Winning Big Part 2: Why Define the Election
September 9 2024
Having argued in the last post that we need a landslide victory, how will we get there when the race is so close?
Three Keys to Victory
- Define what the election is about
- Define our opponent
- Galvanize people on both sides of the divide.
Each of these can be done in any election, making our discussion applicable to future contests—and applies beyond elections to many campaigns. In this post, let's look at the first key—and how it can paradoxically support clarity on other issues beyond what defines the election.
Defining the Election is Crucial
Whoever defines an election is likely to win. A classic illustration is the 2019 contest in Britain. It had been three years since the Brexit referendum started Britain on the path to leaving the European Union, yet the country was still in the throes of negotiations over how to implement it. The Labour Party put together a comprehensive election platform. Canvassers blanketed the country, explaining the intricacies of their 12-point manifesto, one of which was to redo the referendum.
In contrast, Boris Johnson and the Tories, Labour's opponents, came up with the slogan, “Get Brexit Done”—and won a landslide. Even people opposed to leaving the European Union could understand the appeal of a slogan that proclaimed, let’s move on. And it neatly hamstrung the Labour Party; some of its members of parliament represented areas that wanted to reverse the referendum, while others represented constituents who favored leaving. The slogan made Labour's proposal for a redo look like waffling, and made every other Labour platform plank sound like noise.
In the US, neither Harris with her “Opportunity Economy”, nor Trump with his stale MAGA slogan has defined the election clearly enough to secure a landslide; as I write, it's neck and neck. Most great slogans have a verb in them. Can we upgrade Harris's Opportunity Economy? Yes we can!
Further, it's up to us. Slogans can come from anyone. Bill Clinton's "It's the economy, stupid!" evolved from a line his strategist, James Carville, scrawled on a board as one item squeezed into a list. A compelling video detailing Obama's totally accidental adoption of Edith Childs's uniting call and response, "Fired Up! Ready to go" shows how a totally unknown person can alter the course of an election. And, as Obama's experience with Fired Up! shows, we can use multiple slogans. Harris's "When we Fight, We Win" is great. But as with Obama's "Yes We Can," let's choose a primary one.
In the next post I make the case for "Make Manufacturing Great Again." We should certainly be open to better ones. It's Manufacturing, Stupid! Maybe.
But wait. There are many important issues, and voters prioritize them differently. Should we elevate just one? If we are aiming for a landslide, the answer is yes. Otherwise, too many equal positions muddle the message.
Having a Top Priority = More Galvanizing Red Meat
Doesn't elevating one issue as the top priority make voters with other priorities feel forgotten? That's the fear, but we can flip it around to unite those whose number one issue is something else. If we define the core issue, it frees Harris to feed red meat to constituents who embrace other priorities. We're about manufacturing, but we also believe in reproductive freedom. We're worried about the threat to democracy, and we see revitalizing manufacturing as key to strengthening it.
Here's an illustration of how having a top priority frees a campaign to make its secondary priorities galvanizing. In 2016, Trump could take an extreme stance against reproductive rights (galvanizing pro-lifers) because he knew the top priority of independents and many Democrats in the swing states was jobs, jobs, jobs. They wanted to reverse the deleterious impacts of free trade, and many of them would overlook positions they disagreed with and ignore Trump's crazy personality because, for them, these were lesser issues. First, put bread and butter on the table. And throughout his mudslinging campaigns, Trump promised to do that above all else.
In a postmortem of the 2016 election, Trump 's campaign manager Kelly Anne Conway pointed out how this worked, explaining why so many women who opposed Trump's stance on abortion voted for him anyway. Going into the election, they felt confident, she said, that Roe v. Wade would not be overturned.
Today that bet seems like a tragic gamble, given the outcome. But at the time, the logic was compelling. Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a pillar of maintaining reproductive freedom, was still alive and would continue to work until her death in 2020. We knew then that Antonin Scalia would be replaced by Trump (if he won against Clinton) because Obama had been denied his pick by then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But no one could foresee that Trump would appoint not one but three associate justices, upending the balance of the court.
Therefore, in 2016 some women reasoned, why not vote for Trump on the economy? Maybe it was all lies but, unlike Hillary Clinton, at least he promised to end our perpetual struggle to make ends meet. If you believe your top priority (reproductive freedom in their case) is safe or conversely not attainable, why not vote for your second priority? And even if you suspect a candidate is lying, it's still easier to vote for someone who understands your concern than vote for someone who might be more honest in saying they can't accomplish that. What do you want, the honest certainty of defeat or to vote for someone who is at least listening to you? That's the choice Trump posed to many voters in 2016 and 2020.
While voting for Trump never made sense to me, I could see how it would make sense to those wanting the return of well-paid jobs. My neighbors here where I live in Maine's Trump country aren't crazy; realizing that they are rational is the first step to building bridges.
Returning to how a central issue allows you to give your base red meat, Trump exploited this dynamic by taking positions on abortion and the economy that split off just enough Democrats and independents to secure victory:
- both his abortion and economic positions delivered for his base,
- and while his abortion position was opposed by many women,
- his rhetoric on economics was enough to win the votes of many pro choice voters.
In Harris's case, when all priorities are on an equal footing, she must walk the line trying not to offend. On Gaza, for example, she acknowledges the suffering of Palestinians while reiterating she will keep arming Israel, a position that satisfies few and leaves many enraged. Instead, by relegating Gaza to a lower rung, she could take a stronger stance: I will end the killing. That might be enough to win over some of those concerned for Palestinians. (But then, of course, once in office, she'd have to work sincerely toward ending the bloodshed.)
Having a top priority makes it easier, then, to pivot the focus back to it, shifting the harsh light off controversial stances on issues that are not the core of the election: We believe the lives of Palestinians and Israelis deserve equal protection and support, while our top focus is revitalizing US manufacturing.
Whoever wins this fall, I hope to write after the election about ways we can end the conflict between Israel and Palestine and save lives.
The point is, if a politician has a top issue, they are judged by voters mainly on that issue rather than on all on all their positions equally. Being judged on every issue with equal weight leaves a candidate vulnerable.
Defining Conflicts is Key to Healing Our Divisions
By choosing to define the election, a candidate identifies where the common ground is. They stake out the position that makes sense to as many people as possible.
Of course, candidates can define elections in us vs them terms. But by saying, this is the way forward, we tell those who might otherwise vote against us that we share a vision. That's why MAGA was so effective. We Democrats see it as a moniker for a fascist movement but the words appeal to every person in the US: Make America Great Again. And that's why Clinton and Obama's attempt to counter it in 2016 with the claim that "America is already great" fell flat. Their rebuttal had no forward vision beyond the status quo. It felt like a slap in the face to those who were struggling to make ends meet.
Turning to Harris's "Opportunity Economy," it has no verb and is not strong enough to captivate voters' imaginations. We can do better.
But if we are going to define the election, what's the priority?
Member discussion