Droning on about how “deflation is bad” and “we shouldn’t want prices to go down” is not only terrible messaging and tone deaf to American voters, it’s also economically ignorant with a better understanding. It fails to realize that not all forms of deflation are like the “bad kind” we saw in the 1930’s and Depression. Sometimes deflation occurs as correction for corporate price-gouging or speculation bubbles in assets, to make things more affordable, and in those cases sustained price decreases are welcome corrections for things like our current housing bubble. Especially if they occur after a long period of quite high inflation like we’ve seen since COVID and heavy stimulation by the Federal Reserve and pandemic stimulus. (There’d still be inflation in general since 2020 if prices went back down for the next couple of years, particular in certain goods and services that have been artificially inflated with a lot of price gouging.) And there in fact have been cases in American history of prices going down while productivity and buying power go up—prices do stabilize for goods and services as they become easier to make and provide.
We know we’re not alone in this but a running joke in many precinct meetings has been that, of all the news to come out since the spring of 2024, the biggest help to Democrats may well have been those announcements from Target, Aldi, Walmart, Sam’s Club, Mcdonald’s, Taco Bell, Costco and a lot of other shops of cost reductions starting this spring. Rents have finally started to drop in some cities, smart-phone prices are starting to get slashed as makers realize Americans are stuck with higher debt and less savings from the pandemic stimulus, and can’t afford nosebleed prices anymore. The used car market is finally returning to some normality. This “area specific deflation” is actually the kind of news Americans are happy to hear, and it helps their perception of the economy in very stark contrast to wonkish talk of GDP, economic growth or disinflation.
Don’t: Get into arguments with voters about economic minutia, especially things like the technical definition of recession. This is one of those cases where the customer (voter) is always right—don’t argue with them if they’re expressing frustration about things like living costs and get certain terms wrong, hear them out and respond to their earnest concerns. We’ve run into this in some of GOTV and there have been news items on this, but a large number of Americans believe the US economy is in recession because their buying power to purchase needed items has gone down so much. The real budget-killer has been costs of housing and rent, but then add higher costs of other necessities like groceries or health insurance, and each dollar in Americans bank accounts pays for less than it did 4 years ago. This, let’s be honest about it, puts a lot of stress on Americans, and when buying power falls like that, it’s perceived broadly by Americans as being a recession.
When you run into this in GOTV, don’t argue with voters that “this isn’t what a recession means” and then go on some long winded discussion about how a recession is technically defined by some combination of factors with 2 straight quarters of negative GDP growth. Voters simply don’t care. Again, American households measure “how good is the economy” based on how far their dollars and savings go each month and how secure they are financially—not the abstraction of GDP—and when buying power drops sharply due to inflation and high cost-of-living, that to most Americans feels like what they call a recession.
We actually have a kind of recent real world experiment on this, remember that in the first two quarters of 2022, we did have two straight quarters of negative GDP growth, a technical recession for the United States. And in canvassing, not a single time did a voter complain or express concern about that. They did express concern about how costs-of-living were still going up and things were getting harder to afford. That’s the real economy to Americans, so keep on point and focus on what Democrats are doing to help make things more affordable to Americans and bring costs down with the points above.
Don’t: Try to counter voters economic concerns by arguing that “we’re doing better than the rest of the world”, this is completely tone deaf, arrogant, irrelevant and not even necessarily true. Of all the responses in canvassing to Americans expressing economic worries, this is one of the very worst and least effective, and as much as we love his show, we have to pick on Morning Joe again here because this is one of his favorite “go-to” comebacks and seems to be a reason some (not many, but some) canvassers have stumbled into using this incredibly awful talking point. Besides reeking of excuse making, it’s not even true—the US has an unusually high number of people living paycheck to paycheck, and it’s not just because salaries for so many are in fact lower than in other countries but (more to the point of this Diary), living costs in the USA are also quite high in many areas compared to overseas, causing a lot more stress for Americans than other places. Especially things like healthcare, cost of college and lately especially, cost of housing, groceries or cars. This again points to the failures of trying to use GDP to argue that “the US economy is booming” or “the US economy is best in the world” or other ways of trying to lamely argue that Americans should just love how strong and rosy the economy is (another of Morning Joe’s bad habits, unfortunately)—it objectively is not better in general or for millions upon millions of Americans especially when we consider cost-of-living and issues of buying power and affordability.
