Good candidates set the terms of the election. Great candidates drill their campaign pillars into people's values. Not everyone's values, necessarily—just enough to achieve mathematical victory. Put another way, successful candidates weaponize values to achieve power. Issues, agenda, manifestos…these are all secondary. They're the proof points you use to add substance and detail; they are weight behind the shaft.
We’ve repeatedly said we are in an economic moment. Republicans would do well to focus on the economy—as some have. But, early on in the cycle they (re)opened another lane of attack: crime. Why?
In a word: values.
1) Every election is a values election
Elections are an emotional exercise. People make decisions based on how they feel more than what they think. This is the foundation for creating the choice in an election.
Sometimes, creating this choice is about an actual choice between two competing values: my way vs some other way (e.g., supporting a specific group of people vs helping everyone equally).
Sometimes, it's simply about making sure your people know you share their values and are fighting for them (e.g., I am the candidate who will fight for your right to party).
And sometimes, it's about creating fear, a feeling of threat (false or legitimate) that your values are under attack from some enemy (again, false or legitimate).
Republicans are very good at running values campaigns, and often their campaigns take that last approach. They generate a fear of "other", a viscerally felt threat to your values, and a sense of victimhood. This is all happening to you by a force—usually an identifiable group of people, an enemy—with malicious intent.
Sometimes campaigns signal these values choices implicitly (Romney at the NAACP in 2012). Sometimes, it's much more explicit (Trump’s 2016 announcement speech).
Despite most people saying they will 'vote for the better candidate’, the vast majority of people rely on heuristics for which candidate’s values align with their own. In the U.S., that manifests itself as a single letter after an individual candidate's name: R or D. That’s why 90-95% of Democrats vote for Democratic candidates, and 90-95% of Republicans vote for Republican candidates.
Of course, values are not immutable. They change over time and often non-linearly. Campaigns cannot expect the same values choice to work forever. For example, gay marriage in the U.S. was sufficiently controversial even 15 years ago that Barack Obama could not support it. After slow progress in individual states, a major win at the Supreme Court was the catalyst leading to rapid change in public opinion.
But good campaigns don't wait for change. That's a shitty strategy. Rather, they seek out the values choices they can use to drive voters to the polls. It doesn't even have to be something campaigns create on their own. Odds are it won't be. But it does have to create a choice. Choose me—the person fighting for your values. Choose me--the other person is a threat to your way of life.
2) Republicans use values to create and exploit divisions
Republicans leverage issues and turn them into value debates. Their recent messaging on crime is a case of nefarious and obvious “us vs them” fear-mongering. In AZ, Blake Masters directly blames Black people for gun violence. In PA, Dr. Oz uses images of Black people behind bars to attack John Fetterman for being soft on crime. Republicans in WI tie Mandela Barnes (who would be the state’s first Black Senator) to ‘radical’ groups that want to defund the police. And straight from the heart of Dixie, Republican U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville from Alabama explicitly links reparations for Black people with crime.
Republicans today lead with values, specifically leveraging "us vs. them" and fear. Crime isn't about safety stats, it's about "outsiders endangering my community." Immigration isn't about our country's demography, it's about "others" (illegals) changing who we are as a country. Abortion and gay marriage isn't about rights, it's an attack on traditional families.
The economy isn't even about anything economic, it's about government overreach. "Too much" stimulus is the current attack, but when it is appropriate, it will be about "not enough" stimulus. Consistency and intellectual honesty are not prerequisites for the values debate. Motivated reasoning rolls over cognitive dissonance any day of the week. Facts can't overcome values.
Republicans use "otherism" to turn crime (indeed most issues) into a not so subtle discussion on who is American, who deserves to be a citizen, who deserves opportunity, and who deserves to be a full member of society. In weaponizing issues, Republicans often evoke a sense of victimhood—this was ours, and those others are threatening it. This is especially easy with crime.
The play here is two-fold:
First, they gin up a Republican base that believes “America is in danger of losing its culture and identity.”
