incoming Democratic House freshmen won–while many other Democratic challengers came within striking distance of winning–in very Republican districts. One widely-cited strategic approach was for Democrats to focus resources in districts that lean Democratic but have Republican congressional representation, where it was thought that another dollar spent or another ad run might make the difference in a close election. But another approach might consider how several very underfunded and understaffed Democratic candidates in very “red” districts came within hairs of winning. In such races–of which there were many–a small investment of Democratic Party resources might have made a difference. Fair-trade Democrat Gary Trauner’s tremendous showing in the Wyoming at-large race was one such example. The race, which was not ranked as even an “emerging” race by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), resulted in a 48-48 margin, with Republican anti-fair trader Barbara Cubin barely squeaking back into office in a district that went overwhelmingly for Bush in both 2000 and 2004.
DOES THE PARTY “GET” THE FAIR TRADE SWEEP?
There is some evidence that top Democratic Party officials may not understand the voter mandate for change on trade policy. Ninety-two Democrats voted for a lame-duck-session measure that will subject the U.S. labor force to more low-wage competition from Vietnam, while several incoming Democratic committee chairs have hinted that they might pursue a more-of-the-same trade policy. In the midterms, a majority of the DCCC’s hand-picked top candidates lost–11 out of 20.¹² All 11 scored low on our fair trade index, while 6 out of the 9 who emerged victorious received top fair trade grades. Meanwhile, all three challenger candidates who won on Election Day and who were not on the DCCC’s priority lists were A+’s on the fair trade index.
Politics, as DCCC Chairman Rahm Emanuel points out, is not a business in which you bat 100 percent.¹³ Still, the stated reason for the DCCC’s focus (and in turn, the focus of many other donors and Democratic-leaning groups that follow the DCCC’s lead) on specific candidates from Tammy Duckworth to Ken Lucas and beyond was that these races were deemed “winnable.”¹⁴ In contrast, fair trade groups looked beyond the party leadership’s top tier and focused on promoting and lending organizing resources to Democrats who recognized the failures of the NAFTA-WTO model and actively embraced a fair trade message. While several of these races were not deemed winnable by leaders in Democratic circles, nearly all of these candidates ended up winning or coming very close to winning.
Despite stacks of polling data and focus group evidence that a fair trade message resonates, there were also tactical decisions by candidates prioritized by the DCCC to not embrace stronger messages on globalization.
Two such instances are worth recounting. In Pennsylvania’s 6^th district, Democrat Lois Murphy has twice come close to winning in a district that incorporates parts of the Philadelphia suburbs and also the manufacturing hub of Reading, which has lost a disproportionate number of jobs to trade relative to both the country and state of Pennsylvania.¹⁵ In the 6^th district, two-term incumbent Republican Jim Gerlach has taken a lot of heat for voting wrong on CAFTA and other trade deals, with constituents organizing a Valentine’s Day protest and news conference about the increase in sweetheart corporate PAC money Gerlach had received after his CAFTA vote.¹⁶ While Murphy’s trade position was decent, it was buried in a 40-page policy document. Efforts to run a trade-specific Reading GOTV program were not met with enthusiasm from the DCCC or Murphy camp, which is unfortunate for the Democrats considering that Murphy’s margin in 96 percent of Reading’s precincts dropped in 2006 relative to 2004.
Indeed, while Murphy carried every Reading precinct in 2004, she actually lost one precinct to Gerlach in 2006. While Murphy had outperformed John Kerry–who was considered very weak on trade–in 92 percent of Reading precincts in 2004, Murphy’s 2006 margin actually sank below Kerry’s 2004 margin in 80 percent of Reading precincts. Meanwhile, vocal fair trader Senator-elect Bob Casey, Jr. carried and outperformed Murphy’s (and Kerry’s) margin in all Reading precincts.¹⁷ Casey’s fair trade message clearly resonated in Reading in a way that the more muted Murphy/Kerry message did not.
