GOTV Action Alert: Do’s and Don’t’s of messaging on economy (jobs, living costs NOT “econ growth”)

Tl-dr and top headline points: Happy Juneteenth to all of you hard-working canvassers out there. This is a follow up and summary to our earlier posts on effective messaging and canvassing on basic economic issues for Dem GOTV field teams nationwide, going a bit more systematic about what works (talk about reducing living costs, jobs, going after RealPage and price-gouging companies) and what doesn’t (talking about GDP, economic growth or disinflation which come off as tone-deaf and very ineffective, in virtually any community we campaign in). It goes without saying this is a critical area to connect with voters on, and where our messaging has to avoid any muddled thinking and wonkish echo chambers. We’re doing some blunt talk here because we’re in the most important election since the Civil War so little intro needed on the danger facing US democracy and survival of basic American freedoms.

We’ll add some encouraging points to the end of the Diary but want to get to the main point here, and why we’re listing some critical do’s and don’t’s here on our economic messaging: American voters have a different way of measuring the economy from the macro-economics talk the general and financial media puts out. Americans generally measure “how well is the economy doing” based on their buying power and living costs, and absolutely do not care (or openly despise) the media’s focus on GDP, economic growth or “disinflation” which is meaningless or even insulting to them. This is why the over-focus in too many headlines on economic growth (and the supposed strong economy based on it), rings hollow and even tone-deaf to most voters in GOTV, who are far more worried and frustrated about costs of new homes and rent across the US, groceries and getting a car if their current one breaks down. Again, Americans overwhelmingly do not measure the economy based on GDP, the stock market, claims of “economic growth” or disinflation—they measure it based on what they can afford each month, and how that buying power goes up or down.

In being clear, this isn’t just perception—even economists in general have long been souring on GDP as a useful measure of anything, as our very own RFK (the original, brilliant one) pointed out, GDP stinks as a measure for what actually matters. It can and in the US, often does go up due to worsening pollution, healthcare costs or housing bubbles, and a lot of it tied to stock market auto-transactions that benefit no one or Americans running up debt on credit cards, in other words GDP goes up due to things that objectively make the economy much worse for the people, and Americans know this. They’d be fine for GDP and economic growth to fall a bit—something that did happen in early 2022 (we’ll get to this)—if this would make things more affordable, because their answer to “how is the economy doing?” is based on their budget and buying power, not macro-economic abstractions like the GDP. (We’d honestly be better off just dropping GDP from the list of stats getting reported at all each quarter, as bad a measure as it is, but that’s another discussion.)  For the same reason, talk of “disinflation” is very tone-deaf when prices are still rising (even if at a slower pace) while earnings and savings haven’t kept up.

OTOH, talk of not only job creation, but concrete steps Dems have taken to reduce living costs are very well received, even by registered Republican voters. Among the most popular talking points we’ve ever had are mentioning how Democrats (and exclusively Dems) have been taking real action to go after RealPage and other tools used for corrupt price-fixing and collusion with rentals. And steps to limit and shut down corporate ownership of single family homes, not to mention Dem achievements to lower medical costs, to reign in monopolies and price gouging (a big source of inflation and inflationary pressures) and better collect taxes from billionaires, and prosecute PPP fraud. There’s genuine concern among Americans about higher living costs and the hit to buying power since 2020, but as we’ll stress again and again below, voters aren’t simply “blaming the Democrats” or other such dumb media narratives—they’re upset at general institutional failures (including Trump’s actions in 2020) but open to solutions.

This is actually an opportunity for us, so it’s important to connect with voters and be clear Democrats are concretely addressing Americans’ worries about living costs, and going after the root causes. This kind of messaging is universally popular with voters, wins wide support among Americans and shows that Dems are still close to our modern FDR roots, fighting for Americans against corporate oligarchs driving these inflationary pressures. And this is where our emphasis has to be. So here, a list of some do’s and don’t’s for canvassers and GOTV teams in talking to voters about the economy.