Second, by focusing on crime, Republicans can pick off moderate voters who are not being race-baited, but still have concerns about rising crime in their community. Republicans warp safety into race, but are still talking about safety. Moderate voters will hold their nose and vote GOP if they think they will do a better job than Democrats at keeping their communities safe.
Interestingly, despite the racial backdrop of this issue coming from Republicans, this is not just about winning moderate and conservative whites. The people most impacted by crime are poor Black people, poor Hispanic people, poor Asian people, poor Native American people and also poor white people. Seven in ten Hispanic voters say violent crime is a ‘very important’ issue in their community (second only to the economy, and tied with healthcare).
By not talking about crime at all, Democrats cede the entire battlefield to Republicans. They effectively take no part in any discussion of crime with Republicans and allow Republicans to occupy both the racist, anti-Black, anti-immigrant dystopian view of crime, and the more moderate ‘we need to keep our communities safe’ lane. Ceding the issue cedes the value. While some individual Democratic candidates are trying (see Catherine Cortez Masto in NV), few make it central to their campaign. The party itself does not have a clear plan to reduce crime, let alone a way of talking about crime that connects back to core values.
3) Democrats struggle with shared values
The Democratic party has long had the moniker of a “big tent” party. Arguably the only thing that holds the party together is ‘not Republican’. To be fair, the Republican party is "big tent" too (e.g., Christian conservatives, working class whites, business elites).
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Manchin are miles apart on values and issues. In a country with more than a 2-party system, they would almost certainly not be in the same political party. Even on what seems like a basic issue—abortion—not all Democrats are aligned. Conservative Black and Hispanic voters who make up a very large portion of the Democratic party are at odds with the white, generally coastal, highly educated, urban voters who make up the other major bloc.
The real problem with the Democratic party, however, is the leadership is dramatically out of synch with its purported electorate. The three party leaders--Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer—could all legally drink alcohol at Woodstock. In 1969. They are also all white. In short, their experiences are vastly different from the experiences of the people they represent. Whether or not they are empathetic or good people is irrelevant. The leadership may make noises to the effect of representing the party, but they are far too detached from the disparate groups that make up the Democratic base to make a credible argument that they "get it."
The intra-party differences and lack of truly representative leadership boil over virtually every cycle. In 2020, moderates accused progressives of adopting “Defund the Police” messaging pushing away moderate Democratic voters. In 2018, “not the party of Trump” was not even enough to keep the party together. Without a cohesive narrative of America’s history, or future, Democrats struggle to build on and use core values.
This year some Democrats are trying to cast their fight as a fight for “freedom” (#Murica). The goal may be right, but the reality is Democrats have a massive deficit on freedom. During the last 2.5 years, Republicans (always playing the long game) were attacking Democrats for restricting personal freedom during the pandemic. Dems did not run on freedom in 2020, 2018 or 2016. They didn’t run on it with Obama, Kerry, Gore or Bill Clinton. Few voters naturally equate the Democratic Party with freedom or prosperity, no matter what history tells us about Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Roosevelt.
We cannot simply link issues to values with broad strokes. It must be specific and relevant to people.
Democracy isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about people. Dems’ focus on the attack on the Capitol has been about an attack on democracy. Yes, that is true. But, that cannot be the story. “Protecting democracy” is esoteric. Defending your voice, your vote, your government is more tangible.
Protecting the environment is not about ecosystems, animals, or the planet. It’s about protecting our health and our children’s future.
Helping people lead better lives is not about living in a better society. It’s about helping people pay their bills. It’s about helping people have stability and predictability.
Dems do best when they are focused on helping people. Our health, our job security, our dignity, our safety, our children, our future. Voters already think Democrats do a better job representing regular people. They already think Republicans put corporate interests ahead of people. By packaging their core message in freedom, Dems lose their focus on people.
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So far in this series we’ve established that campaigns matter. Candidates matter. People matter. But what happens if a campaign misunderstands the people voting? America does not have compulsory voting. Who votes matters. Next week we will dig into why it is so important to understand who will be voting, and how getting that wrong can cost you the election.