In a one-point Gerlach victory in the 6^th district overall, a better trade message and showing in Reading could have provided Lois Murphy–whose race was considered winnable–with a margin of victory. Meanwhile, Democrat Patrick Murphy–the other Murphy running in the Philly suburbs in the neighboring 8^th congressional district–was thought less likely to be able to pull off an upset against GOP incumbent and CAFTA-supporter Mike Fitzpatrick, but achieved a victory in a campaign that prominently and aggressively advocated fair trade and hammered Fitzpatrick for his CAFTA vote.¹⁹
A similar fair trade message effort was attempted by fair trade groups in Ohio’s 15^th District, where Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy was seeking to oust anti-fair trade GOP incumbent Deborah Pryce, Democratic Party operatives chose not to emphasize a trade message, arguing that the Democrats’ strongest county in the district–Franklin County–was composed of voters who were not displaced manufacturing workers.²⁰ But Senator-elect Sherrod Brown’s campaign, which focused heavily on a fair trade message, received a higher margin of the vote than Kilroy’s campaign in each of the 15^th District’s counties, including in Franklin County, where party operatives predicted a fair trade message would not resonate.²¹ The reason for the Franklin County surprise was that voters are anxious about the economy not solely because of economic damage suffered by them personally, but also because they see people who are one-degree removed from them losing their jobs and health care and realize that Franklin County could be next. In other words, while some voters in Franklin County might be experiencing relatively decent economic outcomes, they are aware of the growing risk faced by the middle class overall in Ohio (which has lost one in five manufacturing jobs during the NAFTA-WTO decade) and fear economic crisis for their own families.²²
CONCLUSION: FAIR TRADE IS SMART POLICY AND SMART POLITICS
Stan Greenberg, in the days after the election, said “There was a missed opportunity here… I’ve sat down with Republican pollsters to discuss this race: They believe we left 10 to 20 seats on the table.”²³ Indeed, it seems that there were many real Democratic pickup opportunities missed, but it’s unclear if any of these were the top-priority, weak-on-trade DCCC candidates. As one political reporter told Roll Call, the biggest story of the 2006 races in North Carolina was “the Democratic Party’s abandonment of Larry Kissell. The national and state Democrats missed the boat.”²⁴ Democratic fair-traders like Victoria Wulsin, who nearly won her Cincinnati race against “Mean Jean” Schmidt, have publicly questioned why they seemed to fall “through some DCCC cracks.”²⁵
2006 has shown us that fair trade is not only good policy, it’s smart politics. A fair trade position showed that a candidate was willing to fundamentally challenge the outdated corporate consensus that government must be hands-off when it comes to supporting the middle- and working-class, while being hands-on when pushing policies like NAFTA and WTO that redistribute income upwards.²⁶ Contenders and donors in 2008 hoping to sweep even more elected offices will have to recognize that voters are ready to move beyond “staying the course” on the failed trade policies of the past and to embrace an agenda which promotes economic security and mobility for all.

Slevin is deputy director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch (GTW), and took a leave of absence in 2006 to run Citizens Trade Campaign’s affiliated political action committee (CTC PAC). Tucker is GTW research director and author of a major post-election report on the role of fair trade in 140 federal and state level races.

¹The authors thank Phila Back, Heather Boushey, John Nichols and Lori Wallach for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this piece.
²Thomas Frank, What’s The Matter with Kansas? (Metropolitan Books: New York 2004).
³For our full report on the role of fair trade in 140 Senate, House and gubernatorial races see http://www.citizen.org/hot_issues/issue.cfm?ID=1471.
⁴Peronet Despeignes, “Poll: Enthusiasm for free trade fades; Dip sharpest for $100K set; loss of jobs cited,” USA Today, Feb. 24, 2004.
⁵“Outsourcing of Jobs is Top Concern in U.S.,” Posted on Angus Reid Global Scan, March 22, 2006.
⁶Ana Maria Arumi and Scott Bittle, “Confidence in U.S. Foreign Policy Index 2,” Public Agenda, Winter 2006, at 15.
⁷Since 1959, the United States has maintained a positive annual agricultural trade balance. But this balance is trending downwards. Since 1979, there have only been 10 months were the monthly trade balance was negative–eight of these were in the past three calendar years. See U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service’s December 2006 trade balance update.
⁸Steven Greenhouse, “Labor Goes Door to Door To Rally Suburban Voters,” New York Times, Oct. 8, 2006.