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Do: Talk about Democratic success going after corporate and landlord price gougers on rent and the cost of housing, including with concerted efforts to win restitution for the damage done by RealPage. This is a massive issue of concern for virtually everyone, and it’s been one of the Democrats’ most popular policies across the country, especially by the DOJ and in states where attorney generals have brought lawsuits against for ex. RealPage, the crooked algorithm that like ProPublica has pointed out in the article, been used for monopolistic price fixing among colluding landlords to push up rent prices and gouge the public. And of course it’s not just rentals, as such collusive behavior also drives up the cost of homes in general, hurting both existing homeowners (insurance and repairs get that much more expensive) and younger Americans locked out of the housing market. Here it’s useful as a reminder, we often get confused about “left right” division in the US but in reality, on issues like this, over 90 percent of the American public, across parties and ideologies, is in support of protecting housing affordability for the people and going after corporate price-gougers.

RealPage and these corrupt corporate landlords pushing up rents are universally hated in America, and even on our MAGA relatives social media like on Gab and TruthSocial, there’s deep anger and hatred of price gouging landlords, RealPage and corporations buying up single family homes (next point). This is a BIG weakness for Republican officials because many are bought-out by these crony capitalists since Citizens United and can’t take action—Democrats can, and are. So we need to hit the GOP at this political weak point for them where it hurts them a lot, and hit hard. Really go for the jugular with clear consistent messaging, every day, show specific examples of Democratic officials bringing these suits and how the Republicans are in bed with these same corrupt scam artists ripping off the American people.

Do: Talk about Democratic bills and policies to block big corporations, investment hedge funds and rich foreign slumlords from buying up scarce single family housing or affordable units and flipping them to charge high rents, causing even higher and less affordable home prices and worsening rent costs across the US. This is an active bill in the Senate and all sponsors are Democrats. Again don’t be fooled by the polarization or left right divisions in the US—corporate purchases of scarce housing in the USA is universally hated across the whole American political spectrum, and calls on government to limit corporate and wealthy foreign purchases of American properties are universally supported, on everything from liberal Democratic blogs to MAGA strongholds on Gab, TruthSocial and Twitter.

Even among our openly Trumpian relatives, this is actually one of the things they rant about most. In their case it usually veers over into resentment of companies like Blackrock or Blackstone supposedly use “free money from the Fed” to buy up all those properties, it’s a matter of controversy how involved those firms actually are. But the details really don’t matter for our canvassing—it’s clear that corporations, big investment funds and foreign oligarchs have been buying up scarce US real estate, it’s not OK, it needs to be fought and it’s Democratic officeholders, not Republicans who are doing something about it. And we must constantly point this out in our messaging to voters. This is a real wedge issue to pry away the votes of even MAGA Republicans away from the Republican Party, because the GQP is clearly bought and sold by the big corporations here and, despite the anger of even their own constituents, isn’t doing anything about this.

Do: Get into the success of President Biden and Democratic officials to combat inflation by going after and prosecuting the massive number of PPP fraudsters who stole hundreds of billions of dollars from US taxpayers thanks to Trump’s negligence during the pandemic, when he got rid of the inspector generals responsible for administering the Paycheck Protection Program. A massive contributor to the recent US inflation wave and asset bubbles all over, was the massive historic level of fraud with PPP that got introduced when COVID19 threatened to cause heavy job losses, a well meaning plan that unfortunately became a massive fraud operation when Trump got rid of the watchdogs.

A big part of combatting this inflation, it’s been draining that fraudulent money out of the system by prosecuting the fraudsters and recovering the stolen money. (And on that, if you happen to be aware of such cases of fraud, please report them—there’s a tip line, and prosecutors are depending on American citizens to report more such cases) The Biden Administration and Democratic state officials have made a major push to prosecute such cases and it’s been an important inflation-fighter.

Do: Talk with voters about Democratic actions to combat inflation and reduce prices by going after price-gougers, and the monopolists and colluding cartels that often cause them. Monopolies and artificial supply restrictions are classic tools of corrupt plutocrats and they’re a major driver of the inflation run up Americans have been suffering under. Bought off Republican representatives (and our Supreme Court as we’ve found out) are complicit and do nothing to work against this, but President Biden and Democrats have been active in antitrust efforts to increase competition and fight monopolies, an important step in for making things more affordable. (The Administration’s improvements in tax collection on billionaires and tax-dodging companies are also a part of improvements here) This is a very smart, effective form of FDR-style populism to fight the price-gouging that’s been driving so much of the recent US inflation, and it must be a centerpiece of Democratic economic messaging.

