Tom Jacobs explains why “Candidates Who Explain Progresive Policies Via Conservative Principles Could be Uniquely Persuasive” at The Pacific Standard:

South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg has impressed a lot of people with his ability to speak many languages during his campaign for the presidency. But Buttigieg’s greatest asset may be his ability to speak Republican.

Though he’s a liberal Democrat, the presidential hopeful often frames his arguments in terms of traditional, even conservative, values. He speaks about faith and freedom and service to the nation, arguing that these bedrock principles actually align with progressive policies.

The rest of the article is not so much about Buttigieg, though Jacobs notes that “this rhetorical ability could make him quite formidable in the general election” if he gets the Democratic nomination. Jacobs elaborates on the main findings:

Researchers report that, in two studies featuring more than 4,000 people, “a presidential candidate who framed his progressive economic platform to be consistent with conservative values like patriotism, family, and respect for tradition—as opposed to more liberal value concerns like equality and social justice—was supported significantly more by conservatives and, unexpectedly, by moderates as well.”

Sociologists Jan Voelkel and Robb Willer report that such a framing tells conservative voters that a candidate shares their principles, thus making voters more open to the candidate’s specific policy proposals. This research suggests that Democratic candidates don’t need to “move to the center” to attract support from Republicans; rather, they need to change the way they talk about their own policies.

The paper, which is available online but has yet to be peer reviewed, describes two similarly structured large-scale studies. The first featured 2,443 American citizens recruited online; the second featured 1,695 participants from the National Opinion Research Center’s AmeriSpeak Panel, which was designed to be representative of the population as a whole.

In both studies, Jacobs explains, the researchers posited an imaginary Democratic candidate named ‘Scott Miller,’ whose “policies were described as either moderately progressive (e.g. maintaining the Affordable Care Act in its current form), or highly progressive (e.g. expanding Medicare to cover all uninsured Americans).”

Some survey respondents were read ‘liberal frame’ speeches in which Miller’s “vision for our country is based on principles of economic justice, fairness, and compassion,” while others “read either a neutral framing or a conservative one,” in which Miller stressed values of “hard work, loyalty to our country, and the freedom to forge your own path.” Not that conservatives have a monopoly on the latter values — many liberals frequently cite them.

Then, writes Jacobs, “these value-oriented statements were randomly paired with the moderate or progressive policy platforms. After reading the entire package, participants indicated on a zero-to-100 scale how likely they would be to vote for Miller over President Donald Trump in 2020.” The findings:

In both studies, when Miller’s policies were expressed in terms of conservative values, he received significantly greater support from both conservatives and moderates than when they were described in terms associated with liberal values.

How significant was the change? In the first study, conservative, as opposed to liberal, framing “resulted, on average, in a 13-point increase in support on a scale of 0 to 100 among conservatives.” That increase was a still-robust 10 points in the second study.

Importantly, “there was no backlash to conservative framing among liberal participants,” the researchers add. Thus the most successful approach “advocated for progressive policies in terms of conservative value concerns.”

Jacobs notes also that “participants in Study 1 rated a progressive candidate with conservative value concerns as similarly consistent as a progressive candidate with liberal values…the researchers  suggest that “the ideological underpinnings of policies and candidates are more malleable than is commonly assumed…Or perhaps it means that people read just enough to be reassured they are on the same page as the candidate in terms of their core beliefs, which leads them to trust that candidate on specific positions.” Further,

These new results are consistent with a 2010 study that found people invested in justifying the status quo—that is, conservatives—were more supportive of pro-environmental policies when such policies were framed as a way to help sustain the American way of life. With all such questions, context is key.

“Moral re-framing may offer a more effective path to building political consensus than policy compromise,” Voelkel and Willer conclude. “This research suggests progressive policies and conservative value concerns are reconcilable in practice—and that such a combination can be persuasive.”