⁹While most in the GOP are unrepentant anti-fair traders, a few have stayed in office a long time by amassing a voting record that is at once socially conservative and pro-fair trade. The Ellsworth and Shuler victories (the latter is listed in Table 1 because incumbent Charles Taylor “took a walk” on CAFTA and significantly angered his constituents) show that that Democrats can “out-fair trade” the GOP’s occasional fair traders.
¹⁰Daryll E. Ray, Daniel G. De La Torre Ugarte, and Kelly J. Tiller, “Rethinking U.S. Agricultural Policy: Changing Course to Secure Farmer Livelihoods Worldwide,” Agricultural Policy Analysis Center Briefing Paper, University of Tennessee, September 2003.
¹¹We considered races to be competitive if they were listed in the Cook Political Report of Nov. 6, 2006 as “Toss-Up,” “Lean Republican,” “Likely Republican,” “Lean Democrat,” or “Likely Democrat.” Many important Democratic pick-ups were in open seat races. Given the complex factors at work in a race with no incumbent, however, the following two tables focus only on those races where Democratic challengers faced Republican incumbents. Our grading system was extremely conservative. An F was reserved for candidates who had no known position, or who had a professional record that indicated they would likely be against fair trade, or for candidates that had previously served in the House and had a bad trade-vote record. (Many of these promised to have “seen the light” of fair trade in their most recent campaigns.) A D was for candidates who had a vaguely fair trade position, but who had not made that position public beyond word-of-mouth. A C was for candidates who had a good position who did not put high emphasis on the issue. A B was for candidates who were more public about a good position (i.e. paid ads on manufacturing job loss, etc.). An A was for candidates with strong positions in favor of fair trade; while an A+ was for candidates with excellent, very public positions who made trade a top campaign priority.
¹²While the DCCC’s ranking of individual races was in flux throughout the campaign season, we consider the DCCC’s very “top candidates” to be the 20 races that were deemed “Red-to-Blue” in early 2006.
¹³Jill Lawrence, “Party recruiters lead charge for ’06 vote; Choice of candidates to run in fall may decide who controls the House,” USA Today, May 25, 2006.
¹⁴“Pelosi and Emanuel want to do what the Republican National Committee is doing–husband the money so it can be pumped in massive quantities into tough but winnable races in the final months… [They oppose strategies that run] counter to the highly tactical approach that Emanuel has pursued, which is to pick winnable districts and candidates who can win them.” See Mike Allen and Perry Bacon Jr., “Whose Party Is It Anyway?” Time, June 12, 2006; see also Steve Kornacki, “Emanuel, Dean Still Sparring,” Roll Call, July 3, 2006.
¹⁵According to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Employment Survey, Reading, Pa. lost 25 percent of its manufacturing jobs during the NAFTA-WTO decade, while Pennsylvania lost 22 percent (and the United States 15 percent) of its manufacturing jobs during the same period.
¹⁶Douglas W. Wesner, “Citizens Group gives Gerlach scathing valentine,” Westside Weekly, Feb. 23, 2006.
¹⁷Reading overlaps more than one congressional district. We only considered precincts in the 6^th district. See http://www.co.berks.pa.us/berks/lib/berks/departments/elections/election_results/2006/resultsprecinct2006.html and http://www.co.berks.pa.us/berks/lib/berks/departments/elections/reports/cong_06.htm
¹⁸See Bryan Schwartzman, “How Did Gerlach Dodge Disenchantment Bullet?” Jewish Exponent, Dec. 14, 2006.
¹⁹Patrick Murphy, “Fitzpatrick Sells Out Bucks County and Sends US Jobs Overseas,” Candidate Press Release, Nov. 18, 2005.
²⁰At the eleventh hour, Kilroy gave the go-ahead to run paid ads that highlighted her good position on trade, but perhaps too late to save her from her eventual loss.
²¹Brown received 59 percent of the vote in Franklin County, 47 percent of the vote in Madison County and 41 percent of the vote in Union County. Kilroy, by contrast, received 52, 38 and 34 percent of the vote in these counties, respectively. Note that Franklin County overlaps three congressional districts. In the 12^th district, Bob Shamansky–who had no stated trade policy–squeaked by with 50.1 percent of the vote in Franklin County but lost the district by 15 percentage points. In the 7^th district, Democrat William Connor carried Franklin County by 55 percent, but ultimately lost the district overall. Connor was very strong on fair trade, but his race was not considered competitive by the Cook Political Report and is therefore not featured in our analysis for methodological reasons explained above. See http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/ElectionsVoter/results2006.aspx?Section=1849; http://www.sos.state.oh.us/SOS/ElectionsVoter/results2006.aspx?Section=1846 and http://connerforus.com/Balance_of_Trade.htm.
