The following article by Gannon University History professor Jefff Bloodworth is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

Riffraff. The Masses. Hoi Polloi. Working Class. The Silent Majority. The Great Unwashed.

“The People” have many synonyms. But “Middle American” best describes the demographic upon which every national election swings. Legendary Columbia University sociologist Herbert Gans defines Middle Americans as lower middle and working-class families between the thirty-first and seventy-first income percentiles. They are the working stiffs who are average in jobs, income, and schooling; a high school educated clerk or truck driver, of any race—that’s a Middle American. And Democrats have steadily lost them.

A broader grouping than working class, income alone does not define a Middle American. In his 1989 classic, Middle American Individualism, Gans outlined how income and a “popular individualism” renders them a distinct class. Reared in environments of economic insecurity, Middle Americans prize personal economic security more than anything. Their pursuit of economic autonomy is defined by self-reliance and an individualist ethos. These values and sensibilities are key to understanding Middle America’s political behavior.

Politically, Middle Americans support a version of “moral capitalism.” Moral capitalism is not socialism; Middle Americans think free enterprise and rugged individualism are just fine so long as labor receives a fair share. But any system that shortchanges labor loses legitimacy in Middle America and risks populist uprisings.

Moral capitalism was born on the nineteenth century populist frontier, and it subsequently evolved into the organizing principle that held rural and urban Democrats together. Moral capitalism was the philosophical basis of the Populist movement in the 1890s. Rejecting small government orthodoxy, populists looked to the state to make the urban, industrial economic order into a moral political economy. When markets failed, moral capitalists sought state interventions—but ones that reflected their individualist code. Social Security exemplifies this attitude: funded by dedicated payroll taxes, to Middle Americans the program is an earned benefit and not welfare.

Harry S. Truman’s GI Bill and Lyndon B. Johnson’s Medicare program followed the script Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote with Social Security. “Earned benefits,” recipients served in the military or labored a lifetime to merit eligibility. Not coincidentally, these programs are politically sacrosanct with most Middle Americans.

Oxford University historian Gareth Davies calls this underlying bargain “opportunity liberalism.” The state provides citizens equality of opportunity. Individuals offer grit and labor. And Middle Americans rewarded Democrats with votes.

By founding federal activism and social insurance programs on Middle American individualism, opportunity liberals defeated laissez-faire conservatism and created a liberal political consensus. In the late 1960s and 1970s, however, entitlement liberals gained the political upper hand inside Democratic politics and policy circles. Seeking equality of results, they pushed a guaranteed income and single-payer healthcare as well as an array of unearned benefits. Moral capitalism, however, cuts both ways: Middle Americans revolt against economic systems andpolitical ideologies that ignore the bond between labor and economic security. Middle Americans came to distrust a liberalism that, in their eyes, dispensed unearned benefits. To them, it was not a moral capitalism, and many turned right as result.

Middle American was once rightfully synonymous with working-class whites. In 1975, nearly nine of ten Middle Americans were white, and in 1980 and 1984 Ronald Reagan won an average 61 percent of the white working-class vote. Because Middle America comprised two-thirds of the entire electorate, Reagan won in landslides. Post-1965 immigration, however, has remade American and Middle American demography. In 1980, whites were 80 percent of the overall population; today, that number has fallen to 60 percent. Indeed, almost half of today’s Middle Americans are non-white. These demographic changes have transformed American politics.

Bill Clinton combined a rising non-white population with the educated middle class, women, and enough white Middle Americans to win the presidency twice. He did so by emphasizing work and opportunity. In effect, he pushed opportunity liberalism back to the party’s rhetorical center.

Read more…

In his article, “What this year’s labor strikes mean for America’s working class” at The Hill, Andy Levin, distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, adds clarity to current reporting about the dramatic increase in labor union strikes and other organized worker actions. As Levin writes, “It wasn’t too long ago that a working-class job, meant a middle-class life….  I grew up in Michigan in the 1970s, when some of us went off to college but many more went straight into factories, construction and other industries. My friends’ working-class jobs provided a type of stability and security that feels elusive in 2023….Even if there was only one parent working outside the home, families owned their houses. There was plenty of food. Health insurance covered illness or injury without the threat of bankruptcy. Our parents could buy us a bike and maybe even take us “Up North” on a little vacation. … But now, in Michigan and throughout the country, the type of working-class prosperity that surrounded me as a kid exists mostly in the memories of people my age or older….In the 20^th century world I was born into, the American labor movement showed we could build a relatively inclusive economy in which work really paid by giving voice and power to workers in construction, manufacturing, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, transit, trucking and more. And while that world has eroded, now, in 2023, workers across the economy are showing us that this can be our future again.” Levin notes the impressive gains UPS Teamsters made as “the largest group of working people under one contract” and adds ‘Simply put, the UPS employees’ win for themselves provides a boost to the whole working class….Now, the UAW is building on this momentum….Poll after poll shows that despite potential disruptions in auto production, Americans are siding with the UAW rank and file….Whether you are a member of an established union at GM or fighting to create a new one at REI, you are amplifying the same question: Can we have livable jobs in America in the 2020s?….Until we update our laws to guarantee that workers who form a union can get a fair contract within a half year or so, we will not be able to rebuild the middle class in this country.” And therein lies a great unmet and almost unarticulated challenge for Democrats in congress and state legislatures — to become increasingly visible advocates for worker rights and better living standards, and to promote labor unions as the most effective vehicle for improving the living standards of America’s working-class.