Do: Talk about solid job creation under Biden’s Presidency. Not much introduction needed for this and it is one area where our messaging has been strong.

Do: Talk with voters about Democratic work and policies to better control the border, and how Republican asshats have been sabotaging border bills to reform asylum and reduce the uncontrolled inflows, driving up rents and housing prices. In one of their most cynically arrogant moves, Congressional Republicans under Trump’s behest have killed two very conservative and mostly Republican-drafted border bills to keep it as an issue for November. All the while Democrats have worked to pass the bills, which would reduce the influxes and bring migration under better control, and President Biden is taking active steps. There’s a lot of things to un-pack here but it doesn’t need a lot of introduction: housing costs result heavily from higher demand for housing when there isn’t enough of it (or if it and the infrastructure around it can’t be built fast enough), and an uncontrolled border crisis means worse strain on housing stock and prices, as Eric Adams warned last summer in New York. Even without Congress’s help, Biden has stepped up border enforcement and deportations with whatever tools he can, giving some relief for the US housing market. We know this can be a touchy subject for us and it’s one that needs to be approached with compassion, and the good news is, Americans by- and large do support what could be called “humanitarian immigration” and efforts to help those like the Dreamers.

What Americans do not support, is massive and poorly controlled “corporate immigration” (both regular and irregular) basically designed to lower wages and drive up the cost of housing, for the benefit of real estate investor interests who profit from it. It’s big part of why things like the H-1B visa (in the form it’s been abused by corporations looking for cheap labor) and increases in mass immigration levels (beyond what our housing and infrastructure can provide for) are very unpopular with Americans, even with Democrats. That’s why it’s good that Democratic officials have caught on this—Tom Suozzi ran his successful campaign in a big part by realizing and campaigning on it—and we need to make clear in our messaging that Democrats absolutely do recognize the importance of good border enforcement and controlled, manageable migration, with the GOP as obstacles here.

Do: Talk about how the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures have helped to bring down the cost of healthcare and other expensive sectors. We know we’re not alone here but we’ve been finding healthcare costs is one of the biggest sources of cost-of-living related anxiety, right up there with housing costs and groceries, and the cost of college or cars. Many of the IRA’s best policies were delayed until this year, and messaging has not caught up. But steps to reduce the price of essential drugs, medical insurance and hospital stays mean a lot to Americans already struggling with higher prices.

Do: Be solutions-oriented relative to issues that are brought up. In our canvassing, Americans overwhelmingly agree with the criticisms from Democrats, such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren that price-gouging has done great damage to the country, are furious at companies engaging in it and are open to well crafted points about how Trump’s policies—like getting rid of the inspector generals to avoid fraud in the PPP program—have fed this inflation. But they ultimately want to hear solutions and proposals, too. “We agree, so what are you going to do to bring down the costs of housing and healthcare, and make things more affordable?” The specifics are above—make sure your GOTV and canvassing cover those points. Now in saying this, in the process of talking about solutions to Americans worries on living costs, it is relevant to get into the causes, and it doesn’t sound like simple excuse-making if we really are oriented around solutions. And while inflation and loss of buying power have a variety of causes, they’re indeed based mainly in the Trumpian policies from even before the pandemic in 2020.

As pointed out he openly obstructed the watchdogs guarding against PPP fraud, causing massive fraud and fuelling many current asset bubbles. His tax cuts for billionaires bill with Congressional Republicans started the buildup of asset bubbles that has since erupted into general inflation. Trump also attacked Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve in 2018 when the Fed was moderating interest rates and quantitative easing (QE) to restrain credit bubble excesses, and his pressures led to the excessive QE—and mass purchasing of mortgage-backed securities (MBS) now recognized as a main contributor to the US housing affordability crisis—that still fuel inflation now. He helped tank the Senate border bills this year that would sharply reduce uncontrolled influxes and ease pressure on housing stock, for crass political reasons. And his failure to prepare and respond to the pandemic contributed heavily to the supply shocks when COVID19 tore through the country. The seeds of the inflation and living cost crisis in the US in 2024 were planted squarely by Trump’s policies and actions, and it’s fine to be clear on this as long as we also stress how Democrats are providing solutions.

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And now some GOTV don’t’s for our economic messaging.