²²For a nationwide analysis of this trend, see Jacob S. Hacker, The Great Risk Shift, (Oxford University Press: New York 2006), at 68.
²³Adam Nagourney, “Flush of Victory Past, Democrats Revert to Finger-Pointing,” New York Times, Nov. 16, 2006.
²⁴Louis Jacobson, “For a Red State, North Carolina’s GOP Is Surprisingly Embattled,” Roll Call, Dec. 11, 2006.
²⁵David Hammer, “Wulsin: Where was Dem support?” Associated Press, Nov. 23, 2006.
²⁶For a more detailed analysis of this pervasive double standard in the policy realm, see Dean Baker, The Conservative Nanny State, (Washington, D.C.: Center for Economic and Policy Research, 2006.)

By Akshay R. Rao, PhD
Once the tea leaves are read, Democratic pundits will offer at least three “truths” about the 2006 mid-terms.

• A tsunami, earthquake or tidal wave (pick your geological metaphor) swept corrupt, hypocritical Republicans out of office,
• Karl Rove was unmasked as less mathematically able than Robert Siegel, has received more credit for political craftiness than is his due, and will therefore be banished to pollster’s Siberia, and
• There has been a fundamental shift in electoral preferences.

There is merit in all of these claims (though my favorite is the second). But, the evidence suggests that they are a trifle overstated. The Senate went Democratic thanks to less than 10,000 votes (in Montana and Virginia) and its future hangs in the balance. Joe Lieberman could pull a Jim Jeffords and then, all bets would be off. And, the House majority was eked out vote by vote, District by District, and in the grand scheme of things probably represents a marginal shift on the political dial.
It is my suspicion that the story of the November elections is more nuanced and more volatile than meets the eye. I offer below my own diagnosis of the electoral outcome (which, whatever its other flaws, has the virtue of being mine), and draw implications for how future Democratic campaigns ought to be run. I hope what I have to say is provocative. I hope it leads to a debate about tactics and strategy. And, I fervently hope that it results in the recognition that the academic disciplines of Marketing and Psychology have much to contribute to the topic of political persuasion.
Some Background
It is my contention that the Democrats have not won a Presidential election in roughly 40 years. (How’s that for provocative?) Republicans have lost a few. I discount Jimmy Carter’s victory because he won with the gale force winds of Watergate behind him. I discount Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory because Ross Perot demonstrably siphoned off substantial numbers of Bush Sr. votes. And, I discount Clinton’s 1996 victory because he was an incumbent. To be sure, there have not been that many straight Republican victories either (Reagan in 1980 and Bush Sr. in 1988 were two relatively clean wins), but, whether you buy my premise or not, you will agree that their recent electoral record is arguably superior to that of the Democrats. Despite their demonstrable inability to govern, Republicans tend to win more elections. Why?
One important reason for their superior performance at the polls is their superior understanding of the marketplace. No, I am not talking about voter registration lists and data base management techniques that allow one to identify likely voters depending on whether they drink red wine and drive Volvos (though that is an important competence). Nor am I talking about their ability to insert ballot measures such as the prohibition of gay marriage, that then turn out certain kinds of voters who are more likely to vote Republican. I am talking about consumer intimacy, a fine grained and time sensitive understanding of the deep-seated and unstated issues and concerns of different segments in the marketplace that are susceptible to subtle and not-so-subtle forms of persuasion. Consider three areas of spectacular Republican success:

• The appropriation of God. As Rabbi Michael Lerner has observed, by identifying a profound spiritual emptiness in the lives of ordinary people, Republicans have successfully employed God (more precisely, the Church) as a marketing tactic. This, despite the fact that free-market economics envisions no role for the right or left hand of God, but rather the invisible hand of market efficiency driven by ruthless self-interest, competition, and individual rationality.