If it isn’t already clear why this terrible argument falls flat on it’s face with voters, try to imagine your team phonebanking, knocking on doors or deep in the ground game, anywhere in the country. The households you’re talking to worried about making their rent payments, or make sure their grown kids can afford to buy a house or condo with the recent out of control run-up in costs for even starter homes across the country. Or they’re worried on how their healthcare costs and premiums go up, or affording college, or repairs or just getting an affordable new car if their current one breaks down. Does anyone really think they’d win over a voter or even reassure the households by responding, “other countries have it worse” or “Americans are doing better than other places”? Obviously, no—this kind of statement stinks of not only tone deafness, but arrogance, privilege and plain cluelessness, even talking to affluent households. And again, it isn’t even really true especially when we consider actual living costs and buying power. (not to mention most people in other countries don’t have to worry about healthcare, daycare or college costs like we do here, but that’s another topic)
Again, one of the first rules of canvassing—always come back to Maslow’s needs hierarchy to “get” voters and what they’re really concerned about, what actually motivates their votes, or make the decision to vote in first place. These kinds of abstractions fall flat with them when they’re concerned about meeting basic household economic needs, and that again is why cost-of-living, affordability and buying power are the keys to how voters actually view the economy and how they’re doing, and what their concerns are. Not GDP, and certainly not “how are we doing compared to this or that-other country?” Always meet voters where they are and their concerns are, as concretely as possible. Remind voters we’re still the party of FDR and the things Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his advisers paid attention to, above all the ability of Americans to afford their basic needs and have a little extra, and achieve financial independence without getting crushed by ever increasing costs of things and corporate price gouging.
And again be concrete, talk about how Democrats (and only Democratic officials) have been the ones to go after RealPage and corporate landlord price-gougers, while bought-off Republicans—including Trump supporters and MAGA loudmouths who claim to support the little guy, while accepting bribes from corporate crooks who just want to price-gouge Americans even more. Talk about how Dems, and only Dems are sponsoring a bill in the Senate to halt corporations and hedge funds from buying up scarce single family housing. Talk about how the IRA is reducing the cost of pharmaceuticals and healthcare costs generally. Talk about how Dems are using better antitrust systems with actual teeth to go after corporate price-gougers and make things more affordable for Americans. Talk about how Democrats, not Republicans are now the ones securing the border, enforcing border laws and relieving some of the pressure on housing and services—how the GOP is all talk and no action on this, even striking down their own border bill that the Border Patrol itself soundly endorsed. Talk about how President Biden and Democrats have gone on the offensive to correct Trump’s blunder from obstructing the PPP inspector-generals and basically turning that pandemic program into a fraud free-for-all—going after the fraudsters and recovering the hundreds of billions of dollars in stolen taxpayer money, also reducing inflation with it.
Don’t: Dive into issues like price-gouging without at least discussing things Dems are doing to confront it. This is the other side of the point about being solutions oriented above. While it absolutely is important to be on board with voters angry about price-gouging corporations and monopolistic collusion, don’t just point the finger and stop there. This sounds demoralizing, and it makes us look feckless and incompetent. Instead, shift to focus on the “Do’s” above and the concrete steps Democrats are taking to confront the abuses leading to inflation and living cost increases in the US. Talk about Democratic actions against Realpage, about antitrust and fighting regulatory capture, collecting taxes from billionaire tax cheats, fighting PPP fraud and abuses. Always focus on not only the actions causing inflation, but what we’re doing to fight it.
And as a reminder:
Don’t: Foolishly walk into the trap of suggesting Democratic voters move to “safe Blue States”. We’ve tackled the short sightedness and self defeating idea of the “move to a Blue State” meme before on DKos, but it bears some repeating—US Presidential elections are decided in the Electoral College (and every state has the same number of 2 Senators), not on the popular vote, and until we get the Popular Vote Compact over the finish line that’s how it is. Otherwise Hillary would have been elected in 2016 (as she should have been) and the US could’ve averted the ongoing nightmare and damage to the country from Trump’s Presidency and movement, and the corrupt disaster of the broken SCOTUS he helped shape. We get nowhere with even bigger margin wins in California or New York, and the neo-fascist Republican Party as the GQP is now would make sure there would be no “safe Blue State” if they got federal power. So victory is the only option, and we have a voter distribution issue when we’ve won 7 of the last 8 popular votes but only 5 of the last 8 elections.
