Are Americans ready for Hope and Change?
Democrats have two fundamental choices to make as they figure out their message.
One is the decision outlined yesterday. Who is the core constituent for the Democrats? Is it the educated woman sitting at a computer terminal or is it the industrial worker anxious about a potential layoff? Does the Democratic Party represent the rising class of knowledge workers and embrace a growth and technology agenda that sees big businesses as partners in greater prosperity (i.e. Atari Democrats like the Clintons), or does the Democratic Party embrace redistribution as the centerpiece of the agenda and use government to force businesses and stockholders to share a bigger piece of the pie with workers and the poor (i.e. Sanders.)
The second question is whether America is in decline or whether it is morning in America. What mood must the Democrat project.
Of course, the Democratic candidate will say that if he or she is elected things will be better. The question is how to describe the present and future. Thad Guyer writes below that Trump has the correct view of the popular mood: Trump is throwing people a life preserver. Voters want to hear that the candidate understands their fear and pain. They will turn off anything utopian or optimistic.
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| Trump helped create this and he profited from it. |
Trump's message, as I heard live in rallies and as Guyer reiterates below, is that the core voters of both parties are worried. Worried about radical Islam. Worried about North Korea. Worried about staying in the middle class in the face of foreign competition and automation. Worried about the cost of educating their children. Worried about Medicare and Social Security because for younger Americans the news that the programs are actuarily sound until 2032 is not re-assuring; it is frightening.
The history of the past 75 years is mixed, but my sense is that the key is not whether the future is grim or rosy. The electoral key is the projection of confidence that the leader can manage it. We want to know that the president knows what to do when in a fight. (Dukakis and Kerry complained to the refs, which the public correctly saw as weak.) John F. Kennedy warned of missile gaps and powerful enemies. His inauguration spoke of bearing any price and burden. He looked confident as he described a long, dangerous trudge. FDR exuded happy confidence that better days were ahead, spoken from the depths of the Depression.. Reagan spoke of morning in America while Carter warned of malaise. Obama was hope and change.
A frequent theme of this blog is that Donald Trump's success comes from his demeanor. It is not what he says--because he sometimes says directly contradictory things within seconds--it is that he appears completely to believe what he is saying while he is saying it. He is persuasive to his base because he himself seems so persuaded.
The Democrat will have a harder sales job than will Trump. No Democrat can win the primary election without returning to the key Democratic theme that government is a force for good and that government might help make things better. The Democrat has a tool to assist him or her. Donald Trump. In the campaign Trump suggested he had worldly know-how. The presidency so far has been a managerial mess, with White House in-fighting and Trump disrupting his own GOP team with criticisms of various House Members and Senators and, now, cabinet officers. There is room for a Democrat confidently to say that government looks like a mess because Trump is messy.
The theme would be that happy days will emerge once government is returned to solid hands. This sets up the cage fight between Trump and the Democrat. Trump would say the government disfunction demonstrates the depth of the swamp and the grim problems ahead only Trump can address; the Democrat would say Trump is part of the problem and that once Trump is gone government can help make things good again.
Here is how Thad Guyer puts his warning to Democrats. He thinks Trump's argument is by far the stronger.
"Call a Cop!"
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| Guyer |
[I read how Peter's progressive correspondent supports]: "credit unions rather than banks, locally owned grocery stores rather than chains, local food, re-negotiate NAFTA". That's a strong nostalgic "make America great again" (MAGA) message.
Indeed, the subtext of the progressive message is to halt, reverse and restore to the status quo ante, to re-empower the previously enfranchised, to return to America's former mantra of success: expand the middle class. MAGA cuts away the flowery progressive rhetoric that voters distrust and says the immediate task is stop the decline-- to survive. Progressivism is grounded in hope and futurism, MAGA is based on the threat of drowning.
Trumpism sells survival and rescue, progressivism sells a hopeful vision and impossible dreams of occupy Wall Street and single payer fantasies. Trump has a way easier job-- throw a life preserver, enforce immigration laws, and drain the swamp.
Worried middle class voters could care less about his vulgarisms and Russiagate, and they won't be sold again on Obama-like progressive idealism and rosy futures. "They're stealing your stuff, call a cop", i.e. MAGA, will be even more appealing in 2020. That's the reality Democrats need to get their heads around.