Levin concludes, “Labor economists can tell you that many jobs will continue to require high school plus an apprenticeship, short-term credential or on-the-job training. We must help students and workers get the training and credentials they need to do the work of advanced manufacturing, information technology and more. But we must also organize society so that work really pays, including for the huge number of people who will devote themselves skillfully to jobs across multiple sectors that don’t require college degrees…. This is what the UAW strike is really about. Through unions, workers can create an America that more closely resembles the shared prosperity of my childhood than the “trickle down” world my children have inherited. All the rank and file are asking for is solidly middle-class wages, good benefits, dignified retirement and the sanity of regular and predictable hours like the people I grew up with had. Union workers built the middle class in the 20^th century, and they are the best people to rebuild it in the 21^st.” Democrats should also remember that their fate is much  intertwined with the survival and growth of a more organized labor force. Unions not only provide Democratic candidates with needed funds for their campaigns; they also provide an enormous pool of campaign volunteers, who help promote Democratic candidates and get out the vote. That’s why Republicans have put so much energy into weakening and destroying unions, in addition to their donors’ desire to keep wages low. Also, labor unions create community among working people, places and occasions to gather, to affirm their solidarity and visibility as creative and effective advocates for a better society.

But here and there, local Democratic groups have done an exceptionally-good job of spotlighting worker rights.  As Erik Gunn reports in “Democrats push an agenda to restore worker rights” at the Wisconsin Examiner, “Flanked by a phalanx of union members in trades ranging from carpentry to teaching, Democrats in the Legislature rolled out a 10-bill collection Thursday to enshrine workers’ rights in state law after a decade and a half of measures rolling back those rights….“The people of our country are rising up and standing together to demand better wages, benefits, treatment and a higher quality of life,” said Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) at a news conference to announce the initiative….She pointed to union organizing, activism and contract fights at Colectivo and Starbucks coffee shops, Leinenkugel brewery and UPS as well as the prospect of a looming job action by the UAW in the auto industry….“Right now, union popularity is soaring, with seven out of 10 Americans having a positive view of labor unions, because labor unions are getting real results that improve both the economic and safety conditions for the workers they represent,” Shankland said….“As our state continues to grapple with a historic worker shortage, putting forward pro-worker policies is not only the right thing to do, it’s the smart thing to do. We know that pro-worker legislation will help us recruit and retain the skilled workforce needed for our workers, businesses, economies and communities to thrive.”….With Republicans holding a supermajority in the Senate and just a few seats shy of that number in the Assembly, Shankland acknowledged the difficulty of advancing the measures, but said she wasn’t giving up on getting bipartisan support for at least some of the agenda….In an interview, she asserted that data shows the Walker-era laws harming workers’ rights have also harmed the economy….“We know we have a demographic issue in Wisconsin — our workforce is aging,” Shankland said.  “And we believe that the key to the workforce shortage is treating workers with the dignity and respect they deserve and have earned through their loyalty and hard work and productivity.”

Democrats should also champion worker rights as a top priority for endorsing Supreme Court and appeals court nominees.  The way it is now, the public hears very little about the views of court nominees regarding worker and union rights, even though adults spend half their waking lives, five days a week, on the job. We hear plenty about potential high court nominees and judge appointee records and views regarding abortion, affirmative action, LGBTQ rights, the environment and a broad range of social issues. Think of all the media coverage in recent years about whether or not a baker had to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple vs. how little media attention was provided to any worker rights cases. A lot of this falls on the failure of the press to provide adequate coverage of worker rights cases. But it’s nonetheless up to Democrats and Democratic office-holders to help raise awareness of worker rights issues to the point where big media can no longer ignore job-related issues. As Eve Tahmincioglu, Celine McNicholas, and Daniel Costa report at The Economic Policy Institute, “The Supreme Court has played an important role in the decades-long campaign to erode workers’ rights in this country. In particular, the Supreme Court has issued rulings that have undermined everything from workers’ rights to form unions, the ability to build strong unions, and health and safety on the job. This term, the Supreme Court once again sided with corporations in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters to make it easier for employers to sue unions over their decision to strike.” Compare the media coverage of this case with the aforementioned cake case. The E.P.I. article provides details about important worker rights rulings that got very little big media coverage. With disapproval of the Supreme Court at an historic high, wouldn’t now be a good time for Democrats to make a loud case for a more worker-friendly Supreme Court?

The deal went down on this some time ago, but it’s still worth noting the official demise of the First-in-the-Nation Iowa Democratic Caucuses, as I did at New York:

The death rattle of the hallowed First-in-the-Nation Iowa Democratic Caucuses took a while to subside. But now it’s done. Yes, Iowa Democrats will still get together in precinct gatherings on January 15, the same day when Iowa Republicans caucus to formally launch the 2024 Republican nominating contest. But thanks to a national party mandate insisted upon by President Joe Biden, there will be no presidential preference balloting at the Democratic caucuses. A separate, mail-in ballot process will culminate in the announcement of the results on March 5, Super Tuesday, safely outside the “early state” window Iowa once dominated, and in the midst of a cascade of votes that will confirm Biden’s nomination.

Iowa’s defenestration from the early-state window was caused by three interrelated factors that came together to overcome the first-in-the-nation tradition. First, Democrats have moved decisively to outlaw caucuses as a method for awarding national-convention delegates, compared to more open and inclusive primaries. Second, Iowa was deemed far too unrepresentative of the country demographically to maintain such a highly influential position on the nominating calendar. And third, the last Democratic Caucuses in 2020 were a huge mess with the state party unable to report the results on Caucus Night (though arguably national party mandates helped make that happen). You could add as a fourth, decisive factor: Biden’s poor performance in Iowa en route to his nomination and election; certainly the White House owed the state no favors.