The Battleground States like North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Michigan, Georgia, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, New Hampshire and Wisconsin are more important than ever, and if anything we need more progressives to move to these states now (to extent anyone can move at all for this kind of reason). Soon South Carolina and Mississippi will be in the Swing State column too, and even Alaska and Utah, possibly even Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alabama are moving towards Purple State status with demographic and cultural changes. We must win these states and focus our GOTV there. For the same reason, always worth reminding our teams to register, register, register voters and keep in contact with them. Know any immigrants eligible for naturalization? Help them get naturalized. Any recent naturalizations, people moving in or students just turning 18? Help them get registered. Recently registered? Call and make sure they get their ballots out, either early voting or on Election Day. There are a lot of encouraging signs for Democrats and we’ve been way outperforming the polls, but we can’t afford complacence here. We have to be aggressive in getting our voters out to the polls.
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And a couple areas of economic messaging where we have tougher calls, and should proceed carefully based on data and surveys of voters in the region. These don’t really have clear do’s and don’t’s—we’ve gotten varied mileage here and it depends on specifics on the ground where precincts are.
Cautiously address the topic of wage increases in the midst of inflation, as this can easily backfire depending on your audience. On the one hand, it is true that Democratic policies since early 2021 have done a lot to help increase American wages. This is an achievement worth bringing up as part of a broader package of messages—such as on job increases and of course, work and achievements by Democratic officials to go after corporate price-gougers and reduce cost-of-living—that help to stress to voters that the Democrats of 2024 are still the modern party that FDR and his policies helped to found. That’s the right kind of economic populism that connects to voters.
On the other hand, be very careful in how you frame the message about wage increases, and never give the impression that you’re appealing to increased wages as a way to excuse or minimize Americans worries about higher living costs. We bring this up because we’ve gotten burned on this and have heard the same from other precincts. A household or voter in a phonebank will bring up worries and frustrations about the increased cost of housing and how their kids can’t afford a starter new home or college without crushing loans and debt. And then a canvasser, instead of sympathizing and talking about how Democrats are working to bring down living costs and make things more affordable, appears (to the voter) to try to brush off those cost-of-living concerns by going on about how “wage increases have exceeded inflation, so don’t worry”. This.. doesn’t go over well. Whatever the broad stats for America, the person you’re talking to on the phone line or front door may not have had a wage increase to cover higher living costs, and in general few have had enough of a raise to cover the 20% run up in costs since the pandemic and the Fed and PPP stimulus (and Trump and Republicans’ general fraud and incompetence) helped ramp the inflation going in 2020.
Remember that income increases throughout the USA have been very uneven, and companies have been asinine about actually giving raises that cover living costs. You may have heard that as actual practice, one of the few ways to actually get a real raise is to quit and sign up for a new job. All fine and just dandy, except that isn’t a realistic option for millions of Americans. They may need to stay near where they are to care for family members or their job may not be so portable (or too specialized), and there’s the issue of the on-boarding and how long and uncertain it is to start in a new job with health coverage. (Not to mention cases like in Tesla this past spring where Elon Musk, in full asshole mode, withdrew offers from many new hires after they’d already quit their before jobs, moved and signed leases, pulling the rug out from under them) And the “wages have increased faster than inflation” talk does not apply to the full period since 2020, esp 2021-2022 when the inflation and cost-of-living jumps were toughest for Americans.
So just be careful here. Again, fine to include wages have gone up as a general description of Democratic economic achievements, but never allow it to sound like an excuse to minimize the worries about living costs increases.
Cautiously address the topic of the China trade and Chinese products (and tariffs) in your economic messaging, this can be very tricky to get right and will depend a lot on your audience, topic and mood.
It’s worth again pointing out as many Kossacks have already made clear, that it’s fine to “stick it to Russia” in your canvassing as Americans (and the world in general) rightly despise what Putin is doing and Russia is in the wrong, and there’s strong support for Ukraine assistance even among Republicans. Russia under Putin is a military aggressor against a sovereign country that never attacked it, and has been openly threatening the US with attacking warships close by and open threats to Alaska and the US mainland. Easy call there. But China is not Russia, and a very different situation as far as how to talk about this in your economic messaging. The outsourcing of jobs to China over decades by profit greedy US corporations has indeed added to the struggles of the Rust Belt and there are obvious human rights concerns, but China is also much more integrated in the world economy than Russia and the top driver of renewables and green tech, so there’s a much trickier set of factors in your GOTV.
We’ve found in general that Americans have very mixed and often contradicting feelings about China, so tread carefully here. Even though there’s been a drop in perception about the country since COVID19, Americans in general do like the lower cost of prices for many basic goods that China can manufacture inexpensively, and the reality is inflation would be much worse in the US without the price dropping effect of Chinese goods and services, and things would get even more unaffordable. And since living costs are the main concern of Americans now in economic messaging, discussions around Chinese trade and tariffs have to be handled with care. We do want to show we’re interested in protecting American jobs and opportunities, but also not stumbling into bad policy that would increase cost-of-living and fuel inflation even more for Americans with already strained budgets.
