Memo to Democrats: ‘Kitchen table issues’ won’t save you

Memo to Democrats: ‘Kitchen table issues’ won’t save you

Paul Waldman — Read time: 4 minutes

Columnist

There are those who say Democrats are in denial about the potential electoral catastrophe they face in November. That’s not true; every Democrat knows how midterm elections usually go and understands the precarious position of their congressional majorities.

The problem is that, once again, the party is hearing the siren song of “kitchen table issues.” Which could lead it to dash itself on the shores of defeat.

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said what matters is what the election “means personally to the American people, to their kitchen table issues.” Democrats need voters to understand “the empathy that we have for America’s working families and the priority of meeting their needs.”

“When I’m home and I talk to Nevadans, it’s the kitchen-table issues,” said Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto. She and three other Democrats up for reelection have introduced a bill to temporarily suspend the federal gas tax — a bill that won’t pass, addressing something most Americans likely don’t even know exists.

Meanwhile, Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who runs the party’s Senate campaign arm, is emphasizing the importance of “bread-and-butter issues,” making clear that the party is focused both on the table itself and on the items resting there.

But this is about more than silly, overused metaphors. It’s about a dangerous fantasy that has gripped Democrats for decades, the idea that they can drain the emotion out of politics by focusing on concerns that are immediate and mundane, and thereby stave off defeat.

Let’s say this as clearly as we can: If this is all Democrats do between now and November, they will fail.

Look at the competing messages the parties are sending on inflation. Republicans say “This is Joe Biden and the Democrats’ fault! They’ve destroyed your life!” Democrats say, “We know this is a major bummer, it’s terrible, it really is, we understand.”

Whom do Democrats want voters to blame? Nobody knows. Yet again, they’re telling a story without a villain — or rather, telling no coherent story at all. Confronted with that vacuum, people will default to blaming the party in power.

If they wanted to direct some of the anger people feel about inflation, Democrats could, for instance, more aggressively attack corporate price gouging. That’s an undeniable reality, as many companies have taken the opportunity to jack up prices, increasing their profits far beyond the actual increase in their costs. It’s a readily available villain and a way for Democrats to frame the discussion on their own terms.

I can already hear Democrats saying: This is a complicated situation, and it’s hard to say precisely how much such profiteering accounts for the overall inflation picture. So it wouldn’t be responsible to focus solely on one emotionally evocative aspect of the issue rather than speaking to every possible nuance. And besides, liberal economists might offer a critique of our arguments!

Can you hear Republicans laughing?

The mistaken belief that empathy can save Democrats has its roots in Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, which happened in the wake of a recession. Clinton’s ability to connect with people’s suffering at a time when the economy was doing poorly was encapsulated in the words “I feel your pain” (even though the only time he actually said that was in response to a heckler).

But what’s important about the context of 1992 was that Clinton’s frequent displays of empathy said, in effect, “The people in power are responsible for your problems. I understand that, so let’s get rid of them together.”

In that case, empathy was the partner of anger. It didn’t dissipate people’s dissatisfaction — what Democrats would like to do now — it heightened it.

Then there’s 2018, when many Democratic candidates decided not to focus their campaigns on Donald Trump, but instead spent time talking about things like health care. When those candidates won, many Democrats convinced themselves that ignoring the dominant national issues, or addressing them in the quietest, least confrontational way possible, was the path to victory.

But that’s a fundamental misreading of what happened in 2018. In that year, the Democratic base was already angry and energized, and would turn out to vote precisely because of Trump. Congressional candidates didn’t need to talk about him, because he was on the front page every day; they could show voters in the middle they also cared about less dramatic issues, and the combination was more than enough to win.

It was like pedaling gently while the electric motor of their e-bike (the anger at Trump) rocketed them to the crest of a hill. The pedaling didn’t hurt, but it’s not why they got to the top.

Today, Democrats are in precisely the opposite position. Their base is demoralized, the Republican base is agitated, and voters in the middle are dissatisfied. Just saying “I care” is not going to be enough. Nor will it matter if they throw out a few half-baked policy proposals.

There are any number of ways Democrats could channel the things Americans are feeling about the economy, the pandemic and their prospects for the future. But it starts with acknowledging that, much as Democrats hate to admit it, politics runs on emotion. And if you’re the one trying to get people to feel less emotional about the state of things, you’re probably going to lose.