If the researchers are right, there is a case for a profound reframing of Democratic messages in federal, state and local elections. It would be instructive to see how such deliberate reframing performs in a few real-world elections, preferably those with Democratic candidates who were underdogs when they declared their candidacies.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Is Biden winning back Obama-Trump voters?

The short answer to this is “yes” if by that we mean some of these voters are willing to express a preference for Biden over Trump in 2020 trial heats. It’s difficult to interpret Biden’s significant leads over Trump in states like Michigan, ,Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in any other way.

As Martin Longman notes in a piece on the Political Animal blog, it makes more sense to reason from these polls–which apparently now include polls conducted by the Trump campaign itself–than from articles that quote non-randomly selected working class Trump voters saying how much they still love the President. The latter of course prove nothing other than that such voters exist and the reporter found some.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

I’m not sure how many people have even absorbed the fact that there is now a competitor to the National Election Pool-sponsored exit poll, the AP VoteCast survey–used by Fox and AP affiliates–which has a very different methodology than the standard exits and purports to replace it.

Is it any better? Probably not. Both polls perform reasonably well in helping predict the outcome of races on election night, though some misses are inevitable. The real problem here is that people rely on the exit polls to give them a portrait of the demographic and attitudinal voting patterns of the electorate and therefore the underlying dynamics of the election. But the exit polls have been shown time and again to be inaccurate on this score and it is unlikely that the AP VoteCast survey is much better.

In her Axios post, “The Democratic hunt for a 2020 down-ballot message,” Sara Fischer writes that  data from Advertising Analytics indicate that the content of TV and digital ads for the 2018 elections emphasized health care, which apparently served Democrats well in Senate and House races.  Ads focusing on education dominated the gubernatorial contests.

Almost half of all ads for House races (48%) and Senate races (47%) focused on health care. Fischer notes that “While anti-Trump sentiment likely helped drive Democrats to the polls last cycle, there’s no question that a single, pro-policy message helped unify the electorate to overtake Republicans in the House…Republicans, who lost the House, had no unifying message.”

Democrats hunt for down-ballot message

Reproduced from Advertising Analytics. Chart: Axios Visuals

Regarding the 2020 campaign, Fischer adds that “Democratic presidential candidates‘ top issues so far have included climate change, wealth inequality and universal health care — all likely to inform the party’s message for down-ballot races in the House and Senate.” Fischer writes that “Focus groups with Democrats in key states, including Wisconsin and Ohio, suggest that messaging around the Green New Deal and Medicare for All hasn’t broken through for all Democratic voters.”

At FiveThirtyEight, Perry Bacon, Jr. addresses the question, “Would Democrats Really Face A Backlash If They Impeached Trump?,” and responds, “In terms of public opinion, probably the best that Democrats can hope for is a 50-50 split on impeachment — basically, Clinton voters in favor and Trump voters opposed. But it’s entirely possible that impeachment remains a net political loser for Democrats…Which leads us to another argument against impeachment, that Democrats should instead focus on issues where a clear majority of the public is on the party’s side. This is Pelosi’s strategy, pushing more popular proposals like defending the Affordable Care Act provision that bars insurance companies from denying coverage or charging higher prices for people with preexisting conditions, and making it easier for Americans to register to vote on Election Day…So even if impeachment is basically a 50-50 issue and wouldn’t hurt Democrats’ standing all that much, you could argue that it’s a bad political move because Democrats could be focusing on issues where, say, 70 percent of Americans agree with them.”

Kos reports that “Harris and Warren dis Fox News, because they’re the smart ones” at Daily Kos and argues that “Warren is absolutely correct. Fact is, there isn’t a single primary voter watching Fox News. It’s a waste of time for a Democratic presidential candidate to spend time on that hate network if their goal is to, you know, win a Democratic presidential primary. Meanwhile, they are giving white supremacist Trump State Media undeserved credibility while getting nothing in return…The Sanders appearance has its own internal logic: He likes to thumb his nose at Democrats, including those fighting the war against Fox News. And he delighted his supporters by doing battle with Fox News hosts. It wasn’t helpful to the broader movement, and reinforced the fact that he’ll never be a team player, but it definitely gave him a nice promotional boost at the time. Ratings were legit great. I’ll call it a smart move. An asshole move, for sure! But smart…So congrats to Warren and Harris for doing the only smart thing here: using their time to talk to actual Democrats, while refusing to give any credibility to the right-wing’s most pernicious propaganda outlet.”