Don’t: Get into how GDP and economic growth have gone up, this kind of wonkish sounding macro-economics talk comes off as too technocratic and out of touch when American households are struggling to keep up with living costs. We talked about this in the Main Points intro above but we can’t emphasize this enough: Talking about increasing GDP does not register well at all in GOTV, and even worse, comes off as tone deaf and disconnected from voters and households every day concerns. This has been a much more serious problem for us than we’d before realized and it’s really come out in our discussions with voters, door to door canvassing and phonebanking—they simply hate how GDP is talked about so much in the media as a target of policy. In fact one of the single biggest mistakes of both parties in government is to pay so much attention to the GDP number (like the stock market) and hoping it goes up, when it too often goes up for all the wrong reasons as healthcare and housing drains Americans dry of their savings. The GDP number is a distraction that’s taken our eyes off the ball, when all along the goal should have been connecting better with Americans on concerns about cost-of-living and affordability, which is how they really measure the economy. Fortunately, we can correct this.

Again, we’d honestly benefit by moving away from GDP and economic growth as a figure to be reported at all in the BLS and Treasury stats, or at least put it way down on the list of things to pay attention to. This is of relevance because it affects our policy and messaging—it’s important to shift away from thinking about, “what increases our GDP and economic growth?” to instead talk about policies that ask, “what will make things in America more affordable and reduce living costs for Americans?”. There had been a belief for a while (mistaken) that GDP increases would at least correlate with better American quality of life, but this simply hasn’t panned out, especially as living costs have gone way up beyond wages over the past 4 years. Things like opiate overdoses and suicides have got worse while Americans are living shorter lives as GDP goes up, that wasn’t supposed to happen. This really hit home for us in one of our GOTV conversations and follows ups with a longtime Democratic voter (who’d herself done canvassing for us before), in her words: “Don’t talk to me about rising GDP when my grocery bill, healthcare and other costs of living keep going up every month, and my two adult kids can’t afford even a basic home despite having professional salaries, even in an area where cost of living is supposedly lower. That’s a world away from anything that matters to us.”

It’s part of why appeals to increased GDP fall so flat and backfire with voters. And too, why some elements of the progressive media (Morning Joe Scarborough has unfortunately been especially blind to this) miss the boat and damage our messaging with their desperate appeals about how “the economy is good! GDP is going up!” when their measurement of choice is going up heavily for reasons that just mean more misery and higher costs for Americans. Again like RFK pointed out so persuasively in the 1960’s, GDP goes up too much for the very worst reasons, it’s inflated by things that damage American households and the environment. It just stinks as an indicator to measure things that actually matter to Americans and quality of life, the only reason we really care about measuring the economy at all. It should basically be dropped as a measure to pay attention to, and at the very least, we need to have discipline in our GOTV not to appeal to it in our messaging. Focus on Democratic efforts to lower living costs and provide jobs instead, the things talked about above.

Don’t: Talk about “disinflation” with voters, they simply do not respond well to insistence on “a slowing of inflation” when prices and living costs are up 20% or more on housing and basic items since 2020, and costs are still going up (if at a slower pace). This has been basically a messaging disaster for us when it’s been brought up, and disinflation is one of those wonkish-sounding terms that falls flat with American voters and comes off as gas-lighting. It of course does not mean that prices are going down or things are more affordable, it just means costs are still rising more slowly—but occurring on the top of previous living cost increases that haven’t corrected. This unfortunately is also one of the areas where some liberal pundits and progressive media members have been badly tone deaf. Most egregiously Paul Krugman, who has sounded off a lot on disinflation but comes off as being stuck in an ivory tower disconnected from Americans real world concerns about rising living costs. We still love reading Paul and the things he’d done but he has a serious blind spot here, as the comments in many of his own NYT op-eds on disinflation (from generally left-leaning commenters) make clear.