• The appropriation of the Flag (and sundry symbols). On national security, economics, and social policy (read “gay marriage”), the Republicans recognize the power of rhetoric over reality, particularly when communicating with “uninvolved” voters. Bromides such as “stay the course”, “tax cuts”, and “family values” trump the reality of ballooning mortality figures in Iraq, ballooning structural deficits at home¹, and the presence of “pink Republicans” in the halls of Congress. President Bush famously doesn’t do nuance, and neither does Joe 6-pack.
• The appropriation of the media. The Republicans are masters at controlling the media narrative. Whether it be generating disarray among Democrats over Senator Kerry’s slip of the tongue, or inoculating Republicans on the gap between their aggressive and muscular foreign policy and their own woeful lack of military service, the media has displayed a level of pusillanimity rivaled only by its level of incuriosity, largely due to fear of reprisal by the rabid right.

But before ceding the arena of Marketing savvy to the Republicans, let’s revisit November 2006. There exist insights and implications that might level and even tilt the playing field in favor of the Democrats.
The Political Marketplace
The best visual metaphor for the political marketplace is the dumbbell (Figure I). The sizes of the red and blue spheres are (not unimportant) empirical details, as is the magnitude of the multi-hued middle. But, there are three other important features of this picture. First, the base (on both the right and the left) is “brand loyal”. They will either vote for their guy (upwards of 90% in 2006) or not at all. Second, the voters in the middle (independents who are not brand loyal) determine the outcome of elections as much as (if not more than) the base. Independents broke for Kerry by 1% in 2004, while they broke for Democrats by 19% in 2006. Third, the middle is probably more complex than either of the extremes. There are at least three different segments in the middle: the uninterested, the currently uninvolved and the undecided. Each has different reasons for not being a conservative or a liberal, each has different reasons for voting (or not voting), and each is susceptible to different information sets that will persuade them one way or the other. And, it is not clear to me that either party has figured out how to deal intelligently with this new marketplace. There are at least two sets of important prescriptions that emerge, and that I discuss below.
Speaking with the Enemy
The best advice I have for Democrats trying to convert Republicans to their cause, is “Don’t”. It takes a great deal of effort to convert brand loyal customers because they have an emotional attachment to the brand that is difficult to overcome with argument, reason or evidence. Brand loyal voters don’t rely on candidates’ arguments when they support them. They rely on their own feelings. When exposed to the faces of the opposing Presidential candidate, both Republicans and Democrats display enhanced activation in the insula, an area of the brain associated with “disgust” and “feeling threatened”. They also displayed enhanced activation in their Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and portions of the anterior cingulate, perhaps in an attempt to enhance their negative emotions towards the candidate they dislike.² Attempting to transform deep-seated emotions, at least in the short-run, is an enterprise fraught with pitfalls. Regardless of their expressed preference for Democrats, or opposition to Republicans, brand loyal Republicans will probably find it viscerally traumatizing to cast a vote for a Democrat. It’s difficult for a Hatfield to marry a McCoy. In fact, Democrats are much better off giving Republicans reasons to stay home, as opposed to taking the chance that a left-leaning Republican will revert to form, once faced with making an actual choice in the privacy of the voting booth.
The Middle is not the Center
And independents are not centrists. They care about particular issues, not brands. They are like the price sensitive customer who keeps switching long-distance calling plans because there is a better deal to be had. And, there are two features of these voters that make them interesting. The first is the degree to which they are informed (or not), and the second is the degree to which they are involved (or not). (I am struggling to avoid the temptation to employ the ignorance and apathy metaphor).
Each of these segments merits a different strategy. The “uninvolved” segment pays only peripheral attention to political messages when the election is months away. In research I have been conducting, I find that when the choice decision is temporally distant, advertising messages should emphasize abstract messages such as the “judgment”, the “integrity” and the “character” of a candidate. It is only when it gets close to decision time that concrete messages (such as “I have a plan to fix the budget deficit”) are attended to. Amy Klobuchar (MN) executed this strategy in textbook fashion, announcing a deficit reduction plan about 65 days prior to the election, as voters began to pay attention to detail. Prior to that, her rhetoric emphasized “real change” and “real leadership”. She beat her rival by a handy 20 points, while all other major races in her state yielded much tighter outcomes.