It’s a fair question: “What If Electability Is More About Authenticity than Moderation?,” addressed by David Atkins at The Washington Monthly. As Atkins explains, “Conventional wisdom and popular cultural media and entertainment narratives dictate that Americans are looking for moderate politicians who will work across the aisle to “get things done” and make compromises on behalf of the American people. That narrative, however, is belied by just about every single recent trend in American politics, from the 2008 election to the rise of the Tea Party, to the aggressive challenge to the Democratic establishment by a self-described socialist, and, finally, the election of an overtly racist authoritarian who had bragged on camera about sexually assaulting women. Moderation, from either direction, does not seem to be what voters are after…for a certain type of voter, authenticity is more important than any particular policy concern…Rather, they want politicians who they view as authentically placing the interests of real people ahead of corrupt special interests. The policy specifics are secondary to that…It may well be that the same candidates who appeal authentically to progressive emotional sensibilities will also appeal to the voters Democrats most need to persuade in the purple districts and states they need to win. At the same time, they might just be the ones to bring out people who otherwise wouldn’t vote at all.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez resurrects an old messaging tool to good effect in making the case for the affordability of the Green New Deal, reports Frances Langum in “AOC Smacks Down ‘How We Gonna Pay For It’ With Pentagon Receipts at Crooks and Liars. As Langum’s subtitle notes, paraphrasing AOC, “Apparently we “can’t afford” the Green New Deal or Medicare for All, but we can afford to pay $1443.00 for a $32.00 part as long as it’s in the Defense Budget.” Here’s how AOC presented it:

Ed Kilgore notes at New York Magazine that “U.S. News’ ‘Best States’ Rankings Don’t Smile on Red Ones,” and he observes, “When you look at the states’ political complexions, the patterns are quite clear. The No. 1 state is Washington, and eight of the top ten are states Donald Trump lost (the exceptions being Utah and Nebraska). Twelve of the bottom 13 are states Trump carried (New Mexico is the exception)…It’s an interesting commentary on the ancient reactionary idea that a low-tax, low-regulation, anti-union environment guarantees growth. If that were true, Alabama and Mississippi should be dynamos with high living standards. They really, really aren’t. But the myth endures that the good life is found where government is weak and job creators walk tall, particularly from the safe distance of conservative think tanks far away.”

Margaret Calson argues at the Daily Beast that “The worst thing that could happen to Donald Trump would be for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. Public opinion over abortion rests in equipoise with equal percentages for and against, although with those against more energized. But this week’s poll from pro-Trump Fox News  shows that with abortion threatened like never before,  57 percent say of Roe, “let it stand.”…That’s bad news for Trump, although he doesn’t seem to know it yet, the way he doesn’t know Patriot Farms can’t switch on a dime from planting soybeans to corn to mitigate damages from his fruitless trade war.” On the other hand, he (more likely his advisors) may know it and be OK with it losing in the Supreme Court, so they get the benefit of jacking up their base, while not risking energizing the opposition.

It’s not going to pass before Democrats win back the white house and the senate, but “The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), introduced earlier this month by Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), would push back on a series of Republican-backed laws that have cropped up in more than two dozen states in the past decade.” Among several important provisions, the “new bill would also allow workers to sue employers who illegally interfere with unionizing efforts, instead of forcing them to take all their complaints to the National Labor Relations Board, an independent federal agency that enforces collective bargaining laws. The new bill would also let the board hit employers with fines if they break the law. Right now there’s currently no financial penalty for employers who illegally fire workers who are trying to unionize, for example…Despite declining union membership, more and more Americans support the idea of unionizing these days. In fact, there’s been a sharp increase in public support for labor unions in recent years, according to Gallup…Still, it’s highly unlikely that any Republicans in the GOP-controlled Senate would ever touch the new labor reform bill. In fact, they’re moving in the other direction, trying to expand a bill in the Senate that implements right-to-work laws in every state…” – from “Democrats have an ambitious plan to save American labor unions” by Alexia Fernandez Campbell at Vox.