The simple fact is Americans are seriously upset with how high costs have risen since the pandemic hit in 2020 and the monetary floodgates were opened. (With the Federal Reserve’s QE and near zero percent interest rates, for too long, happening in addition to the supply shocks) That’s especially true of costs for buying even a starter new home, with the home prices making homebuying unaffordable for even well earning American professionals. To be clear, and we’ll hit on this again in the summary below, Americans fortunately do not as a rule blame President Biden or Democrats for these cost increases, despite all the media hype about that. It’s more of a general angst and anger at the failures of American institutions to look after the interests of the middle class and Americans in general (including the key failures of Trump himself in 2020). This is actually good news for us because we can still connect to Americans and their anger about inflation if we honestly recognize it, don’t try to downplay it, sympathize with them and stay solutions oriented, with the “Do’s” lined out above. But part of doing this, it’s avoiding wonkish-sounding tone deafness or excuse making (to the ears of voters), with terms like disinflation.

Don’t: Fall into the trap of wonkish economic arguments about how “deflation is always bad” and “prices should never fall”. Voters on the ground almost universally hate this kind of talk, and for any of us being real—do you think Americans would really be unhappy with a drop in their costs for rent, mortgages, healthcare or groceries? Of course not, reductions in living costs would be universally welcomed. Among the very few times we’ve had voters angrily hang up the phone on us while phonebanking, or slam the door in our faces while canvassing it’s often been eager but inexperienced college kids with the syndrome of a little knowledge without getting the big picture, especially on the topic of deflation and price stability. Even though economics has actually moved away from this kind of automatic statement lately, there’s still too many cases of canvassers who thought they heard this in an econ class and caught in the trap of arguing that “deflation is always bad, and much worse than inflation”. This pisses off voters already angry about how their rent, mortgage, groceries and kids college tuition have gone up, and it’s not even good economics.

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 in the past month, 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: 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.

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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.

On the other hand, be very careful in how you frame the message about wage increases, and never give the impression that you’re appealing to increased wages as a way to excuse or minimize Americans worries about higher living costs. We bring this up because we’ve gotten burned on this and have heard the same from other precincts. A household or voter in a phonebank will bring up worries and frustrations about the increased cost of housing and how their kids can’t afford a starter new home or college without crushing loans and debt. And then a canvasser, instead of sympathizing and talking about how Democrats are working to bring down living costs and make things more affordable, appears (to the voter) to try to brush off those cost-of-living concerns by going on about how “wage increases have exceeded inflation, so don’t worry”. This.. doesn’t go over well. Whatever the broad stats for America, the person you’re talking to on the phone line or front door may not have had a wage increase to cover higher living costs, and in general few have had enough of a raise to cover the 20% run up in costs since the pandemic and the Fed and PPP stimulus (and Trump and Republicans’ general fraud and incompetence) helped ramp the inflation going in 2020.

Remember that income increases throughout the USA have been very uneven, and companies have been asinine about actually giving raises that cover living costs. You may have heard that as actual practice, one of the few ways to actually get a real raise is to quit and sign up for a new job. All fine and just dandy, except that isn’t a realistic option for millions of Americans. They may need to stay near where they are to care for family members or their job may not be so portable (or too specialized), and there’s the issue of the on-boarding and how long and uncertain it is to start in a new job with health coverage. (Not to mention cases like in Tesla this past spring where Elon Musk, in full asshole mode, withdrew offers from many new hires after they’d already quit their before jobs, moved and signed leases, pulling the rug out from under them) And the “wages have increased faster than inflation” talk does not apply to the full period since 2020, esp 2021-2022 when the inflation and cost-of-living jumps were toughest for Americans.

So just be careful here. Again, fine to include wages have gone up as a general description of Democratic economic achievements, but never allow it to sound like an excuse to minimize the worries about living costs increases.

Cautiously address the topic of the China trade and Chinese products (and tariffs) in your economic messaging, this can be very tricky to get right and will depend a lot on your audience, topic and mood.

It’s worth again pointing out as many Kossacks have already made clear, that it’s fine to “stick it to Russia” in your canvassing as Americans (and the world in general) rightly despise what Putin is doing and Russia is in the wrong, and there’s strong support for Ukraine assistance even among Republicans. Russia under Putin is a military aggressor against a sovereign country that never attacked it, and has been openly threatening the US with attacking warships close by and open threats to Alaska and the US mainland. Easy call there. But China is not Russia, and a very different situation as far as how to talk about this in your economic messaging. The outsourcing of jobs to China over decades by profit greedy US corporations has indeed added to the struggles of the Rust Belt and there are obvious human rights concerns, but China is also much more integrated in the world economy than Russia and the top driver of renewables and green tech, so there’s a much trickier set of factors in your GOTV.