The “undecided” segment is quite another story. They tend to pride themselves on voting for the person not the party (they are brand unloyal), being informed about the issues, and being unpredictable. This is a group that is frequently offended by “politics as usual” including negative advertising and other overt forms of communication. Since they frequently see “both sides of the issue”, they are often faced with trade-offs. “Tastes great” versus “less filling” types of tradeoffs. Should healthcare be weighted more than security? Should the economy be viewed as more important than social issues? There are many Marketing principles that can be employed to break such ties. One non-standard approach called the “attraction effect” employs the introduction of a third (relatively unattractive) option into the choice set (see Figure II). This option is similar to the focal option and its entry influences the weight these voters attach to the attributes that influence choice. Think Ralph Nader — did his presence in the political firmament help or hurt Gore’s message? In research I have been conducting, it turns out that Nader’s presence could have increased attention to those attributes on which he and Gore dominated. (Unfortunately, he eventually stole some votes from Gore; our data show that had he exited the race after having drawn attention to the attributes on which Gore dominated, thus increasing their weight in the decision process, he would have benefited Gore more than had he never entered the race). While there may be other reasons to avoid engaging in such a strategy, one obvious implication is for Democrats to encourage the entry of like-minded candidates into a race, with the proviso that they exit once they have fulfilled their charge.
The “uninterested” segment is politically uninteresting. They are unlikely to vote for several reasons. They don’t believe their vote matters, the opportunity cost of their time is too high, they look down on politics, and the like. This segment represents a serious long-term problem, particularly if it grows, for both parties, not to mention the Union itself. But, in the short run, they are the segment that is perhaps best left alone.
Conclusion
The temptation to over-interpret the results of November 7, 2006, is strong and alluring. Republicans are looking for glimmers of “conservatism” among the Democrats who have been elected, suggesting that they are more red than blue, while Democrats are looking for evidence of a fundamental shift in the body politic, suggesting the country has turned more blue. Most thoughtful observers are focusing on the purple middle, and my caution is that the middle is distinguished by its complexity, the fact that it is not brand loyal, and that it is susceptible to very particular persuasion strategies that are sensitive to time (how temporally distant the decision is) and content (what attributes to emphasize and how). In other words, the middle is not “centrist” (in the DLC sense of the term). It is multi-hued, and it is persuadable, while the right and left are not persuadable because they are emotionally wedded to their political brand.
Figure I: The Political Marketplace

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Figure II: The Attraction Effect Illustrated
Panel A: Bush v. Gore (Before Nader enters)
Voters care about the environment and baseball and rank Gore higher on the former and Bush higher on the latter. The candidates’ shares of the electorate are equal, as reflected by the size of the circles.

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Panel B: Bush v. Gore (After Nader enters)
Nader is ranked lower than Gore on the environment and equally low on baseball expertise. He has little support.

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Panel C: Bush v. Gore (After Nader exits)
Gore’s share of the electorate has grown because Nader made environmental issues more important.

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Akshay R. Rao, PhD is the Director, Institute for Research in Marketing and the General Mills Professor of Marketing at the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management.

¹Try explaining what a “structural deficit” means to a college educated voter, without having their eyes glaze over. Go on, try it.
²Kaplan, Jonas T., Joshua Freedman and Marco Iacoboni (2006), “Us versus them: Political attitudes and party affiliation influence neural response to faces of presidential candidates,” Neuropsychologica, (forthcoming).

By Jasmine Beach-Ferrara
On a 100-degree day this summer, I took my dog on a run through Tower Grove Park in St. Louis. A mile into it, I looked up to see two teenagers, a guy and a girl, walking toward me, their shoulders brushing. Beyond us, an African drumming circle pounded away as part of an International Festival taking place on the park’s periphery.
My dog stopped abruptly in his tracks to relieve himself and I slowed down to jog in place. This, apparently, was all the prompting the teenage duo needed. In tandem, they veered towards me on the path and the guy — his shaggy bangs fanning coyly over his eyes, the collar on his pink polo perkily up — started talking about Jesus. As in, I’d like to tell you about my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. In the distance, the pace of the drumming picked up to a frenetic pace. Sweat dripped into my eyes as I blinked rapidly. Jesus?