For the same reason be careful about re-hashing old tropes about why Chinese goods are relatively cheap. Things have changed a lot in China in just the past 10 years, and it’s no longer the kind of cheap labor manufacturer (with those tales of Foxconn workers jumping into nets) we used to hear about, so it’s easy to get off-track and sound outdated in our messaging if not careful. It’s moved fast up the value chain, a leader in tech and science, now leads the world in renewables (far more wind and solar than the rest of the world combined). BYD is absolutely crushing Tesla as the top electric vehicle maker which we’ll see with this quarter’s data and many other Chinese companies are also world leaders now. Yes wages are lower there though cost-of-living is too with lower healthcare and housing costs (hence the common point about how China is the world’s largest economy already if still using that GDP stat by PPP—something Americans really couldn’t care less about either way), but the main cost advantage for China’s companies now is better vertical integrating, automation and economies of scale. So it can legitimately sell those goods at Target and Walmart at lower prices. So where does this leave us with economic messaging? As a general rule, it’s probably best to avoid bringing up the China issue at all, except for specific cases when our policies are needed and popular and where trade and tariff policy are relevant.
First, and related to the topic of migration, there’s undoubted broad support for deporting Chinese migrants who have come illegally or (much more common) overstayed a visa—that’s one of the things driving up US housing costs after all like talked about above. In being clear it’s the same for overstays or visa violations for any country—India also has many such cases, and there are also Russians abusing the asylum system by crossing the border despite they’ve crossed through safe countries like Brazil and Argentina. President Biden’s recent executive order directives have stiffened procedures here and stepping up deportations, as they should, and if it helps to do photo-ops of the President standing near a deportation plane back to China, stressing “our laws need to be enforced” (including for visa overstays and other violations of our immigration laws), so be it, politics is politics and our laws indeed do need to be enforced here. While one could argue we have a special responsibility to Latin American, African or Mideast countries our foreign policies have destabilized (thus the support for Dreamers), this isn’t the case for most of the world, and abuse of asylum or visa overstays by Chinese economic migrants—cause strains on housing stock and infrastructure—rightly lead to deportation under the President’s new policies. So it’s fine to point out in our messaging how Democrats have gotten tougher about border enforcement here, indeed Tom Suozzi used exactly such arguments to win handily in what had been a very Republican leaning district.
Other cases have to be handled more carefully. We warned in a previous Diary that the TikTok ban talk was quite unpopular in the US, not only with younger voters (whose votes and enthusiasm we need) but also with the growing number of Americans whose small businesses or extra income depend on the app as a business resource (as it’s morphed into). Those concerns have borne out as this bill was basically an own goal for us, very unpopular with our voters and as the bill became concrete, unpopular in general—social media has been a mess but the bill should have addressed social media issues and privacy concerns in general, not with a focus on one specific app (and now multinationally owned, at that) that has, in reality, become ever more important for the livelihoods of an ever growing number of Americans. The only reason this hasn’t hurt us worse is partially that many Congressional Republicans were dumb enough to walk into this trap too, and that it’s more and more doubtful that the app will face any kind of ban or forced sale at all, not only due to skepticism from the courts but also lack of enthusiasm from either party in actually taking action. (Both Biden and Trump and their teams are themselves using it in campaigning now, and when a court in one of the many lawsuits strikes down the bill, as is looking practically certain now on 1st Amendment grounds alone, take it as a gift—drop the ban talk and let it go, we can’t afford these kinds of dumb, voter-antagonizing distractions). It’s a good example on how we have to tread carefully here, and how unfocussed moves against China (or perceived to be, as this one would do little) do us far more harm than good and turn our own voters against us. The greatest threat by far to the United States is from the neo-fascist Republican party founded by Trump, and it’s a major blunder for us to hand them any ammunition.