As Politico reports, Iowa Democrats hope their cooperation in what is after all an uncontested nomination contest in 2024 will give them a chance at reentering the early-state window in the future, albeit not likely in its old premier position. And as the Des Moines Register notes, the state party’s surrender eliminates a collateral threat to Iowa Republicans who might have faced a calendar challenge from New Hampshire if Iowa Democrats conducted something that looked like a primary before the Granite State’s event (which by state law must occur first).

Now the only apparent troublemakers left in the presidential nominating arena are New Hampshire’s Democrats, who have no choice but to follow state law and conduct a presidential primary on January 23; the DNC has demanded New Hampshire give way to the vastly more diverse South Carolina as the first primary state and vote instead on February 6, the same day as Nevada’s primary. The Republicans who control New Hampshire’s legislature have refused to play ball, leaving their Democratic counterparts to hold a rogue event that will cost New Hampshire at least half its delegation to the Democratic convention in Chicago next year, while creating the possibility of an embarrassing upset of President Biden, who won’t participate in a primary that defies his own calendar rules.

Most recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has significantly reduced the risk of that happening by indicating he plans to withdraw from an allegedly “rigged” Democratic nominating contest to run as an independent, leaving Marianne Williamson as Biden’s only foe with any significant support. To be safe, New Hampshire’s Democratic leaders are planning a Biden write-in effort.

No matter what happens in New Hampshire, the whole show will begin in Iowa on January 15 strictly on the GOP side of the partisan divide. Republicans, after all, aren’t that hung up on diversity and are still okay with caucuses and highly unrepresentative delegate award systems. Meanwhile, sad Iowa Democrats may well feel their caucus traditions on January 15 like a missing limb.

The best election campaigns do a good job of both turning out supporters and winning over a healthy share of “persuadable” voters.

Turnout is more of a science – good campaigns know where most of their supporters are and take tried and true steps to get them to the polls. It’s not an exact science, since people keep moving and changing their minds, and sometimes it’s not enough. But you can’t win an election without a solid turnout effort, unless your candidate is a really good one.

Persuasion, on the other hand, is more of an art. there are some tried and true rules for winning hearts and minds. But they don’t always work as planned, either, and these voters can be found in many demographic groups. Yet no campaigns win important elections without persuading a significant number of previously uncommitted voters to support their candidates.

America is so polarized now, that even identifying persuadable voting groups is increasingly difficult.  At The Wall St. Journal, Aaron Zitner and Kara Dapena share some interesting statistics about persuadable voters in their graph-rich article, “A Quarter of Americans Can’t Decide Whom to Vote For. What Do We Know About Them?” including:

….most voters say their choice for president is already settled, if their options are Biden and Trump. That leaves a small but meaningful share of voters, 26%, as “up for grabs,” or persuadable. And these voters are conflicted: They don’t think Biden is doing a good job but dislike some of Trump’s personal qualities. They have a sour view of the economy but favor abortion rights. The findings give clues to how each party will try to reach these voters in the coming months.

Watching the latest GOP madness from the House, I wondered why Republicans weren’t smart enough to stay narrowly focused on economic issues where they currently hold a big advantage. I thought about it and posted this explanation at New York:

Even as the horrendous dysfunction afflicting House Republicans dominates the headlines, polls continue to show the GOP in a good position to maintain and extend its power in 2024. In the RealClearPolitics polling averages, Republicans lead in the generic congressional ballot (basically a measure of which party voters want to control the U.S. House) by a point (44.4 percent to 43.4 percent). And their wildly erratic and indictment-prone presidential front-runner, Donald Trump, similarly leads Joe Biden in 2024 general-election trial heats by an average of 45.5 percent to 44.4 percent.

There are multiple reasons offered for this anomaly of the crazy-person party holding a lead, ranging from the president’s age to some sort of national malaise. But the most obvious reason from the data we have is that solid majorities of Americans are unhappy about the economy and blame Biden for it. A new Marquette Law School national poll shows Trump being preferred to Biden on handling the economy by an astonishing 52 percent to 28 percent margin. It’s hardly an unusual finding. Here’s what ABC’s Gary Langer said after the latest ABC/Washington Post survey came out:

“Forty-four percent of Americans in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’ve gotten worse off financially under Biden’s presidency, the most for any president in ABC/Post polls since 1986. Just 37% approve of his job performance, while 56% disapprove. Still fewer approve of Biden’s performance on the economy, 30%.”

And that’s with most major economic metrics looking relatively sunny. If the economy takes the negative turn next year many forecasters expect, what then? How much Trump craziness might swing voters tolerate to get back that sensational Trump economy they remember (or imagine)?

Looking at the situation from a different angle, how much are Republicans unnecessarily hurting themselves by both tolerating Trump’s high jinks and displaying their own in the U.S. House? Why don’t they exhibit some self-discipline by getting onto the obvious winning message and chirping like cicadas: Economy! Economy! Economy! I’m quite certain there are Republicans in boardrooms and country clubs all over America wondering just that.

Before getting to the heart of the matter, it’s important to acknowledge a couple of factors that lead Republicans to be less than entirely mono-vocal, aside from their varying ideological and geographical backgrounds. There are some issues, notably the situation along the southern border, and — in some parts of the country — violent-crime rates, that benefit them so much that ignoring them would represent political malpractice. The Marquette Law School poll cited above showed Trump leading Biden on “border security” by exactly the same margin as his advantage on the economy. Plus, of course, it’s a signature issue for Trump and the MAGA movement he created. There are other issues, notably abortion, that are more important to key Republican activists than all the economic indicators past, present, or future. Trump is probably straining their patience by urging the GOP to downplay its unpopular views on abortion policy.

