(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . GOTV alert (update): Do’s and Don’t’s of messaging on economy (jobs, living costs NOT "econ growth") [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-06-27 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. --------------------------------------------------- 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. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/6/27/2248847/-GOTV-alert-update-Do-s-and-Don-t-s-of-messaging-on-economy-jobs-living-costs-NOT-econ-growth?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/