I mumbled something about being comfortable with my faith and then gestured toward my dog, who was still crouching in a patch of weeds and staring off nobly into the distance. The guy smiled easily, undeterred. He was very calm and tan. Well, maybe you’ll join us for a church service this Sunday? he asked. The girl, much paler, nodded encouragingly as she offered me a brightly-colored, illustrated Jesus pamphlet. Maybe, I said as my dog jerked on his leash and pulled me down the path. Thanks, I called over my shoulder, out of a compulsive, and perhaps pointless, Southern politeness. My partner and I had moved from North Carolina to St. Louis just a week earlier and, in the midst of a Midwestern landscape that still felt foreign to me, there was something reassuringly familiar about crossing paths with evangelists.
Running again, I laughed, not derisively, but rather at the necessary absurdities of our America. Different day, different neighborhood, that could well have been me, waving someone down to talk earnestly about, oh, say, voting against a marriage amendment.
Might the progressive movement have more in common with the Evangelical Right then we like to admit? Like the pair I encountered in the park, we’re relying on door-to-door and in-the-streets evangelism to change hearts and minds about core spiritual beliefs and values. Across the country this fall, for instance, campaigns to defeat marriage amendments sent cadres of volunteers to knock on strangers’ doors and recite a two-minute script focused on conversion. I’ve been that volunteer and I’ve seen the guarded look on the face of Poor Voter X as she tries to shut the door without being too rude. Who can blame her?
Scripted, involuntary interactions with strangers are not an effective way to engage people, much less change their minds, about deeply-held beliefs. Election results, polling data and common sense all support this conclusion. Why, then, are progressive campaigns still relying so heavily on this strategy? I’m honing in on the LGBT movement in this article, but this question must be asked of any campaign attempting to defeat, or pass, a values-based ballot measure.
Since 2004, anti-marriage amendments have passed resoundingly in twenty states, including seven in the 2006 election cycle. The defeat of an amendment in Arizona is a tremendous victory for the movement. The narrowing gap between “yes” and “no” votes in several other states is also noteworthy. But the hard truth is that the LGBT movement is partly to blame for this storm of defeats: we can do better, if only we are willing to change our strategies.
As we knock on strangers’ doors, our opposition is busy preaching about the sanctity of marriage to thousands at a time from the pulpit, and microtargeting voters using consumer data. Putting aside basic democratic values like equality, they deserve some credit for their strategies. A hot button issue on the ballot does indeed boost turnout among your base. And when you put a “yes/no” question about gay marriage to a populace that is still figuring out what it thinks about the issue, most people will stick with what’s safe and familiar. Once again, the Right is playing smart offense while the Left cobbles together a formulaic — and ineffective — defense.
In the long view, anti-marriage amendments — and even the marriage issue itself — may come to seem incidental in the LGBT community’s journey towards civil rights. But in the short-term, we face a real, pressing dilemma in figuring out how to defeat these amendments. A holistic solution involves restructuring the LGBT (and the broader progressive) movement and adopting an approach to community and political organizing that is rooted in values and relationships rather than strategies of questionable effectiveness like canvassing and phonebanking. These are bigger picture topics for another day, though.
The question on the table today is how to engage meaningfully — and strategically — with the American public about values-based issues, including the charged question of whether full civil rights should be extended to LGBT individuals. Surprisingly, the short-term answer may be adopting another strategy from the Far Right: Abstinence Education.
Currently, when an anti-marriage amendment goes to the ballot, campaigns on both sides compete ardently for swing voters. Meanwhile, voters face the flawed, dichotomous choice of voting either for or against an amendment. For those on either extreme of the issue, these options are a good match. But what is that coveted swing voter, who, after all, isn’t quite sure what she thinks about gays getting married, to do? Anti-amendment campaigns expend tremendous financial and human resources trying to convince her — through short, scripted interactions with strangers — to cast a “no” vote. But, time and again, they fail to change her mind, her heart or her vote.
This should come as no surprise; after all, as people change, they typically do so slowly and idiosyncratically. Conversion takes time and the sooner we accept this, the better off we’ll be. In the short term, we’re not going to win the swing vote; so why not destabilize it?