But the key thing to understand in processing wild Republican rhetoric on issues like congressional appropriations is that they and their supporters deeply believe the country’s economic problems are almost exclusively caused by excessive public spending and government overreach. Risking a debt default to rein in deficit spending strikes most Democrats and nonpartisan observers as playing an insanely dangerous game with the economy. Plenty of Republicans can’t imagine anything more dangerous and irresponsible than trillion-dollar budget deficits and unlimited public borrowing. For people who think that way, forcing a government shutdown is an absolute no-brainer. It has to be done again and again until the spending and borrowing stops.

To be sure, the wild extremism of so much Republican rhetoric on government spending is fed by non-economic concerns about objects of all that spending. According to some conservatives, Democrats are bankrupting the country and tanking the economy in order to finance radical assaults on freedom like COVID shutdowns, vicious assaults on Christians and their institutions, a vendetta against fossil fuels and those who use them or depend on them for jobs, and the partisan weaponization of law enforcement to prosecute conservatives and liberate looters and killers. Many of them also seem to think Biden is determined to spend the U.S. to death in order to save Ukraine as payback for bribes. Donald Trump seems to regard government spending as strictly designed to keep him from returning to the White House. But it’s also telling that complicity in deficit spending is one of the rare issues on which otherwise craven Republicans like Nikki Haley are willing to criticize the 45th president.

While it’s impossible to sort out all the different evils with which Republicans associate “big government” and “runaway spending,” there’s no question that when they rage about these things they believe they are addressing the same economic concerns that their voters, as well as swing voters, want them to deal with urgently. Keep that in mind as you watch House Republicans choose a new Speaker against a backdrop of fresh promises to radically pare back federal spending.

 

 

At The Washingtonian, Hunter Spears interviews Ron Elving, American University professor and a Senior Editor and Correspondent on the Washington Desk for NPR News, who explains “Don’t Worry, Trump Isn’t Going to Become the Next Speaker of the House. Probably!“: “Article 1 [of the Constitution] says, “the House of Representatives shall choose their Speaker and other Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.” That’s the only guidance we get. It doesn’t say [the Speaker] has to be a member, but I think it’s just a presumption that it would be. But, in all the rules that Congress has adopted in 200 and some years, they’ve never specified that the speaker had to be a member of the House….It’s like the pope being a Catholic—I’m not sure that there’s anything in the Vatican’s protocols that says “oh and by the way, the pope should be a Catholic.” It’s not like they’re just going to pick Taylor Swift, it has to be a cardinal!….Trump would have to get virtually all the Republicans on board for that, and I could see getting half or two-thirds if some of them hold their nose—but not all. Some may not want to anger the Trump supporters in their districts, but there are 20-some Republicans from districts that actually voted for Biden….I don’t think the average Republican wants to play a hand in giving Trump the power to shut down the government. Even if all of them did back him, their majority is so slim it’s almost a non-majority. If an elevator door didn’t open or a taxi driver got lost, they might not get the votes….At the end of our conversation, Elving suggested we take a look at clause 10 (b) of rule XXIII in the official Rules of the House of Representatives. The clause reads:

a member … who has been indicted for or otherwise formally charged with criminal conduct in any Federal, State, or local court punishable as a felony for which a sentence of two or more years’ imprisonment may be imposed should … step aside from any conference leadership position until judicial or executive proceedings result in an acquittal or the charges are dismissed or reduced.

So if Republicans did want Trump as speaker, they might have to address the above first.” So, probably not gonna happen. And that’s actually a little good news for Republicans, who would have an even tougher time of being taken seriously as adults going into 2024 with the Trump follies running the House.

The other Fantasy Island scenario I’ve heard being bandied about is the Democrats, plus a very small handful of Republican House members electing Liz Cheney as the next Speaker. It’s a lovely thought, which would call attention to the GOP’s embarrassing character problem, which is one reason why it probably won’t happen. Being sane and having some integrity, Cheney likely wouldn’t want the job. Would you want to spend the next couple of years herding bellowing and whiny Republicans into a working majority? Plus, there is a high probability that the next speaker will also get canned in short order, given the belligerent nihilism of the MAGA crowd. And there is close to a zero chance that the House will pass any legislation that gives the Republicans any bragging rights. Not a lot of upside for Ms. Cheney, who currently enjoys the respect of millions of Americans across the political spectrum. Why trade that to front for the worst shite show in U.S. political history? Worry more about her running for president than speaker. At NBC News, Scott Wong and Sahil Kapur have a little roundup of some more realistic possibilities for the next Speaker, including: Majority Leader Steve Scalise; Majority whip Tom Emmer; Garret Graves; Patrick Henry; Elise Stefanik; Jim Jordan; Tom Cole and a few wild cards. Most of them are Trump grovelers and it’s hard to envision the Republicans emerging from this debacle with a modicum of dignity that will earn the respect of swing voters. Still, Democrats would be wise to plan strategy around one of them getting the Speaker’s gavel. And dare we hope that this sorry affair may help Dems win a House majority next year?

J. Miles Coleman of Sabato’s Crystal Ball offers some astute observation of the GOP House meltdown, including: “We doubt there is much actual political fallout here, but one thing to monitor going forward is how much more dysfunctional the House becomes. The chances of a shutdown, which McCarthy narrowly avoided thanks to Democratic votes over the weekend, just shot up, as we are going to be doing the shutdown dance again in November and the new GOP speaker (assuming there is one) may need to take a harder line in an attempt to satiate his most insatiable members. It may be that this speaker gets a reprieve from some of the hardliners simply because he or she is not McCarthy. Democrats, meanwhile, declined to throw McCarthy a lifeline during the motion to vacate, opting en masse to vote with the Republican rebels. The Democrats seemed legitimately angry at McCarthy for offering them less than nothing for their support, which he clearly needed (or he just needed some Democrats to vote present on the motion to vacate, allowing loyal Republicans to deliver a majority of those voting)….Democrats also will likely relish the continued turbulence on the Republican side. That said, there are risks to them, too. Yes, it would probably be easy to blame Republicans for a future shutdown, but an extended one that has an impact on the economy could have repercussions for the president, too….One final point: Despite his rocky rise to the top and short tenure as Speaker, McCarthy had been a prodigious fundraiser for House Republicans. Over the last several cycles, Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC he was aligned with, emerged as one of the most formidable outside spending groups in House races. With McCarthy out, there may be some negative effects on GOP fundraising.”