On the other hand, it’s fine to take concrete steps where there are concrete concerns backed by evidence, and where we can make the case in our messaging. Although Trump’s Red Scare, Mccarthyist style warnings of massive spy rings in academia were overdone with the China initiative, still theft of intellectual property has been a real issue with some Chinese nationals before and where cases are still ongoing, the Administration is absolutely right to pursue and prosecute them and follow with deportations, whether in universities or the academic community. And on the issue of the tariffs, on one hand there’s been some grumbling with the recent 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and solar panels, and this has been a tough call. BYD and other Chinese carmakers sell EV’s for less than $20K and the high cost of new cars has been a serious sore point for Americans since the pandemic. But again, Presidential elections are won in the Electoral College and major Purple States like Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and others have large shares of auto workers (UAW and others) who’d be decimated by cheap Chinese BEV’s flooding in. It’s an imperfect political calculation and it’s unfortunate that Americans (unlike most other countries in the world) really don’t have inexpensive options for EV’s right now. But the EC is what it is, and as long as it decides elections as it does, Biden’s tariffs are understandable, as is economic messaging with a focus on how Biden is aware and actively working to protect American jobs in the auto industry.
This is a tough one as you can see, and we need to be smart and careful about each case and issue on a matter of important trade like this. A big part of the reason for Biden’s EV tariffs on China likely do help more than hurt (for the Electoral College) is that they really won’t practically have much effect at all on US prices. BYD and other Chinese auto-makers have had no intention of entering the US market anyway, for unrelated reasons (they’re not making the big boxy SUV’s Americans have been buying). So Biden’s tariffs here and on other items as practical matter have very little actual effect and don’t fuel inflation, while allowing us to show concern and awareness of the worries of auto workers for job security and paying the mortgage. But the deeper problem of course, is that vehicles have got so expensive in the US in general, and BEV’s in particular not practical for millions of Americans due to cost.
We also need to be careful in addressing China trade and tariff issues, to avoid stumbling into any kind of Yellow peril narratives like Trump’s “China flu” slurs during COVID, that led to a worsening series of hate crimes against Asian Americans. (Read about the tragic history of the Vincent Chin incident and the Atlanta massage parlor shooting to see where this goes) It’s now even come out that the Trump Administration’s anti-vaccine misinformation campaign during the pandemic (first directed against Sinovac but quickly became generalized) caused tens if not hundreds of thousands of deaths in the Philippines and SE Asia—a serious enough crime that the US may well have lost regional allies there forever—while also fuelling the distrust of public health that killed over a million Americans from COVID (and counting), and antagonizing and alienating Asian American voters and households, and it was the Biden Administration that rightfully put a hard stop to this. We need Asian American votes and turnout in many important Battleground States, and so again need to approach this kind of messaging with careful attention to evidence and compassion.
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To conclude here, we’re not trying to downplay GOTV efforts up to now or to imply they’ve been ineffective—there’s been a big improvement in our economic messaging and it’s helped Democrats to over-perform significantly since the 2022 mid-terms, but we can’t rest on our laurels. Not with the stakes this high. The complacence in 2016 lead to the ongoing Trump disaster and its effects, including the most corrupt Supreme Court in history, the Dobbs ruling and Clarence Thomas’ recent “gift” of restoring the deadly killing weapons that slaughtered almost 60 Americans in Las Vegas in 2017. This is the price of failure, and we cannot take any chances in making sure we win, resoundingly this November. That’s why strong, on point economic messaging is so important.
Now in saying that, there is some solid, reality-based encouraging news: despite the horse race headline stupidity from a lot of the media, the combination of improved Dem messaging and GOP outrageousness especially on abortion have helped Dems to consistently way outperform polling in the 2023 and 2024 special elections. Yes, this is partially because polling is so hard to do in the call-screened cell phone era. But Republican arrogance and extremism, particularly on women’s rights to their own bodies, has struck a lot of personal nerves and angered a wide swathe of voters. (This is part of why US Republicans have put themselves behind the 8-ball compared to conservative parties abroad) And although there’s ongoing discontent about living costs (esp housing) in the USA, we’ve found voters do not automatically blame Biden or Democrats for this—it’s a more diffuse dissatisfaction against US institutions generally, and we can work with this as long as we make sure to recognize its significance for voters, and be solutions oriented about it.
Therefore the do’s and don’t’s outlined above. As always, remember the first rule about effective canvassing and GOTV: voters vote the first and foremost on issues that affect them directly, ie. Maslow’s needs hierarchy. Abortion is indeed one such issue and an ongoing disaster for Republicans (even conservatives are angry at how GOP thick-headedness on it is driving out ob-gyn doctors and making it too hazardous to get pregnant), but the economy is another and we have to message effectively on it. The suggestions above are based on what’s worked and what hasn’t, and what really connects and communicates with American voters. Our ways of talking about the economy—too often centred around GDP and economic growth—have let us down and painted the wrong picture for is in too many ways. But we’re already turning it around, and a focus on addressing living costs concerns, buying power and affordability will lead us to victory in November, at all levels of government.