We Forgot What Democracy Means...
...to the people who live in our democracy.
Donald Trump has been making some…interesting…Cabinet appointments. I have thoughts, but I’ll save them for now. I want to focus on how we move forward.
Specifically, I want to discuss how democracy advocates can gain ground with working-class, rural, and non-college-educated voters.
Of course, I have to start by identifying the problem. Well, a problem. We made a lot of mistakes, but my expertise is in communications and messaging, so I’ll stay in my lane.
WATCHUTALKINBOUT
There’s a great song on Jon Batiste’s record, We Are, with a verse that exemplifies how most voters view the Democratic Party:
But this ultra light, not a regular beam
People is bursting up out of the seams
This is reality, not a dream
This is reality, and I don't even know whatchutalkinbout!
I don't even know whatchutalkinbout indeed.
The messaging from Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans for the past four years ( and arguably longer) hasn’t resonated with many Americans, and it’s not because these Americans don’t care about democracy or other people’s rights.
The fact is, working-class, rural, and non-college-educated do care about those things. They care about them very much. But the anti-MAGA forces never really talked about democracy, freedom, or rights. We talked about Donald Trump.
We kept talking and talking and talking about a guy who thrives on attention. And we were surprised when all that attention paid off for him.
We told them, again and again, that he was a threat to America. He told them he loved them. That he would fight for them. That he would fix everything.
They understood him completely, but they didn’t know what we were talking about.
Democracy is an Abstract
The key point is that Trump defined “democracy” for people. Sure, he defined it in ways many of us found abhorrent, but the message contained in all of that abhorrent language was, “YOU are the priority.”
“America First” means you first. “America for Americans” means America for you. “There are evil people in government who are your enemies, and I will fix everything for you.”
The anti-MAGA community was never able to articulate and deliver a clear alternative to that definition. Kamala Harris had a strong message of “Freedom,” but the message always devolved into freedom for someone else (e.g. trans people, women, immigrants, etc.) or freedom from Donald Trump.
If you don’t spend a lot of time considering the intricacies of the US Constitution, “democracy” isn’t really something you think about every day. By default, “democracy” becomes “my personal life experiences.”
So, how do we message more effectively?
Contra-MAGA
I believe that terms matter, so I will start by changing how I speak. For quite a while, I have been using the term “anti-MAGA” to refer to the opposition,1 but that’s been a mistake. It implies opposition to people, and I’m not opposed to people. I’m opposed to misinformation, lies, bad policies, hate, and authoritarianism.
So, I’m going to start using the term “Contra-MAGA” because I believe our job now is to provide an alternative viewpoint that isn’t based exclusively on opposition. (I considered “alt-MAGA,” but that prefix has been overused by all the wrong people.)
The idea behind contra-MAGA is to present a contrary perspective, not just criticism.
MAGA messaging is “America First!”
Anti-MAGA messaging is “Trump wants to take away your rights.”
Contra-MAGA messaging might be “America, Free and Strong!”2
The point is to shift the messaging away from a person or group we see as a threat and focus on messaging that makes people feel better about themselves (and the country) and an alternative to the hateful messaging Trump and his acolytes use.
It’s a bit of a Jedi mind trick.
I understand that many of you won’t agree with me. I’m basing this on my belief that the vast majority of Americans are good people who want good things for their fellow Americans. I honestly believe that to be true.
Trump made them feel good about themselves by creating enemies for them to hate. Democrats tried to make them feel good about themselves because economists and other experts said they should feel good (and failed).
My suggestion is that Contra-MAGA messaging should make people feel good about themselves by reminding them that they are good people who contribute to making the U.S. of A. the greatest nation in human history.
How do we make this change?
Hello. How are you doing?
I’ll discuss this in more detail soon, but the first step is to get to know working-class, rural, and non-college-educated voters again.
The contra-MAGA community needs to go into the Red States and every district in the country where a majority of voters chose Donald Trump. We need to go to the coffee shops, VFW halls, and local bars and hang out for a few weeks. And we need to talk to people. All the people.
We need to ask one simple question: How are you doing? We need to listen to and internalize their answers. We need to refrain from telling them anything. We just need to…listen.
When we do, we’ll discover that (for the vast majority) how they are doing has nothing to do with immigration, trans people, or Nancy Pelosi. It has to do with their hopes and dreams, for themselves and the people they love.
Once we can focus our messaging on those things, we can lead the nation to a better future.
I include Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans here.
Or something to that effect. I have not pressure-tested the specific messaging; it’s just an example.
"Trump made them feel good about themselves by creating enemies for them to hate."
To me the question is why do they need to feel good about themselves. My answer is that elites have slowly leached away any status that working class people might accrue from the work they do.
From David Brooks' Atlantic article.
“We now have a single route into a single dominant cognitive class,” the journalist David Goodhart has written. And because members of the educated class dominate media and culture, they possess the power of consecration, the power to determine what gets admired and what gets ignored or disdained. Goodhart notes further that over the past two decades, it’s been as though “an enormous social vacuum cleaner has sucked up status from manual occupations, even skilled ones,” and reallocated that status to white-collar jobs, even low-level ones, in “prosperous metropolitan centers and university towns.” This has had terrible social and political consequences."