Even the best candidates and campaigns lose if they misread the moment. Dynamic campaigns listen to their voters. They understand the mood and emotion of the moment, how to be relevant, and how to adapt when necessary.
Previous articles in this series laid out the ‘players’ in this election—why Democrats have unusually strong candidates (actually a sign of the party’s weakness) and how bad Republican candidates can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory (but may still win, due to a strong brand and hyper-partisanship). Over these next two weeks, we will discuss how these good and bad candidates show they are relevant—what issues they highlight, and what values they fight for—as they seek to define the narrative and terms of the election.
Strategy is a series of choices. You can’t do all the things, and you can’t be everything to everyone. Campaigns must make choices, trade-offs. An ad about the economy is not about education. An attack ad on crime is not a positive ad on your vision.
Good campaigns make smart choices. They use research to drive these choices; to identify the voters they need to win; to listen to those voters and understand the "moment;" and to act by signaling to these voters, with the right combination of issues and values, that they (the candidate) are relevant to you (the voter).
1) It’s the economy, stupid. Again. That’s good for Republicans.
We are in an economic “moment.” The macro story is obvious: inflation in the US is the highest in decades; millions of people are quitting their jobs every month, and millions more are getting hired; supply chains face extreme stress or are outright broken.
Voters feel it, too. In a survey we conducted this summer1 to assess the mood and the moment in the US, half of adults said the economy was their number one concern (more than double any other issue). Four in ten Americans said they are not earning enough to meet their basic needs or are just getting by. This is not just "a rough patch." This is a deeply and personally felt economic moment. It is about cost of living—specifically gas prices and cost of basic goods—not the stock market or GDP.
What makes the moment more acute is its unpredictability. Disruption is the norm. We’ve just endured 2 years of pandemic, and now the economy is wildly unsettled, with no clarity on when things will improve. People feel uncertain, anxious, wary. There is an intense need for stability.
This is the moment campaigns must meet. But moments do not offer equal opportunity to everyone. We’ve illustrated previously Republicans’ advantage on the economy. Whether Republicans deserve that advantage (hint: actual economic data under Republican presidents suggests an emphatic “no”) is irrelevant. Politics is about perception, not reality. Indeed, perception is reality.
One might ask, "But isn’t every election about the economy?" Actually, no. For example, despite overnight pundits talking about the plight of the American working class in 2016, study after study shows the 2016 election was about more deeply-seated factors, including racism, sexism, and just bad candidates.
Still, most elections are arguably about the economy, in whole or in part. And time and time again, Democrats fail to close the gap with Republicans on this issue. Here are Democrats attributing their 2014 blowout to the lack of an economic message. And here again, their attempt in 2004.
Republicans will continue to press their advantage. That’s why Ron Johnson in WI, Blake Masters in AZ, and Adam Laxalt in NV focus on “struggling families” and “the wrong direction” (though Johnson’s focus on struggling Earthling families is a reach).
2) Parties build issue advantages over time, but they are not immutable.
How voters perceive a party on a particular issue is part of their brand. It is built on trust, and sometimes facts. If a voter trusts you are good on an issue, you get two major benefits: a) your message on that issue is picked up easily, and b) voters resist your opponents’ attacks on it. (Of course, this isn’t always true, and a true political masterstroke is when you can dislodge your opponent from their position of strength.)
Republicans beat Democrats on the economy, including creating jobs, fighting inflation, and supporting businesses. The irony notwithstanding, this election is favorable terrain for them as long as it remains about the economy. Republicans also beat Democrats on crime. (This is important, as we will discuss below.) For their part, Democrats ‘win’ on healthcare, abortion rights, and climate change.
These issue advantages are generally stable over time. Partly, this is inertia. Partly, this is hyper-partisanship and heuristics, with each party’s base assuming their side is "right" and unwilling to accept the other party having a "better" position on anything.
There are some notable exceptions. For example, Democrats traditionally have a strong advantage on education, above their vote share. Republicans have attempted to make inroads here, but have never succeeded enough to displace Dems. However, in 2021 Republicans learned to apply their broader playbook to education: they manufactured a crisis around "Critical Race Theory" to disassociate education from actual the actual issue of education and instead fight the issue along culture war lines. These attacks erased Democrats’ advantage on education within a year.
Republicans do this because they understand elections are fundamentally about values (we will discuss this more in next week’s issue). Though less adept at this political maneuver, Democrats are not wholly inept. Under Trump, Democrats cut deeply into Republicans’ historical advantage on immigration by ringing the alarm on Trump’s inhumane family separation policies. Despite supporting strict immigration laws, Americans still believe in doing things humanely. Forcibly separating children from their parents crossed a line.