Meanwhile, Cooper Burton reports that “The Supreme Court starts its new term with dismal approval ratings” at FiveThirtyEight: “Numbers from a new average we built (similar to our presidential approval tracker) to track approval of the Supreme Court over time show that the court remains extremely unpopular with the American public: At the time of publication, an average of 38 percent of Americans approved of the job the Supreme Court is doing while 54 percent disapproved, for an average net approval rating of -16 percentage points. (Be on the lookout for a full launch of the tracker soon.)….The court’s net approval rating at the beginning of September was the lowest since our tracker began in December 2020. Other metrics besides approval, like favorability and confidence, have also registered record lows. In a Pew Research survey from July, the court’s favorability was the lowest since they began asking the question back in 1987. And 62 percent of adults in an April Marist/NPR/PBS NewsHour poll said that they had not very much or no confidence at all in the Supreme Court….some of the justices themselves have expressed concern over both the perception and reality of the court’s ideological divides. Add that to the steady stream of ethics scandals that have continued to trickle out since April, and you get the recipe for an unhappy public — in our average, the court’s net approval rating has fallen 17 points since it began releasing the biggest opinions of the term in May, despite the data showing public agreement with most of those decisions.” Democrats should keep pointing out that this is a Republican-dominated Supreme Court, and Republicans violated long-standing Senate agreements so they could pack the Court. The most realistic way to change it is to elect a landslide Democratic majority next year – one which can implement reforms to restore the Supreme Court’s credibility.

The following article,  “The key to messaging is repetition. These are the messages Democrats should repeat relentlessly” by Matthew Smith, is cross-posted from Daily Kos:

Mass-market messaging is all about repetition and consistency—telling the same story over and over till it finally sinks in with a media-deluged public. It’s the principle behind the famous “Rule of 7” in advertising (your audience has to hear your message at least seven times before they’ll consider buying your product). It’s why ads are repeated so often on TV or YouTube that we get sick of seeing them. And, of course, it’s the basis of Goebbels’s Big Lie (If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it).

Conservatives have learned this lesson too well. We all know the Republican Party’s brand, because every Republican, from Congress to city councils, sounds exactly the same: “freedom,” “liberty,” the Constitution, “family values,” blah, blah, till we’re sick of hearing it. When they find a meme that works for them (“woke,” trans hate, Hunter Biden), they seize on it with a groupthink that’s honestly a little creepy. They know that simply by endless repetition they can create their own reality, persuading millions of Americans to believe even stone-cold lies—for example:

• Republicans are the party of freedom, Christian values, and fiscal restraint.
• The Second Amendment is about owning a gun for your own personal use.
• The election was rigged.
• Democrats are radical socialists who hate America.

Clearly, repetition in political messaging is a powerful tool.

Now ask yourself: What messages do Democrats repeat so often you’re sick of hearing them?

If an answer doesn’t immediately spring to mind (and it won’t), that’s an issue. It means, for one thing, that persuadable voters may not have a clear idea of who Democrats are and what we stand for. For another, if we’re not constantly, relentlessly telling Americans who we are, then we allow conservatives to define our party for us. And they are.

Democrats have inspiring, powerful messages to tell, and plenty of time to make our case. But it has to be a coordinated effort at message domination. From now till Election Day, we need to tell those messages so often that voters beg us to stop. They should be short, simple, values-based messages that solidify our party’s brand and define our core beliefs.

What should those messages be? What reality do we want to create? One would hope Democratic leaders are answering those questions now, but if not, here are a few suggestions (If you have other or better ideas, please post them in the comments):

PRIMARY MESSAGES

DEMOCRATS MAKE PEOPLE’S LIVES BETTER.

This strikes me as the party’s most powerful and appealing message. But it can’t just be implied by our policies. It needs to be stated explicitly, and it needs to come from everyone, always.

Talking points:

• By all means tout the many, many accomplishments of President Biden and the Democrats, BUT tie those policies explicitly to our brand: The Democratic Party’s mission is making people’s lives better. It’s what Democrats do and what we stand for.
• We don’t just talk about making people’s lives better—we’ve been doing it for nearly a hundred years. Virtually every major improvement in our country’s quality of life has come from Democrats, including:
  • Social Security and Medicare
  • Affordable health care
  • The very idea of a minimum wage and getting paid for overtime
  • Unemployment insurance
  • Civil rights and workplace rights for women, people of color, and LGBTQ
  • Credit card reforms and consumer protections
  • And so much more
• We’re the party of compassion and caring. Our primary goals are to alleviate hardship and suffering and to improve the basic quality of life for all Americans.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IS UNFIT TO GOVERN. VOTE THEM OUT. ALL OF THEM.

Because negative messages work too. President Biden has very effectively made speeches about the conservative threat to democracy. But an occasional speech won’t get the job done. Every Democratic politician needs to repeat the message at every media opportunity, campaign stop, and debate.