For the time being, let’s say we’d still knock on a swing voter’s door to contact her. But when she opens it, our message, tone and goals would be different. Instead of simply exhorting her to vote “no” against an amendment, we would instead start a conversation acknowledging the complexity of the issues at stake. While still encouraging her to vote “no,” we would also present her with another option: to abstain from voting on this one ballot measure. As the election cycle progressed, we would use increasingly tailored messaging for a) our base, b) swing voters that seemed likely to vote “no” and c) swing voters who seemed likely to abstain. The only voters excluded from targeting efforts would be those who were certain to vote “yes,” a much narrower pool than is currently being excluded.
At first, the idea of abstaining from voting chafes against the basic democratic impulse that it’s always good to vote. But give it a few minutes. The questions being posed to voters by values-based ballot measures (about gay marriage, about stem cell research, about abortion) are inherently flawed; they don’t allow room for the nuanced and even conflicting belief systems that polling and anecdotal evidence suggest so many people hold. There’s no reason for us to continue to be complicit in this. Why not, instead, give voters a proactive option — abstinence — that actually correlates with their beliefs.
If sufficient numbers of swing voters abstained and if a campaign’s base turned out robustly, it could impact election results. Implemented successfully, this strategy would increase the likelihood of defeating an amendment by (1) reducing the number of votes necessary to defeat a ballot measure and (2) pulling swing voters away from the opposition. (For the sake of brevity, the details of implementation are not enumerated here, but they are available on request.)
A quiet piece of 2006 Election Day data from South Carolina points to the potential of this strategy, and the fact that some voters are also acting on the impulse to abstain. The South Carolina Equality Coalition reports that a total of 26,021 people who voted for governor abstained from voting on Amendment 1. Could this number be grown if a campaign were willing to adopt abstinence education as a proactive strategy?
Polling data and election results from 2004 and 2006 provide insights into the tension between actual beliefs, beliefs reported to pollsters, and voting behaviors. National polling conducted by the Princeton Survey Research Associates International in the months leading up to the ’04 election showed that 29% of people favored gay marriage, 60% opposed it and 11% were unsure. However, when asked whether they favored or opposed a legal agreement that would grant gay couples many of the same rights as married couples, 48% were in favor, 45% opposed, and 9% unsure. In 2004, amendments passed with at least 60% of the vote in ten states; in Mississippi alone, a full 86% of voters supported the amendment. In other words, many of the people who reported believing in equal rights, or who weren’t sure what they thought, ended up voting for amendments. Why? In part, at least, because our campaigns failed to engage them meaningfully, and failed to provide them with a way to accurately express their beliefs.
With the notable exception of Arizona, these tensions held true in 2006 as well. According to July 2006 polls conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 56% of people polled opposed gay marriage, 35% favored it and 9% were unsure; meanwhile 54% of people reported favoring a legal agreement that would grant equal rights to gay couples, with 42% opposed and 4% unsure. On Election Day, amendments passed by margins ranging from 4% (South Dakota) to 54% (South Carolina).
Public opinion is changing, and our strategies need to change along with it. The question is whether our movement is nimble enough to do this.
The problem with “Abstinence (Voting) Education” is that it’s a new strategy and thus challenges established methods of political organizing. But a variation on this approach has proven effective in public health work, a field that is also concerned with changing human behavior. The “Abstinence (Voting) Education” model is rooted in the public health theory of harm reduction, which years ago redefined how we think about treating addiction. In a harm reduction approach, a person gradually reduces her risk-taking behavior, such as drug use, and each reduction in risk is defined as a success. If a person uses drugs once a week instead of three times a day, for instance, they are making progress. In public health and in political organizing, the polarized choices — to vote yes or no, to be sober or relapsed — leave out that great swath of people who are in flux, who are in the midst of the (beautifully) messy and human process of change.
If any community knows about the change process, it’s the LGBT community, and it’s time to extend the lessons learned in our personal lives to the political sphere: people change, but they tend to change slowly, and what they need through this process is choice and latitude, not exhortations and polarities. “Abstinence (Voting) Education” meets people where they are and, like the most effective political strategies, plays to human nature instead of trying to change it.

Jasmine Beach-Ferrara is the Director of The Progressive Project and is a consultant to non-profits and political campaigns. She is currently working on a novel and her writing has appeared in The Harvard Review, The Advocate, The Bellevue Literary Review and on Alternet.org. Those interested in discussing this strategy can reach her at jelibe@hotmail.com.