Yes, the Alabama abortion law was signed into law by a woman governor. But the title of Danielle Girard’s cbsnews.com post, “Alabama just criminalized abortions – and every single yes vote was cast by a white man” further highlights a good messaging point for Democrats, that the G.O.P. is the party of old white guys at the state level, as well as nationally. Dems should be more dilligent about always putting together a group photo of the Great White Wall that that is so often responsible for the legislative disasters du jour and publicizing it where it can do some good. Just clip the pix from their individual web pages and present them as a whole. It’s not a good look, even in Alabama, which is far more diverse than its state legislature indicates.

There are plenty of articles noting the unwieldy size of the Democratic field of presidential candidates and all of the problems it creates, not the least of which is that many of the candidates can’t get much media coverage. Indeed, Dems do have a bumper crop of very impressive presidential candidates with relatively low name-recognition, at least compared to Biden and Bernie. Only Mayor Pete Buttigieg of the lesser-known candidates is getting substantial coverage. But could the large number of quality candidates, depicted as a whole, also be a good look for the party? Showcasing the Democrats’ array of attractive younger candidates could also help portray an appealing image of the party. Sure, the diversity could be better. But, compared to the Republicans, it’s much more impressive and also helps to make Dems look like the party of the future and the one that looks like America. Not to deny the very real problems Dems face with the huge field of candidates; but Dems would be wise to make the most of their younger, more diverse ‘look.’

The following article by Lou Martin, associate professor of history at Chatham University and author of Smokestacks in the Hills: Rural-Industrial Workers in West Virginia, is cross-posted from Working-Class Perspectives: 

The 2018 documentary Moundsville drops viewers into the West Virginia town with no introduction. Instead, the film takes us directly into conversations with local residents, the mayor, a former mayor, retirees, a couple of historians, young entrepreneurs—a dozen or so people from all walks of life.  They talk about the town’s history, the prehistoric burial mound for which it is named, the leading industries over the decades, the boom times, the economic decline since the 1980s, and ideas about the town’s future.  I grew up in the Ohio Valley, about an hour’s drive from Moundsville, so these conversations felt familiar, like spending an afternoon in the local diner.

A central theme is the local economy, including the remarkable number of products that the towns’ workers manufactured in decades past.  At one time, Marx Toys, which employed thousands in its Glen Dale factory (neighboring Moundsville), produced one of every three toys made in America.  Other major employers in the area included Fostoria Glass, U.S. Stamping Company, Allied Chemical, and the Moundsville State Penitentiary.  A short drive away were coal mines, steel mills, and more chemical plants.

Today, Moundsville’s economy—like much of the region’s—looks a lot different.  Many of the mines and mills have shut down.  RV Parks just out of town house out-of-state gas pipeline and drilling crews.  The downtown has a lot of old businesses but also empty storefronts, and the Walmart Supercenter and other chain stores on the edge of town have won over many customers.  Some local entrepreneurs have found their niche in the new economy by, among other things, capitalizing on tourism to the now-shuttered prison and the nearby Palace of Gold (a Hare Krishna community).  But a third of the town’s residents have moved away.

With so many rusting factories, Moundsville could have become just another of the many reports from “Trump Country” since the 2016 election.  Most of those seem to be written by journalists facing deadlines, who parachute into Appalachia, gather a few quotes that support their assumptions about racist provincials, and then head back to the airport.  In her recent book What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia, Elizabeth Catte writes that these reports “share a willingness to use flawed representations of Appalachia to shore up narratives of an extreme ‘other America’ that can be condemned or redeemed to suit one’s purpose.”