Talking points:

• This election is truly a battle for the soul of America. Ultraconservatism and its slavish devotion to Donald Trump has become an actual destructive force in America. It is a toxic ideology that poses a real and immediate danger to American democracy and the principles we have stood for for almost 250 years. Republicans have proven it by:
  • Trying to overturn a free and fair election, fomenting a riot at the Capitol, and preventing the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history
  • Passing laws making it harder to vote
  • Fomenting pointless culture wars that pit Americans against one another
  • Spreading outrageous conspiracy theories
  • Refusing to do anything about gun violence
  • Undermining people’s faith in elections, a free press, science, law enforcement, the rule of law, and government itself
  • Praising the authoritarian regime in Hungary as an example for America and threatening to withdraw support for Ukraine
  • Banning books
  • Threatening financial default and government shutdowns
• Nothing gets better without change. And nothing will change until every last Republican is out of office.
• Conservative policies toward the poor are immoral, cruel, un-American, un-Christian, irreligious, and inhumane.
• Conservatism is a timid ideology based on fear. Republicans are afraid of new ideas and anyone who isn’t just like them. Don’t live in fear, and stop electing politicians who tell you that you should.
• Conservatives have stopped listening to Americans. Polls show strong majorities of Americans agree with Democrats on virtually every important issue.

SECONDARY MESSAGES

OUR POSITION ON [X] IS BASED ON DEEPLY HELD AMERICAN VALUES.

Whenever Democrats do talk about policies, they should always, always relate them to traditional American principles. Don’t just make intellectual arguments; appeal to voters’ emotions—their patriotism and national pride.

Talking points:

• Democrats passionately believe in the values established in America’s founding documents:
  • All of us are created equal.
  • All of us have an unalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
  • Liberty includes, as Roosevelt said, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear.
• Explicitly relate every policy to the core values behind it. For example:
  • Gun safety: The unalienable right to life, freedom from fear
  • Civil rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights: Equality, personal liberty, the right to pursue happiness
  • Poverty and income inequality: Equality, fairness, freedom from want, the right to pursue happiness and the American Dream

DEMOCRATS FIGHT FOR THE UNDERDOG.

Talking points:

• We fight for everyone who needs a voice in America—workers and their families, the poor, people of color, LGBTQ people, voters having their rights taken away.
• It’s not about “identity politics” or “class warfare,” it’s about living up to the American ideals of equal opportunity, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

DEMOCRATS BELIEVE IN AMERICA’S FUTURE.

Talking points:

• America is doing well. We are the greatest, richest, most powerful nation on earth, respected and admired around the world. We believe America can do anything we set our minds to. We can create the society we want.

• We are the party of optimism and progress—the only party with a vision for the future and a better way of life for America. Republicans have no vision for the future and nothing to offer but divisive culture wars and a dark, apocalyptic view of our country.

  Reasonable Democrats may have disagreements about the specifics of message content. But Smith is surely right that Democrats can profit from better message discipline, repetition and, especially coordination.

Manu Raju, Lauren Fox and Melanie Zanona report “House Democrats weigh risky strategy: Whether to save McCarthy” at CNN Politics, and write: “While no decisions have been made, some of the party’s moderates are privately signaling they’d be willing to cut a deal to help McCarthy stave off a right-wing revolt – as long as the speaker meets their own demands….Publicly, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has not weighed in on how he’d want his members to manage a challenge to McCarthy’s speakership, saying it’s hypothetical at this point. But privately, Jeffries has counseled his members to keep their powder dry, according to multiple sources, a recognition it’s better for Democrats to keep their options open as the government funding fight plays outs.…“If somehow Democrats are asked to be helpful, it’s not just going to have to be out of the kindness of our hearts,” Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan, told CNN. “If Kevin can’t govern with just his part – which clearly he can’t – and he wants to have a conversation with us about how to do that, we are going to have a policy conversation.”….members who spoke to CNN made clear that any Democratic help would come at a cost. And their asking price for saving his speakership, Democratic members say, is a bipartisan deal to avoid a shutdown – a route McCarthy is not yet prepared to take, as Republicans are still trying to find consensus on a GOP plan to fund the government.” Um, Kevin, beggars can’t be choosers. “It’s a complicated dance for Democrats, who don’t want to be seen as saving McCarthy – especially after he just launched an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden – and could open them up to backlash on the left. But some Democrats also fear the potential alternative: a government shutdown and the prospect of an even more right-wing lawmaker ascending to the speakership if McCarthy is ousted – or the House being paralyzed with no candidate able to win 218 votes to be elected speaker.”

In “Is American Polarization a Reality or a Political Strategy?,” Carl Smith interviews Rachel Kleinfeld at governing.com and shares some of her comments in response to his questions: “Carnegie has just published a paper from [Rachel] Kleinfeld, Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says. It offers a detailed view of research on polarization, and what has been learned about the interplay between public attitudes, politics and political violence….“Americans are not as ideologically polarized as they believe themselves to be,” she finds, but emotions are being polarized for political purposes, leading to new levels of threats against state and local officials. “That makes it even more pertinent to get a handle on what’s going on and what we can do about it,” Kleinfeld says….”Party leaders have been selecting more extreme candidates for some time now — Democrats by maybe two to one and Republicans by a 13 to one margin, according to one study. Party leadership is playing a big role in how extreme our candidates are getting ideologically….Some of us are looking at things like getting rid of primaries and having ranked-choice voting, the way they’ve done it in Alaska, to create incentives for people to run in a less extreme way. Other academics are looking at things like proportional representation to try to get extremes out of politics….Threats are getting severe enough that they are deterring people from taking elected and appointed jobs, especially things like school board and city council, the grass roots that we need to function. We can’t run a democracy if good people don’t run for office.”