Health care has also flipped back and forth—traditionally a bastion of Democratic strength, Republicans undermined this in 2010 with claims of "death panels" and people "losing their chosen doctor" as a result of Obamacare. Ultimately, Republicans went too far, and having unsuccessfully attempted to repeal Obamacare 70 times, when they finally held power in 2018, they failed to replace it with anything. Because they had no plan. Health care swung violently back to the Dems—literally half of Democratic ads that year were on health care—and the issue was a major contributor to the Blue Wave in 2018.
Today, we are in an economic moment. On the surface, that favors Republicans. But the election is not a slam dunk for them. As we argued previously, candidates will play a major role in this election. Further, issue advantages and who you trust on an issue can change. Just as John McCain lost the Republican advantage on the economy in 2008, so too can Republican candidates lose this advantage in 2022. And then, of course, we come back to "events." Things happen. What matters can change. Elections fluctuate.
3) Strategic campaigns don’t put all their eggs in one basket.
Economies fluctuate. Sometimes very quickly. Gas prices—the number one economic indicator for regular people—have dropped for 3 months straight. Of course, the apparent sabotage of Nord Stream, the just-announced OPEC production cuts, and the natural increase in demand in Europe for energy during the winter all could reverse this trend quickly.
Republicans know this election can’t and shouldn’t just focus on who would do a better job on the economy. There must be more, not only in case the economic terrain softens for them, but also because they have learned an important lesson over the decades—cultural, values-driven messages carry more weight.
While Republicans have led with economic attacks, they have separately pushed a strong secondary message: crime. Adam Laxalt’s next ad after introducing himself and showcasing a struggling economy highlighted his time as district attorney, protecting people from assault, drugs, and trafficking. Marco Rubio in Florida immediately went on the offensive on crime, attacking Democratic candidate Val Demings—a former Orlando Chief of Police—for "turning her back on law enforcement." In border state Arizona, “crime” as an issue manifests as immigration.
Republicans did not land on crime by happenstance. They lean further and further into the crime narrative based on both recent and historic advantage. In 2020, Republicans successfully weaponized left wing activist calls to ‘Defund the Police’ in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. Historically, Republicans have played the ‘tough on crime’ message going back decades. Some of our readers will remember Michael Dukakis and Willie Horton (1988). This line of attack works on Democrats, who typically rebuff these attacks with academic ripostes instead of an equally effective visceral narrative.
‘Tough on Crime’ is an integral part of the Republican brand. It is a safe space for them and an easy way to draw cultural lines in the sand. They call upon it whenever needed.
Democrats are not as intentional. As we’ve said, Dems are capitalizing on the Supreme Court’s elimination of national abortion protections. Polling shows abortion rights are a leading driver of support for Democratic candidates. This is good news for them in 2022. But, what does it mean in 2024? If Democrats still control DC and do not enact abortion protections, what is the point of voting for them? If they control DC and do enact protection, is “vote for me to stop a national abortion ban” still a viable strategy? Unless Democrats can elevate this into a strategy, this has echoes of Republicans’ attacks on Obamacare in 2008.
That comparison, however, is not fully fair. Republicans were united, supposedly, against Obamacare. Democrats, on the other hand, have never had a united stance on abortion. Partly, this is demographic and cultural. Black and Hispanic voters are a major constituency within the Democratic electorate. Yet they are much more socially conservative (especially older Black and Hispanic voters) than their white, upper-income, coastal Democratic counterparts. In order to win or hold seats, the Democratic Party supported an anti-abortion Democratic incumbent against a pro-choice primary challenger in both 2018 and 2020. Some party leaders thought pro-life Dems would be how they win back Congress. Biden (vigorously) supported the Hyde Amendment, restricting federal funds for abortions until he announced his run for the Presidency in 2019. He then pledged to make Roe v Wade law of the land…and did not deliver.
Focusing on abortion post Roe v Wade when Democratic voters are demanding action makes tactical sense. Democrats hold a big advantage on the issue. The more the election becomes about abortion, the better Democrats’ chances. But tactics are not strategy. What’s missing is how Democrats convert this to something deeper, a cultural divide this speaks to, between what Republicans want for you, the voter, and what Democrats want. What does it mean when Republicans seek to ban abortion under all circumstances? If Democrats only allow a ban on abortion to be about abortion, they are failing to take advantage of an historic opportunity (and failing to fully fight back).
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But why is it that Republicans consistently build their brand and make themselves relevant cycle after cycle, while Democrats struggle to do the same? How does this work?
In a word: values. Elections are about values; issues are merely the vehicle. Next week, we will dig into how strategic candidates set the terms of the election by drilling their campaign pillars into America’s foundations.
We conducted an online nationally representative poll of 820 U.S. adults (18+) July 27-August 8.