Competing for Blue-Collar Voters
There are so many things going well for Democrats and the Harris-Walz campaign.
We are winning, decisively, on the abortion question. We are winning, decisively, on the debates about freedom and democracy. Because of the January 6 exchange, Tim Walz won the VP debate. Kamala Harris won the September 10th debate going away, and Donald Trump is too chicken to debate again. The success of the transition from Biden to Harris and the Democratic convention allowed us to consolidate the Democratic base and regain our 2020 edge with college educated voters in the suburbs. The Harris-Walz campaign has built the best field operation I have ever seen, and they are swimming in money.
But for all these good things, we are still in a dead heat. How do we close the deal?
Numerous polls and focus groups I have seen, some public and some private, show Harris still struggling with blue collar voters, especially those outside of big metro areas. Some of these voters are hard core MAGA people whom we will never get, but many of them are genuinely swing voters -- a lot of them voted for Obama and Biden, and have voted for other Democrats like Shapiro, Fetterman, and Whitmer. Many are leaning toward voting for other Democrats on the ballot in 2024. While these working-class folks do care about issues like abortion and saving democracy, the tough times they have had over many years, including their challenges with the increasing cost of living, have made the economy the most important issue in how they vote.
While Vice-President Harris has given some strong speeches on the economy, including the one in Pittsburgh recently where she talked about her economic agenda, she has yet to convince working-class folks that she will fight for them on the economy.
The campaign has to build a compelling narrative about Harris and Walz fighting for them on economic issues that matter to regular people.
The most populist moment of my career
I grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Lincoln, Nebraska, and progressive populism is in my blood. I believe that wealthy people and corporations should pay more in taxes; that corporate power should be restrained and worker power should be lifted up; and that monopolists and price gougers should be punished.
I have also always believed that a narrative built on those kinds of issues is a good message for Democrats to win elections, but I have never seen a moment where populism works as well as it is working right now. The polling and focus groups that I am seeing right now show that voters are angry at big corporations who have too much power, and who abuse their workers, consumers, and communities -- the angriest I have ever seen.
Our problem right now is that the most populist voters, the working-class folks without college degrees, think of Trump as the most populist candidate, and they aren’t sure that Harris is a populist.
In the closing weeks of the campaign, the Harris-Walz campaign needs to drive an aggressive message centered in economic populism.
How do we close the deal with working people?
Here are the things that need to happen for the Harris-Walz ticket to win more working-class voters outside of big metro areas:
Always lead with a message on driving down the cost of living. Harris’ message on cost of living needs to take credit for things she has been prioritizing to bring costs down (see my second point below), but then to go on and talk about how not enough has been done and what she will do differently -- her proposed legislation stopping price gouging, her proposed legislation on housing, etc. Along with abortion, this should be the main thing Democrats are talking about right now, especially with working-class voters.
Take credit for taking on concentrated corporate power. Voters don’t like being used and abused by big corporate conglomerates who have enough market power to take advantage of workers, consumers, and small business competitors. The Biden-Harris administration has a strong track record in:
Using the FTC, the SEC, and the DOJ Antitrust Division to challenge abusive monopolistic practices and corporate collusion to fix prices.
Supporting unions in their fights to get better wages, as they have done throughout their administration. What they did to help the UAW in their strike against the auto companies and just now with the Longshoremen strike has been astonishing, more than any other president since FDR.
Forcing airlines to create a passengers Bill of Rights to make flying less costly and more reliable.
Speaking of the airlines (but also applicable to banks, the healthcare industry, and others with concentrated corporate power) -- taking on hidden junk fees.
Stopping businesses from having non-compete clauses for their line workers, retail workers, restaurant workers, and all those other workers who have no knowledge of corporate trade secrets.
Using the United States Trade Representative’s office to take on off-shoring corporations, and to keep Big Tech from dominating trade agreements.
All of these things are incredibly popular. Harris needs to be claiming credit for them as the campaign comes to a close.
The campaign needs to keep selling the times Harris took on corporate power to help consumers and workers as California Attorney General. This is actually something the campaign has been doing well. It is starting to sink in with people, but we need to double down on it. Voters don’t know enough about Harris yet, and they need to know how she has been fighting for regular folks for a long time. Her work as AG is the most tangible example of that, and it helps when people hear more details of those battles.
The campaign needs to build a strong, populist narrative around the trade issue. If we want to have any hope of making solid gains among working-class voters outside of big metro areas, the message on trade needs to be reshaped for sure. The perception of voters in the old industrial towns of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, is that both Republicans and Democrats have sold them out on bad trade deals (especially NAFTA, which they bring up all the time without being prompted in focus groups as something they absolutely hate).
However, they believe that Trump was the first president to be tough on trade. These voters tend to like tariffs, and don’t believe the experts and Democrats when they say how bad Trump’s across-the-board tariffs will be for them. These voters need to hear Harris say that NAFTA was a bad idea; that she knows we need to fight hard for American workers in trade deals; and that even though Trump’s across-the-board tariffs are a mistake, that she won’t hesitate to apply them when other countries are cheating.
A strong populist message on taxes would be a big help with working-class voters as well. The campaign is talking a lot about the $100 billion tax cut they will be giving middle-class families, which is great, but they should say more often that they will pay for it by making the wealthy and profitable corporations pay their fair share. That kind of populism on taxes is hugely popular, and matters a lot to voters.
The importance of labor and local organizing in closing the deal
Having the right message is not enough for the Harris-Walz campaign to close the deal. Because of the intense cynicism of working-class voters, the campaign needs to get validators outside the campaign to talk to voters.
Their greatest hope in this regard is labor leaders and members. The labor movement is at an all time high in popularity, and they are particularly respected by working families on economic issues. The Harris-Walz campaign, and Democrats in general, need to lean into their embrace of unions and, most importantly, getting labor leaders to reach out to their local unions strenuously on behalf of Harris, Walz, and all the Democrats down the ticket.
The campaign also needs to get local community members and civic group leaders to speak out on their behalf. These voters need trusted messengers, including friends and neighbors they talk about issues with, to let them know why they should be voting for Harris-Walz.
Not easy but essential
Campaigns sometimes give up on things when they are hard. Giving up on hard-pressed working families outside of the big metro areas as we come down to the end game would be a major mistake. We have populist economic messages that appeal to these voters; we have influential messengers like labor unions and other trusted groups and sources that can help move people.
We have three weeks to win this incredibly hotly contested race. Sometimes in an election year, the key swing voters move in one direction at the very end. If Democrats do what they need to do, this can be a year where the movement is toward us. The only way we get there, though, is to win over those hard-to-convince working-class folks. If we do, we will be celebrating big time on election night.