Those reports often attempt to construct a single narrative about voters in “Trump Country,” and the makers of Moundsville explicitly position their documentary against such narratives.  The voiceover for one of the trailers for the documentary explains that after the election “every media story about small-town America seemed to focus on the same things: Trump, opioids, and the rusting factory.”  “But,” it continues, “what if you went to a small town and didn’t talk about those things?  What if you simply asked people about their lives without connecting their answers to those larger narratives?”

Indeed, Moundsville does a good job of capturing the joys of life in a small town and highlighting the diversity of voices even in a town of nine thousand by featuring young and old, women and men, and white, African American, and Latino voices.

While this portrait is refreshing because the filmmakers brought empathy and patience to the project, they left out some important, complex, and challenging topics do not lend themselves to restaurant conversations.  While the documentary touches on economic decline, trade policies, and the outmigration of young people, it tends to treat economic change as natural or neutral, not even mentioning the policymakers or policies that facilitated capital migration.  I would argue that one of the greatest accomplishments of the proponents of neoliberalism has been to make their ideology seem like economic changes just happen.  Neoliberals’ free trade policies, cuts to taxes and social spending, privatization, and the elimination of union protections have hollowed out many factory towns, cut assistance to the poor and unemployed, and concentrated wealth and power in the hands of the few.

While some of the participants in the documentary share their memories of Moundsville’s prosperous decades, they don’t talk about how unions enabled workers to address safety concerns and gender discrimination, win fair wages and benefits, bring stability to their families, buy homes, and have discretionary income to spend at local businesses.  While the residents remember those prosperous years by listing employers, they don’t mention the American Flint Glass Workers’ Union, the United Steel Workers of America, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, and the United Mine Workers of America.  I’m guessing that only a few of those interviewed were union members, and as union strength has declined since the 1980s, public memories of the critical role they played in earlier decades have faded.

Also, Moundsville offers only a cursory discussion of race and racism.  A former mayor, who is African American, recalls painful episodes of racism when he was growing up but says that he no longer faces that kind of cruelty.  And the Latino owner of the Acapulco Mexican Restaurant says that racism is still present and that it negatively frames residents’ understanding of immigrants.  We do not hear other residents’ thoughts on the role of race in their town’s history.  While Moundsville avoids the overly simplistic, stereotypical portraits of racist hillbillies that are a common feature of “Trump Country,” the result is to largely ignore race and racism, which are admittedly complex subjects.

Growing up in northern West Virginia, I was largely unaware of racism and associated it most with the use of the N-word, which was only uttered by the crudest students at my school.  It was not until I reached adulthood that I began to realize that racism was particularly powerful when it was unheard and unseen.  Racism has shaped life in these Ohio Valley factory towns in fundamental ways, particularly through discriminatory housing, employment, and education, and sometimes as a result of battles fought decades ago.  These forms of racism are pervasive throughout the United States—no region or social class has a monopoly on it—and institutional racism’s profound effects up through the present need to be better understood.

When we erase subjects like institutional racism, the labor movement, and the rise of neoliberalism, the resulting portrait is incomplete, and things seemingly just happen to people and towns with no understanding of why.  Moundsville is an intimate portrait of a former factory town whose residents are proud of their hometown and working to redefine it, and I appreciate the filmmakers’ hard work and empathetic lens.  Yet, much work remains to help us make sense of the past and present of Moundsville and many places like it.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Public opinion and recent electoral results suggest American voters are ready for significant change in a leftward direction. Consequently, the Democratic nominee in 2020 is likely to offer a strongly progressive program to the electorate.

