Can Harris Appeal To Working Class Voters With a Reframed Economic Narrative?

Anger at inflation has damaged the Democrats’ message on the economy. As the fresh face in the race, Harris has the opportunity to call for a "New American Dream."

The flawless transition to Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee has pumped hope, energy, money, and enthusiasm into Democrats’ 2024 campaign. But Harris has not yet defined a crisp economic message for what still remains a “reelection” campaign for a second consecutive term in the White House for the Democrats. She will need to do so in order to avoid another razor tight electoral college race and hope to gain Democratic Party control of Congress.

Harris’ improved polling in both the national and swing state races indicates that previously unenthusiastic Democrats are coming home and will now come out to vote for Harris. But my sense is that working class Democrats, independents, and disconnected voters will still need convincing. When the dust settles after Harris’ VP choice and the Democratic National Convention, we are likely to still be in a tight, competitive race. Trump may regain his footing and his attacks on Harris’ record may start to resonate. As we move into the fall, voters who do not pay much attention to policy debates or the political vitriol bouncing around social media will focus, as they always do, on pocketbook issues.

All the evidence indicates that this is an area that Democrats remain vulnerable. Democrats have been losing working class voters for decades, with support from white working class voters dropping from 52 to 35% from 1968 to 2020. In recent years, this malaise has spread to non-white working class voters as well, whose support for Democrats dropped 18 percent from 2012 to 2020. 

Biden/Harris made recovery of the middle-class the core theme of the 2020 campaign and changed enough minds to eke out narrow victories in key states. This victory was followed up with meaningful achievements –- the infrastructure law, the CHIPS Act, and the clean energy investment bill (otherwise known as the Inflation Reduction Act) –- all directed at boosting American manufacturing and providing good paying jobs for the middle-class. Yet, much to Democrats’ frustration, voters’ concerns about the high-inflation two years ago and stubbornly high prices for groceries and housing today, have been a drag on Democrats’ 2024 prospects. Prior to Biden dropping out of the race, polls showed that voters gave Trump higher marks than Biden on handling the economy and taming inflation by as much as 22 points. It is possible that Harris could gain the White House mainly through a negative campaign against Trump’s detestable persona and the policy craziness of the MAGA movement, but she would be far better served by also developing a positive case for her candidacy with an economic message to which marginal voters can relate.  

Harris’ message needs to take into account the reasons why Democrats have been losing working class voters despite their strong advocacy on pocketbook issues such as health care, family leave, equal pay, a higher minimum wage, labor rights and child care for decades. 

Harris needs to take into account that Trump has been successful in convincing a chunk of the population that Democrats are “elites” who do not care about people like them. Trump obsesses over things like electric vehicles and low-flow showers because he believes they show how Democrats prioritize issues like climate change and environmental protection over the economic concerns of middle class Americans. This sentiment was exacerbated during the pandemic when Democrats seemed to be beholden to the public health bureaucracy compared to the GOP which called for reopening the economy more quickly and opposed measures like school closings and mask-mandates. Democrats’ foreign policy that emphasizes international alliances and support for global institutions reinforces this theme by bolstering Trump’s charges that he puts “American’s first” compared to the Democrats and is a bulwark against the American people being ripped off by foreigners. Finally, Trump plays on the white working classes’ racial anxiety, painting the Democratic Party as aggressively advancing the economic interests of people of color over those of whites. Trump’s overt appeals to Christianity, calls to ban so-called “critical race theory” in schools, and attacks on transgenderism are all part of a combined cultural-economic message that he will “fight” for a certain sector of the population over the interests of “others.” From day one, immigration has been the rocket fuel for Trump’s appeal, combining in one issue people’s concerns that their economic opportunities are being taken by non-Americans with their cultural anxiety about America’s changing demographic composition.

Harris’ challenge will be to speak to the voters that have not fully bought into the Trump narrative yet are struggling economically and share some of the cultural anxieties that have animated the working class’s flight from the Democratic Party. And she will need to do so while remaining faithful to Democrats’ commitment to the environment, protecting civil rights, and addressing structural racism. This is no easy task.

I am sure that there are people with access to research and polling data who are far more skilled than me at crafting a forward looking narrative that will appeal to these voters. But I suggest that Harris build on the ideas laid out in her 2012 convention speech, when she said “the American dream belongs to all of us,” by advocating for a set of economic policies that would constitute “A New American Dream.”  

