"Democrats Need to Construct a Populist Counternarrative- What You Can Do"

 

“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.