We’ve found in general that Americans have very mixed and often contradicting feelings about China, so tread carefully here. Even though there’s been a drop in perception about the country since COVID19, Americans in general do like the lower cost of prices for many basic goods that China can manufacture inexpensively, and the reality is inflation would be much worse in the US without the price dropping effect of Chinese goods and services, and things would get even more unaffordable. And since living costs are the main concern of Americans now in economic messaging, discussions around Chinese trade and tariffs have to be handled with care. We do want to show we’re interested in protecting American jobs and opportunities, but also not stumbling into bad policy that would increase cost-of-living and fuel inflation even more for Americans with already strained budgets.

For the same reason be careful about re-hashing old tropes about why Chinese goods are relatively cheap. Things have changed a lot in China in just the past 10 years, and it’s no longer the kind of cheap labor manufacturer (with those tales of Foxconn workers jumping into nets) we used to hear about, so it’s easy to get off-track and sound outdated in our messaging if not careful. It’s moved fast up the value chain, a leader in tech and science, now leads the world in renewables (far more wind and solar than the rest of the world combined). BYD is absolutely crushing Tesla as the top electric vehicle maker which we’ll see with this quarter’s data and many other Chinese companies are also world leaders now. Yes wages are lower there though cost-of-living is too with lower healthcare and housing costs (hence the common point about how China is the world’s largest economy already if still using that GDP stat by PPP—something Americans really couldn’t care less about either way), but the main cost advantage for China’s companies now is better vertical integrating, automation and economies of scale. So it can legitimately sell those goods at Target and Walmart at lower prices.

So where does this leave us with economic messaging? As a general rule, it’s probably best to avoid bringing up the China issue at all, except for specific cases when our policies are needed and popular and where trade and tariff policy are relevant. First, and related to the topic of migration, there’s undoubted broad support for deporting Chinese migrants who have come illegally or (much more common) overstayed a visa—that’s one of the things driving up US housing costs after all like talked about above. In being clear it’s the same for overstays or visa violations for any country—India also has many such cases, and there are also Russians abusing the asylum system by crossing the border despite they’ve crossed through safe countries like Brazil and Argentina. President Biden’s recent executive order directives have stiffened procedures here and stepping up deportations, as they should. While one could argue we have a special responsibility to Latin American countries our policies have destabilized (thus the support for Dreamers), this isn’t the case for most of the world, and abuse of asylum of visa overstays by Chinese economic migrants—and the resulting strains on housing stock and infrastructure—rightly lead to deportation under the President’s new policies. So it’s fine to point out in our messaging how Democrats have gotten tougher about border enforcement here, indeed Tom Suozzi used exactly such arguments to win handily in what had been a very Republican leaning district.

Other cases have to be handled more carefully. We warned in a previous Diary that the TikTok ban talk was quite unpopular in the US, not only with younger voters (whose votes we simply cannot afford to lose) but also with the growing number of Americans whose small businesses or extra income depend on the app as a business resource (as it’s morphed into). Those concerns have borne out as this bill was basically an own goal for us, very unpopular with our voters and as the bill became concrete, unpopular in general—social media has been a mess but the bill should have addressed social media issues and privacy concerns in general, not with a focus on one specific app (and now multinationally owned, at that) that has, in reality, become ever more important for the livelihoods of an ever growing number of Americans. The only reason this hasn’t hurt us worse is that it’s more and more doubtful that the app will face any kind of ban or forced sale at all, not only due to skepticism from the courts but also lack of enthusiasm from either party in actually taking action (both Presidential candidates are themselves using it in campaigning now). But it’s a good example on how we have to tread carefully here, and how unfocussed moves against China (or perceived to be, as this one would do little) do us far more harm than good and turn our own voters against us. The greatest threat by far to the United States is from the neo-fascist Republican party founded by Trump, and it’s a major blunder for us to hand them any ammunition.