The “New American Dream” should be a set of policies that signal a break from the free market oriented policies that both parties emphasized in the early part of the century, but Democrats have broken away from during the Biden/Harris Administration. Democrats should make clear that they are prepared to continue investing to ensure that the jobs of the future are located in United States and using tools like targeted tariffs to prevent emerging domestic industries from being overrun by unfair labor practices abroad. The New American Dream means that America will be a country that builds things – computer chips, new roads and bridges, factories to produce disease curing drugs, a new energy grid, solar farms and so on. These investments will provide good paying jobs now and also make America an attractive place to do business in the future, creating a virtuous cycle of economic growth. And the New American Dream is about investing in the American people by revitalizing our public schools and universities, training our workforce for the high-tech jobs of the future, and providing economic assistance with housing to reduce the cost-of-living for young people and help them build wealth in the future.

“New” is forward looking and positive. Focusing on what is “new” also gives Harris the opportunity to show she is going to do different things in office, not just repeat what occurred the past four years. By calling for something “New” – Harris can also distance herself from “Bidenomics,” which too many voters associate with high inflation and expensive prices. There is some early polling showing that voters have more confidence in Harris’ approach to the economy than Biden’s. She may well be able to try and take credit for the increase in manufacturing jobs and wages in recent years, while distancing herself from the episode of high inflation in 2021-22.   

“New American Dream” is also a good contrast with “Make America Great Again!” MAGA suggests that America was great before, but isn’t now. The before-times that Trump is frequently hearkening back to, however, was a time when women were not powerful forces in the workplace and racial and ethnic minorities lacked political, social and economic power. By calling for a “New American Dream,” Harris would be explicitly including these key parts of her coalition in her vision of the future, while simultaneously appealing to voters who feel disadvantaged by the current economy.  

Harris should use universal language in laying out her economic narrative. This “New American Dream” should be equally available to white working class voters in the Midwest and young people of color in Atlanta or Phoenix that are having trouble in today’s economy. As a mixed-race woman that has a strong record on diversity, Harris need not make overt appeals to discrete groups in the same way that Biden needed to in 2020. Indeed, the 2020 Democratic platform went way overboard in this regard.  (In that platform there were 24 references to “people of color,” 37 references to “black,” 17 to “Latino,” 72 to “Indigenous,” “Indian” and “Native American,” 32 to LGBTQ+, 15 to “transgender,” 63 to “race” and “racial,” 34 to “discriminate” and “discrimination,” 50 to “gender,” 60 to “women,” and 23 to “disability.”).

Promising a “New American Dream” can also provide Harris with a narrative for combatting the challenges that many American families are facing, whether from high rents, an unaffordable housing market, and ever increasing educational costs.  These are tough problems, but voters will respect a candidate who acknowledges them, empathizes with voters, and proposes solutions. Again – recall how Bill Clinton excelled in showing voters that “I feel your pain.” So far, Harris seems as if she might have the political skills to do this effectively.  

The “New American Dream” should also have some policies that demonstrate a break between the Democratic Party and the economic and cultural elites that have so much power in modern society. Calling for the end to legacy preferences in college admissions, for example, would be a potent message that Democrats believe that economic mobility must be equally available to all. This policy would have the dual benefit of demonstrating that Democrats are not beholden exclusively to their highly educated voter base.  

The “New American Dream” should also include direct appeals to those who feel left out of the information economy that advantages highly educated urbanites but provides few opportunities to those who live outside our big cities with a high school education or less. These communities are disadvantaged by poor schools, declining public services, and a lack of accessible health care. Reversing these macro-economic trends is no easy matter.  But if Democrats want to stop losing elections in these regions by wide margins, they must start speaking to these concerns. Part of the “New American Dream” ought to be the ability to choose to live in a small town while sending your kids to good public schools and having access to quality health care. There is no reason why the themes that enable Democrats to win gubernatorial races in places like Kentucky and Minnesota can’t be part of the national message. 

Finally, the New American Dream can support the Democrats’ message on immigration. Harris should reject chaotic flows of migrants across the southern border as a means for gaining entry to the United States and promise to continue Biden’s executive order that has closed the border to asylum applicants when border apprehensions are excessive. But she should also promise to keep the American dream alive for families who have lived lawfully and productively in this country for decades by rejecting Trump’s call for un-American and economy damaging “mass deportations.”

The idea that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy or that MAGA is “weird” will only get Democrats so far between now and November. Politics needs to be about telling voters a story about how the future will be better than the present. Kamala Harris has the skills to be this storyteller, but she needs a more fulsome and convincing economic narrative than has been presented by the Biden/Harris campaign so far this year. Harris’ speech to the Democratic National Convention in 17 days is her one big chance to do this.