“Democrats Need
to Construct a Populist Counternarrative- What You Can Do”
Troy D. Smith
As a historian, I’ve spent much of the past decade -like
many of my colleagues -trying to sound a warning to the public about the
dangers of authoritarianism and fascism from a certain orange presence coming
down a golden escalator and into our political lives. Just before the election
of 2016 I took an informal poll of about a hundred fellow historians from
around the country -a few of them said that, at the time, Trump might not
technically qualify as a fascist, but at the very least he showed strong
authoritarian and fascist tendencies. Not one said he did not. Like many
Americans, I was genuinely shocked on that November day when he was declared
the winner over Hillary Clinton. I sincerely did not believe it was possible
that a sizable percentage of the American people could possibly cast their vote
for president for such a crass, vulgar, sexually abusive, cruel con artist.
Even with attempted Russian interference, I thought it would not even be close.
I learned a lot about the American people that day -things that many LGBTQ+
folks and people of color have always known.
I had some slight reassurance about human nature when he was
easily defeated by Biden in 2020. At last, I thought, the American people have
learned their lesson. I watched in numbed horror as the January 6 insurrection
unfolded. Horror turned into existential dread when, within a week, his
at-least-temporarily-shamed supporters started downplaying the whole thing or
denying what we had seen with our own eyes, and soon thereafter Republicans in
the Senate cravenly refused to convict him in his second impeachment, which
would have prevented his ever holding office again. From that moment, I began
to strenuously do my small part to help prevent him from returning to the White
House, this time without even the handful of semi-sane people who had tempered
his worst impulses in his first term.
I started writing a weekly political column in my local
newspaper. I cried out in the internet wilderness. I became a committeeman of
my state Democratic party. I joined activist groups. I tried to reach the
public with the lessons of history. I appealed to their sense of morality,
religion, patriotism, logic, reason, kindness, and basic human decency, as did
thousands and thousands of others like me.
But… the price of eggs.
That is, of course, an oversimplification. But not by much.
Trump not only won, he actually made advances among women, young people, and
most minority groups. Many of the very people he targets with his vitriol. He
did it in two ways: by turning them against each other, and by promising to
magically fix the economy (which he had helped tank).
This election day, I was not surprised. I was not
despondent. I was filled with a cold rage and a grim determination. And a dark
realization. The majority of voters, at the end of the day, are really only
concerned about their own wallet. Lofty ideals and spiritual affirmations are
fine, until it cuts into their bottom line. That’s not true of everybody, of
course, not by a long shot. But there are not enough lofty people in today’s
America to win an election on, and without winning elections we will -under the
authoritarian morass the once respected Republican Party has descended into
-lose more and more of our freedoms and ideals, and the more vulnerable among
us will lose their lives. It is time to get strategic. It is time to balance our
idealism with pragmatism, perhaps even a dose of cynicism. At the very least,
realism.
Before I go any further, let me clarify what I do not mean. Unlike many party analysts
giving election post-mortems, I do not
propose “backing off the woke stuff” because it ticks off Middle America. I do
not propose backing off on our commitment to diversity, justice, and equal
rights for all. That is the essence of who and what we are. But I do propose a
different approach.
I know you’ve all heard people saying that the Democratic
party’s weakness is losing touch with the working class, and that we need to embrace
economic populism. Some among us feel betrayed by such talk, because, after
all, we are talking about people who would like to take away their rights or
even their lives. So far, though, I have not seen anyone lay out that argument
as clearly and in quite the way I am about to -at least, not in public.
Trump wins because he appeals to people’s fears and angers,
like many a despot before him. Fear and anger are among the most powerful human
motivators. And they come in a broad palette; Hitler used fear and anger to
fuel the Holocaust, and the rest of the world used its fear and anger at what
he was doing to stop him. Our only hope of stemming the tide of
authoritarianism is to redirect the public’s fear and anger toward a different,
and legitimate, target.
Another thing the Trump approach leans heavily on: the
American public is not good at nuance or complexity, and are wooed by
narrative. It is preferably a narrative in which they can envision themselves
as the hero, or part of the hero team. Of course, a narrative is a story -and
an effective story must have conflict, which requires antagonists. I used to
say, in the writers’ workshops I led for years, if you don’t have conflict you
have a bunch of characters hanging around being happy and no one will read it.
“Us versus them” is an aspect of human behavior we rightly wish to relegate to
the past -which is not easy, as it is so hardwired into our cultures and the
human condition -but Trump has used it to great effect. It avails us nothing to
deride or condemn Trump to his followers, who identify him as the chaos-figure
they would like to be, vicariously burning everything down and disrupting the
social structure. Pointing out that he is doing those things only makes them
admire and identify with him more, reinforcing to them that they are part of
his “us.”
We need a different target, especially considering that
-should the republic stand -Trump will be unable to run for office again and no
one else will have the sort of charismatic hold on his followers that he has
achieved. Instead of focusing all our ire on Trump, let’s make it the entire
billionaire class. Let us construct an (accurate!) narrative with an
appropriate set of villains- let us reintroduce words like fat cats, big shots,
and especially robber barons, pointing out that they will reap all the benefits
and the common people will suffer. People can identify with that, and already
have fears about it. Let us emphasize that all
the rest of us -despite race, religion, or ethnic origin -are all in the same
boat, being trickled down on by the ones at the very top. The whole 99% is the
“us”, and the 1% is the “them”. As we do this, let us make sure to point out
the many wealthy Americans of the past who stood beside the regular folk and
served their country tirelessly, such as both Roosevelt presidents and John F.
Kennedy, to reinforce that we are not advocating for what they will spin as a
communist class war. It’s fine to be rich, so long as you are the Scrooge of
Christmas morning and not the Scrooge of Christmas Eve -and today’s robber
baron class is very much the latter. No, we are asking for their votes in order
to defend the country from greedy monopolists.
As despondent as many progressives have been since election
day, the ground for such an approach is more fertile now that at any time since
the Occupy movement. Far from lowering the price of eggs, Trump’s insane
tariffs and the DOGE debacle are going to seriously rock the economy,
especially for working class people, and many of them are starting to come
around to that fact. This will be much more true by the time of the midterm
elections, so we need to be softening their defenses now with as many
broadsides as we can deliver. It is time to take off the gloves.
Many within the Democratic Party will resist such a
strategy, as they are themselves too invested in the status quo and the
Clintonian centrism to which the party has continually reverted over the last
three decades. They will be concerned about the donor class. We need to drag
them along kicking and screaming if need be -if the people are mobilized,
corporate donors will follow, if nothing else to protect their bottom line.
Trump has shown us how true that is. Continually tacking to the center against
a prevailing wind leaves a vessel dead in the water.
It is time to be a movement, and move.
That’s what we can be doing now, as the economy is already starting to totter. Screaming
from the rooftops that we’re all being screwed over by the fat cats. The anger
will build, and at least some of the people who were not hardcore MAGA -just
remarkably short-sighted and not very empathetic -will start howling too, when
the economic effects of Trump’s policies start affecting them. We don’t need to reach them all, or convert them all -we just
have to turn a few, or help them reach a point where if nothing else they stay
home on election day, and it can make the difference.