Common sense suggests, however, that there are limits to how far left this program should go. Programs that lack public support should be avoided and programs preferred that generate strong support among not just among the base Democratic constituencies like blacks and Latinos but also among white college graduates and ideally have significant purchase among white noncollege voters as well.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Biden’s spike in the polls is well-documented. His current popularity with black voters is striking as has been noted. Less has been written about how he’s doing with white noncollege voters, but the results here are also of significance. Harry Enten notes in his latest CNN column:

“Whites without a college degree still make up a substantial portion of the Democratic Party. Despite much noise about how whites with a degree are the future for Democrats, each group is about 30% of the party. Nonwhites, both with and without college degrees, are about 40% in total. [Note: these figures agree with my own States of Change data.]….

Our latest CNN national poll shows Biden is strong with non-college educated whites, as well [as with nonwhite voters). Biden jumps from the low 20s among whites with a college degree to the mid 30s among whites without a college degree. Comparably, his lead over Sanders increases from only 5 points over Sanders among whites with a college degree to about 20 points among whites without a college degree. Sanders polls in the mid 10s with each group….

Biden’s ability to breakthrough with non-college whites marks perhaps the biggest difference between the 2016 and 2020 primaries. In 2016, Clinton actually lost white voters without a college degree in the primary. Sanders beat her by 7 points among this group in the median Democratic nomination contest with an entrance or exit poll, even though she won college educated whites by 7 points in these same contests.”

This pattern clearly could help Biden secure the Democratic nomination. But does this mean Biden is the most “electable” nominee against Trump?

Not necessarily and for two reasons, which are frequently confused. One is that superior appeal to one group of voters does not mean that more voters may not be lost by inferior appeal among another group. Using Biden as an example, perhaps whatever he gains among white noncollege voters relative to other potential candidates will be more than counterbalanced by losses from unenthusiastic support and turnout among young voters and possibly some other Democratic constituencies.

Therefore, electability is always and inevitably about trade-offs. No candidate will be without them so people should be asking: who has the highest net, given potential gains and losses, and therefore the best chance of beating Trump overall and in the states that are likely to count the most. This is always hard to do given data limitations but that is really the argument we should be having.

The second reason to be cautious about Biden’s electability is that, even if one is taking proper cognizance of the various factors that may increase or decrease a candidate’s appeal, it is hard to make these judgments and harder still this far in advance of the actual general election campaign, when data are sparse and less reliable. Put more bluntly, a lot of early judgments about electability, by voters and pundits alike, turn out to be wrong.

Does that mean we shouldn’t care about electability and, since no one knows anything (as they say in Hollywood), just roll out who we like the best and hope they win? I don’t think so, especially given the 2020 stakes. But we do need to think about it in a sophisticated and, to the extent possible, in a data-driven way.

That’s it for my plea for rationality. Back to the usual heated and intemperate debate who’s the best candidate!

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Jonathan Chait attempts to unlock the riddle of why Joe Biden seems to be doing so well, even if he doesn’t seem to represent the leftward shift of the Democratic party. Chait points out that the general leftward shift of the party is frequently confused with the viewpoint of its leftmost adherents, which does’t really make sense. The whole party can be shifting to the left–I believe that it is–but the median Democrat, even if more left than they once were, can still be pretty different from the aggressively left activists who seem to get most of the attention.

Maybe that’s why Biden is doing so well, much to the dismay of the Twitterati and the puzzlement of political observers who pay attention to that world. The median Democrat simply wants to beat Trump and a generally left program, even if falls short, of the current AOC-approved laundry list, will be just fine with them.

Democrats are currently spending a great deal of time debating how much effort should be devoted to regaining support from working class Americans–but much less time discussing how it can be done.

But it’s the second question that’s the most important. Trump’s victory in 2016 was a brutal demonstration that Democrats had lost the trust and support of many working Americans. To prevail in 2020, Democrats now must convince working people that they genuinely understand their problems and will represent them better and more authentically than Trump and the GOP.

This will not be easy–and the first step must be to recognize that simply advocating a list of progressive economic policies will not be sufficient.

The Democratic Strategist is therefore pleased to present the following strategy memo:
Democrats: To Understand How Workers Feel About Jobs, listen to Sociologists and not just Economists

To read the memo, click HERE.

We believe you will find this memo both useful and important.