How Should Kamala Close?

Today on TAP: The need to preserve our democracy is objectively urgent, but economic populism is the message that works.

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The days dwindle down to a precious few, as Maxwell Anderson wrote in his lyric for “September Song,” to a musical passage that composer Kurt Weill put in an ominously minor key. And ominously minor is a key now stalking Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. A national Wall Street Journal poll out today shows her trailing Donald Trump by two percentage points, while a Financial Times poll also out today shows Trump leading Harris by one percentage point on the question of which candidate voters trust more to handle the economy.

All of which raises the urgent question of what message Harris should drive home in the dozen days remaining before November 5th. Of late, she’s been campaigning with Liz Cheney and addressing the unprecedented threat that a new Trump presidency would pose to democracy. She’s scheduled a rally next Tuesday on the Ellipse, the site of Donald Trump’s incitement address to his assembled acolytes and thugs on January 6th, 2021. Having chosen that setting, she will surely deliver her clearest statement on the dangers that Trump poses to American democracy and the constitutional order. (The two are not synonymous, I hasten to point out, but that’s a problem I’m not addressing here.)

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Is that the most effective message Harris can deliver? As the legendary pollster Stan Greenberg notes in a piece posted on the Prospect site today, Harris’s most effective messaging is her policy on reducing the cost of living. Of all her ads, the one that registered most positively among voters is the one in which she says:

When I am elected president, I will make it a top priority to bring down costs. We should be doing everything we can to make it more affordable to buy a home and more than 100 million Americans will get a tax cut. I will help families; letting you keep more of your hard-earned money. As president, I will be laser focused on creating opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity.

Greenberg’s argument is reinforced by a survey of Pennsylvania voters out today from the Center for Working-Class Politics, co-sponsored and published by Jacobin. The survey compared Harris’s various messages, and found that “all populist and economic-centered messages outperform those that focus on immigration and abortion, and they dramatically outperform messages foregrounding Trump as a threat to democracy. These results hold across partisan lines and largely across class lines, measured by occupation, education, and income.” Indeed, it found that the attack on Trump as a threat to democracy was by far the least effective of Harris’s messages (notwithstanding, I should add, its obvious truth).

The survey ran a host of messages by Keystone State voters; the most popular of all was this:

Let’s call it like it is: Working-class Americans are struggling while the billionaires just get richer. We’re paying too much for gas, groceries, and even the medicine we need. It’s time we stand up to big corporations and the politicians in Washington who serve them. I’ll fight to cap prescription drug costs, crack down on price gouging, make sure corporations pay their fair share, and end tax breaks for billionaire crooks. It’s time to put working families first.

Crucially, this message did not alienate wealthier voters, who responded to it positively at almost identical rates as voters with annual incomes under $50,000.

So: Why is Harris stressing the democracy issue (putting aside its objective importance)? The fact that she’s been raising it particularly when campaigning with Liz Cheney by her side, and will raise it some more when she returns to the scene of Trump’s January 6th crimes, suggests it’s targeted at a sliver of voters whom the Harris campaign believes can be brought into her camp: moderate Republican suburban women, who were appalled by the mayhem of January 6th and Trump’s role in fomenting the lumpen attacks on American democracy.

Which is all well and good and significant. But her general closing message needs to emphasize her anti-elitist economics. If her November song is not to register in a minor key, that’s the contrast she needs to draw, the closer she needs to deliver.

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