On the other hand, it’s fine to take concrete steps where there are concrete concerns backed by evidence, and where we can make the case in our messaging. Although Trump’s Red Scare, Mccarthyist style warnings of massive spy rings in academia were overdone with the China initiative, still theft of intellectual property has been a real issue with some Chinese nationals before and where cases are still ongoing, the Administration is absolutely right to pursue and prosecute them and follow with deportations, whether in universities or the academic community. And on the issue of the tariffs, on one hand there’s been some grumbling with the recent 100% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles and solar panels, and this has been a tough call. BYD and other Chinese carmakers sell EV’s for less than $20K and the high cost of new cars has been a serious sore point for Americans since the pandemic. But again, Presidential elections are won in the Electoral College and major Purple States like Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia and others have large shares of auto workers (UAW and others) who’d be decimated by cheap Chinese BEV’s flooding in. It’s an imperfect political calculation and it’s unfortunate that Americans (unlike most other countries in the world) really don’t have inexpensive options for EV’s right now. But the EC is what it is, and as long as it decides elections as it does, Biden’s tariffs are understandable, as is economic messaging with a focus on how Biden is aware and actively working to protect American jobs in the auto industry.

This is a tough one as you can see, and we need to be smart and careful about each case and issue on a matter of important trade like this. A big part of the reason for Biden’s EV tariffs on China likely do help more than hurt (for the Electoral College) is that they really won’t practically have much effect at all on US prices. BYD and other Chinese auto-makers have had no intention of entering the US market anyway, for unrelated reasons (they’re not making the big boxy SUV’s Americans have been buying). So Biden’s tariffs here and on other items as practical matter have very little actual effect and don’t fuel inflation, while allowing us to show concern and awareness of the worries of auto workers for job security and paying the mortgage. But the deeper problem of course, is that vehicles have got so expensive in the US in general, and BEV’s in particular not practical for millions of Americans due to cost. We also need to be careful in addressing China trade and tariff issues, to avoid stumbling into any kind of Yellow peril narratives like Trump’s “China flu” slurs during COVID, that led to a worsening series of hate crimes against Asian Americans. (Read about the tragic history of the Vincent Chin incident and the Atlanta massage parlor shooting to see where this goes) We need Asian American votes and turnout in many important Battleground States, and so again need to approach this kind of messaging with careful attention to evidence and compassion.

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To conclude here, we’re not trying to downplay GOTV efforts up to now or to imply they’ve been ineffective—there’s been a big improvement in our economic messaging and it’s helped Democrats to over-perform significantly since the 2022 mid-terms, but we can’t rest on our laurels. Not with the stakes this high. The complacence in 2016 lead to the ongoing Trump disaster and its effects, including the most corrupt Supreme Court in history, the Dobbs ruling and Clarence Thomas’ recent “gift” of restoring the deadly killing weapons that slaughtered almost 60 Americans in Las Vegas in 2017. This is the price of failure, and we cannot take any chances in making sure we win, resoundingly this November. That’s why strong, on point economic messaging is so important.

Now in saying that, there is some solid, reality-based encouraging news: despite the horse race headline stupidity from a lot of the media, the combination of improved Dem messaging and GOP outrageousness especially on abortion have helped Dems to consistently way outperform polling in the 2023 and 2024 special elections. Yes, this is partially because polling is so hard to do in the call-screened cell phone era. But Republican arrogance and extremism, particularly on women’s rights to their own bodies, has struck a lot of personal nerves and angered a wide swathe of voters. (This is part of why US Republicans have put themselves behind the 8-ball compared to conservative parties abroad) And although there’s ongoing discontent about living costs (esp housing) in the USA, we’ve found voters do not automatically blame Biden or Democrats for this—it’s a more diffuse dissatisfaction against US institutions generally, and we can work with this as long as we make sure to recognize its significance for voters, and be solutions oriented about it.

Therefore the do’s and don’t’s outlined above. As always, remember the first rule about effective canvassing and GOTV: voters vote the first and foremost on issues that affect them directly, ie. Maslow’s needs hierarchy. Abortion is indeed one such issue and an ongoing disaster for Republicans (even conservatives are angry at how GOP thick-headedness on it is driving out ob-gyn doctors and making it too hazardous to get pregnant), but the economy is another and we have to message effectively on it. The suggestions above are based on what’s worked and what hasn’t, and what really connects and communicates with American voters. Our ways of talking about the economy—too often centred around GDP and economic growth—have let us down and painted the wrong picture for is in too many ways. But we’re already turning it around, and a focus on addressing living costs concerns, buying power and affordability will lead us to victory in November, at all levels of government.