From “The GOP’s arsonists lost on the shutdown, but they’re not going away” by WaPo columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr.: “If anyone doubts which party is extreme and which favors bipartisan accord, the roll call on McCarthy’s resolution provided a resounding data point. Even as their party’s speaker sought the two-thirds majority he needed in this last-minute process, only 126 Republicans voted with him; 90 voted no. Among Democrats, the vote was 209-1….None of which bodes well for the next 45 days, and not just because some way must be found to finance aid to Ukraine, left out of the resolution. Democrats remain angry that McCarthy broke the deal he reached with Biden earlier this year during debt ceiling negotiations. That deal, too, was passed with more Democratic than Republican votes. McCarthy effectively rewrote the deal on Saturday, saying he viewed those numbers as a ceiling and would seek further cuts. The country could face this crisis again….“There will not be a lot of Democrats eager to rescue a guy who broke his deal with Biden and is currently trying to impeach him,” [Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim] Himes said in an interview. But if McCarthy were willing to share power with Democrats, they “might be open to negotiating” to contain the far right….“We’re the party that fights chaos,” he added….It’s notable that Biden gave his democracy speech in Arizona in honor of the late Sen. John McCain, a Republican who always defended the idea of putting country over party — and who was hated by Trump. Biden spoke of the danger posed by those who would “shut down the government” and “burn the place down.”….On Saturday, enough House Republicans joined their party colleagues in the Senate and Democrats to keep the arsonists at bay. Given Trump’s hold on the party, alas, there are few signs that this will become a habit.”

Disagree if you must, but Paul Rosenberg has an eloquent scold for some progressive Democrats in his article, “Leftists, save yourselves! It’s a bad moment for nihilistic self-indulgence; The far-left bromance with RFK Jr. is only helping Trump. Remember how left-wing purity worked out in the 1930s?” at Salon. As Rosenberg writes, “There’s a vast range of legitimate political choices leftists can make, to be clear. I think it’s generally a bad idea for folks on the left to attack one another over strategic differences. We need strategic and ideological diversity, and we need to welcome and engage profound disagreements — that’s healthy. But it’s simply bad faith to call yourself a “leftist” while, in practical terms, you’re working to sabotage decades of hard-won, partial progress and allow fascists to win….Of course Biden is no leftist, and his party remains largely terrified of the left. But there’s more space for real progressives in the Democratic Party than there has been for decades. More to the point, it’s the only vehicle we have to get certain things done: That’s why Bernie Sanders has caucused with the Democrats throughout his career in the House and Senate, while remaining an independent….I’m completely fine with people who devote 99% of their political energy attacking Democrats from the left on climate, prison abolition, militarism, class politics, you name it. But set aside that crucial 1%, because sometimes (indeed, pretty often) you need to vote for Democrats in order to keep Republicans out of office and create space for all the other battles we need to fight. That’s my minimum standard for the non-suicidal left. Almost everything else is up for grabs….My first rule of thumb is not to echo right-wing tropes or draw on their deeper narratives or worldviews. It’s tempting to take advantage of supposedly popular images, ideas or themes, but we need to be hyper-vigilant about not empowering the right, particularly when the right’s counter-mobilization against social progress has gained so much strength on its own.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, politics editor of The Liberal Patriot newsletter and co-author with John B. Judis of the forthcoming book “Where Have All the Democrats Gone?,” is cross-posted from The Liberal Patriot:

As the 2024 election approaches, Democrats have a three-point plan for their challenging quest to re-elect Joe Biden, take back the House, and defend their razor-thin Senate majority. The first two points one might characterize as the Democrats’ version of the culture war: (1) relentless attacks on Republicans’ association with abortion restrictionism, usually portrayed as a GOP drive to ban the procedure entirely; and (2) equally relentless attacks on the Republicans as destroyers of democracy, from Trump’s and his supporters’ “election denialism” to “MAGA” movement rhetoric and legislation said to be subverting democracy across the country.

The theory is that these attacks will neutralize and then some Republican messages on crime, immigration, race, gender and schools, where Democrats are easily associated with genuinely unpopular positions. The 2022 elections and special elections since are believed to provide a precedent for this approach. But then we have the third prong of the Democratic strategy: a bold attempt to sell Democrats’ stewardship of the economy as “Bidenomics.”

On one level, this can only be described as chutzpah. A massive tranche of poll findings uniformly find the public extremely unhappy with the state of the economy. In a particularly brutal recent poll from Washington Post/ABC News, Biden receives a dreadful 30 percent approval rating on handling the economy. It’s instructive to break this down by working class (noncollege) vs. college educated. Working-class respondents give Biden a 24 percent approval rating on the economy, way below the comparatively respectable 43 percent rating among the more upscale college educated group. Since Bidenomics has been explicity pitched as a way to build working-class enthusiasm for Biden’s candidacy, this signals a rather big problem with the strategy.

Similarly, the Post poll finds a mere 25 percent characterizing the national economy positively (excellent or good), with just half as many (19 percent) feeling that way among the working class as among the college educated (38 percent). And a rock-bottom 14 percent of working-class respondents say their personal financial situation is better now than when Biden took office, compared to 50 percent who say they are actually worse off.

The second wave of The Liberal Patriot/YouGov (TLP/YouGov) 2024 presidential election project was completed in early September, including interviews with more than 3000 registered voters. These new data flesh out how and why Bidenomics has been such a flop with voters. Start with the issue of inflation. As we noted in our post yesterday, voters overwhelmingly feel that inflation is “still a very serious problem that is not improving,” with working-class voters particularly likely (68 percent) to feel that way.

These sentiments baffle Democrats who note that the rate of inflation has actually been falling and that unemployment is super-low. So why aren’t people, particularly workers, happy? It’s very simple as liberal economist James K. Galbraith has noted:

Unlike unemployment, inflation does affect everyone. But what matters to working people is not the monthly or yearly price change taken alone. What matters is the effect on purchasing power and living standards over time. Whether these are rising or falling depends on the relationship of prices to wages. When wage growth exceeds price increases, times are generally good. When it doesn’t, they aren’t.

