Taking Back America

Eduardo del Buey
Foto: Afp
La Jornada Maya

Martes 26 de febrero, 2019

Without wanting to sound dramatic, I believe that the 2020 presidential election in the United States will be a battle for that country’s soul. And without exaggerating, I think that the campaign and its outcome will directly affect the global community.

Never have U.S. political and social values been so under attack from the White House as they have been during the Trump administration. Never has U.S. leadership abroad been placed in such a precarious position by its own President and his party’s leadership. And never has the country been so polarized while political dialogue and civil discourse seem to have disappeared.

The country’s image abroad has never been so low, and never has a government so blatantly given free rein to the racial prejudices that seem to have become the norm since Trump began his campaign in June of 2015.

So, is there a solution?

I believe that there is, but that many questions remain to be answered by Democrats before it can become reality.

How do Democrats fight the solid base of 35 percent of the electorate that continue to strongly support Trump and are almost guaranteed to vote for him on election day? How do they convince an electorate that is highly divided that the traditional vision of a united and vibrant America for all is still possible?

How can they overcome the politics of fear and division, and promote a positive set of messages that can appeal to the average voter’s imagination?

How can they replicate the strong and positive themes of past leaders -- John F. Kennedy’s “New Frontier”, Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”, or Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”?

How do they motivate American voters to “Take America Back Again”?

Not back to the white, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, misogynistic mirage of the 1950’s, but to a time when dialogue was possible and consensus the name of the game. When foreign policy debates ended at the nation’s shores, and political leaders were willing and able to speak with each other rather than at each other.

In 1980, then Republican candidate Ronald Reagan asked American voters if they were better off than they had been four years earlier. Their response was negative, and Reagan was elected president of the United States.

In 2020, Democrats must ask American voters the same question but only slightly tweaked: “Are you better off than you were four years ago and are we a better society than we were four years ago”?

And they must not only show that a better way is possible, but also how it can be attained.

To achieve victory, they will have to do three things.

First of all, they will have to select a candidate who ignites the passions of the electorate, connects with voters, and can address their concerns.

Democrats will not make strong inroads into the hard-core Trump base. That leaves about 65 percent of the electorate up for grabs: Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans dismayed by the tone and tenor of their current leadership.

While the competition will be stiff during the primaries, competitors for the mantle of Democrat leadership will have to avoid a bitter primary campaign fight and concentrate on coming together quickly into a cohesive force once the primaries are over. This was not the case in 2016 when supporters of Bernie Sanders refused to support Hillary Clinton.

Secondly, the Democrats will have to campaign intelligently.

They will have to focus on Electoral College votes and not only on the popular vote. In 2016, Democrats campaigned poorly in key Electoral College states and handed Trump a victory that he arguably did not deserve in absolute terms, but did in terms of intelligent targeted campaigning.

They will have to select local and regional candidates who can translate national policy proposals and objectives into local messages that resonate with their publics. They must meld local concerns with national goals to ensure that voters are presented with an integrated political platform.

They must avoid their apparent obsession with identity politics – identified by Merriam Webster as politics in which groups of people having a particular racial, religious, ethnic, social, or cultural identity tend to promote their own specific interests or concerns without regard to the interests or concerns of any larger political group.

They must seek to unite, not divide.

Thirdly, Democrats will have to develop and sustain a strongly motivating and aggressive communications strategy.

They must focus on few, but relevant, short and simple messages focusing on “what’s in it for the average voter” in a way that minimizes alienation and that takes the needs of all target audiences into account.

And they must focus on message discipline.

Trump is a master at focusing on his message and distracting his base from reality.

Democrats must learn from the start to avoid constantly responding to Trump’s tweets that come early in the day and set the tone and conversation. They must create their own narrative and impose it on the daily news cycle to ensure that their messages get out constantly.

They must come out with their own forward-looking proposals and seek to bring people together through a common cause.

Their vision must not focus solely on criticizing Trump.

Rather, they must create a narrative that produces a positive vision for the electorate and provides hope after twenty years of negative politics. Democrats must focus on the individual, and how he or she will benefit from their policy proposals.

They must remember the words of the late poet Maya Angelou: “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”.

Creating a few simple messages and making the voters feel those messages must be their strategy. Connecting with voters must be their objective.

The 2016 Clinton campaign was highly cerebral and focused on complex policy proposals. Different messages were aimed at different groups. Voters didn’t feel the passion nor did they identify with any particular common vision or message.

The Trump campaign focused on a simple set of messages: “Make America Great Again”, “Build the Wall”, “Clear the Swamp”, “Crooked Hillary” and “Lock Her Up” -- tapping into voter dissatisfaction and alienation while creating doubt about the opposing candidate. The Democrats would be wise to learn from this.

Trump painted a portrait of a simpler and better time that catered to the emotions of the hard right – a white Anglo-Saxon country with values and aspirations that fed the narrow narrative of his base. That this portrait of the past left out the injustices of racism didn’t concern Trump’s target audience. They saw Trump’s vision as a vindication of their beliefs – long derided by mainstream America – and the legitimization of their prejudices.

The Democrats must set out a positive vision for the country. They must focus on rescuing traditional positive American values of decency and ethical morality at the most senior levels of government and bringing back those values that have diminished during the Trump years.

They must identify a single campaign concept and then develop a set of three key messages linked to this concept that will resonate with Democrat voters and appeal to independents who appear to be increasingly disillusioned with the Trump administration.

One key overriding theme could be “Take Back America” – focusing on the need for decent people to take back their government and once again engage in civil dialogue and consensus building.

Candidates will require strong guidance on how to communicate effectively. They will have to learn how to connect and engage with voters and prepare for tough public and media questions, as well as Trump’s constantly tweeted attacks. They will also need to be consistently coached on how to always pivot back to their strategic positive messages to ensure that they make their mark on voters.

They must learn to craft speeches that are simple but powerful, using stories and statistics in a way that create the type of positive mental images with which voters can relate.

The Democratic Party must also take great care to ensure that their candidates have unimpeachable credentials and be seen as scrupulously honest to avoid the ethical baggage that weighed Clinton down in 2016.

In addition, Democratic candidates must learn to focus on the voter’s primary question – “what’s in it for me?”. Complex messages about complex issues will not resonate with the bulk of American voters.

They must not tell or yell, they must sell.

Absent that, Trump might well beat them again.

Every message, every speech, every commercial, every social media post, must focus on how any element of the party’s platform will contribute directly and positively to the individual voter’s life. Candidates must avoid messages that don’t relate to the actual realities of average voters. They must focus on clear, positive messages, that will lift the electorate up and allow it to dream of attainable better times for all.

Canada’s Justin Trudeau showed the way forward for positive politics in the 2015 Canadian election, and Emmanuel Macron did the same in the French presidential election of 2017.

Positive campaigning can and does work. With strong and simple messages and excellent message delivery.

Can a Democrat succeed similarly in 2020 and beat Trump?

For the sake of global stability and ethical governance, I most certainly hope so.

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