It is here that Biden has a problem. During his presidency, living standards have not risen. From early 2021 to mid-2023, prices have increased more than wages, implying that real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages and real weekly earnings have fallen, on average. Not by much, but they have fallen. Worse, the average figure probably masks a larger fall, in real terms, for families that started out below the average. And given how income distributions work, there are always many more families earning less than the average than there are who earn more.

In other words, it is the trajectory of workers’ living standards, not  misinformation or media framing, that explains why they see the economy of the Biden administration in such jaundiced terms. And why they tend to think Trump actually did a better job managing the economy. In the new TLP/YouGov poll, working-class voters prefer Trump’s economic management as president by 20 points (55 percent to 35 percent), again contrasting with the college educated who prefer Biden’s performance by 9 points (51percent to 42 percent).

Given all this, it should not be surprising that the very term the Democrats are seeking to popularize—”Bidenomics”—is not striking a responsive chord. On the contrary, the lack of enthusiasm is deafening. In the TLP/YouGov survey, a mere 28 percent of working-class voters are willing to say they support Bidenomics, just 29 percent think Bidenomics will help their family financially, and scarcely more (32 percent) believe Bidenomics will help the overall economy.

Interestingly, Bidenomics support lags significantly behind support for specific legislative measures passed by the Biden administration, especially the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act. Since these were unaided questions—that is, no descriptions of the bills were given, just the names—voters may partially have been reacting to things they already feel positively about like “inflation reduction,” “bipartisan,” and “infrastructure,” rather than the content of the bills themselves. But that in itself is a clue to what voters are looking for. The term “Bidenomics,” on the other hand, with its absolutely inevitable association with economic conditions voters, especially working-class voters, detest seems perfectly designed to annoy voters, rather than win them over.

A new NBC poll shows Republicans currently favored over Democrats on handling the economy by an astounding 21 points, the largest lead Republicans have had on this measure since 1991. That tells you about how well the Bidenomics messaging campaign is working so far. The Democrats would be wise to try a different approach—one that doesn’t rely on telling voters they should be happy when they are not.

The federal government is going to shut down this weekend, barring some miracle. And Democrats really need to make sure Americans know exactly who insisted on this avoidable crisis. It’s the House GOP, as I explained at New York.

If you are bewildered by the inability of Congress to head off a government shutdown beginning this weekend, don’t feel poorly informed: Some of the Capitol’s top wizards are throwing up their hands as well, as the Washington Post reports:

“’We are truly heading for the first-ever shutdown about nothing,’ said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Strain has started referring to the current GOP House-led impasse as “the ‘Seinfeld’ shutdown,” a reference to the popular sitcom widely known as ‘a show about nothing.’ ‘The weirdest thing about it is that the Republicans don’t have any demands. What do they want? What is it that they’re going to shut the government down for? We simply don’t know.’”

That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Many House Republicans, led by a band of right-wing hard-liners, want to impose their fiscal and policy views on the nation despite the GOP’s narrow majority in the House. Their chief asset, beyond fanaticism, is that the federal government can’t remain open past the end of the fiscal year without the concurrence of the House, and they don’t really mind an extended government shutdown, if only to preen and posture. They are being encouraged in this wildly irresponsible position by their leader and likely 2024 presidential nominee Donald Trump.

But the hard-liners’ real motive, it seems, is to use the dysfunction they’ve caused in the House to get rid of Speaker Kevin McCarthy for being dysfunctional. The not-so-hidden plan hatched by Florida congressman Matt Gaetz is to thwart every effort by McCarthy to move forward with spending plans for the next fiscal year and then defenestrate him via a motion to vacate the chair, which just five Republicans can pass any time they wish (with the complicity of Democrats). Indeed, the Post reports the rebels are casting about for a replacement Speaker right now:

“A contingent of far-right House Republicans is plotting an attempt to remove Kevin McCarthy as House speaker as early as next week, a move that would throw the chamber into further disarray in the middle of a potential government shutdown, according to four people familiar with the effort who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.”

McCarthy’s tormenters would like to have a successor lined up who will presumably be even less inclined to compromise with Democrats than the current Speaker. And that’s saying a lot, since McCarthy has already bowed to the Gaetz demand that House Republicans reject even the idea of a continuing resolution — the stopgap spending measures used to forestall or end government shutdowns in the past — and instead plod through individual appropriations bills loaded with provisions no Democrat would ever accept (e.g., deep domestic spending cuts, draconian border policies, anti-Ukraine measures, and abortion restrictions). It’s a recipe for a long shutdown, but it’s clear if McCarthy moves a muscle toward negotiating with Democrats (who have already passed a CR in the Senate), then kaboom! Here comes the motion to vacate.

Some observers think getting rid of McCarthy is an end in itself for the hard-liners — particularly Gaetz, who has a long-standing grudge against the Californian and opposed his original selection as Speaker to the bitter end — no matter what he does or doesn’t do. In theory, House Democrats could save McCarthy by lending a few “no” votes to him if the motion to vacate hits the floor, but they’ve made it clear the price for saving him would be high, including abandonment of the GOP’s Biden impeachment inquiry.

So strictly speaking, the impending shutdown isn’t “about nothing”; it’s about internal far-right factional politics that very few of the people about to be affected by the shutdown care about at all. Understandably, most Democrats from President Biden on down are focusing their efforts on making sure the public knows this isn’t about “big government” or “politicians” or “partisan polarization,” but about one party’s extremism and cannibalistic infighting. For now, there’s little anyone outside the GOP fever swamps can do about it other than watch the carnage.