I’ve been thinking about this since the day after the election and been going back and forth on whether to say someone else should do it or just do it myself. Still not sure which, but here goes. It would be very beneficial for Democrats to create scorecards right now charting where inflation, unemployment and GDP were at the end of Biden’s term and regularly updating it with Trump’s latest numbers. One of the smaller benefits of this is these three numbers are currently pretty hard to beat. You can only get them slightly lower or higher, depending on which statistic you’re referring to, and you can get them much further into bad territory. I’d also add percentage of people with health insurance, even though that’s not normally considered an economic marker.
Leading into the November election, one of the big talking points was that this time Trump would be more ready, more experienced and better assisted in doing bad things. That’s true. But it works both ways. His opponents should be, and are, more prepared. We know the guy’s playbook. A year from now, if he’s lucky enough to have these numbers where they are now, he’ll be talking them up — in endless repetition — as evidence of the gangbusters Trump economy which is the best ever. He got a lot of mileage out of that in his first term despite the fact that he’d inherited that economy in solid shape from Barack Obama. You counter this with a chorus to remind everyone — constantly — that he’s bragging about the numbers he got from Joe Biden. Quite likely those numbers will be worse. And there should be a chorus reminding everyone of that. A chorus. Shareable infographics, memes, and more.
Nothing matters, you say? Bullshit.
What matters is consistent, easy to understand repetition, in line with a really constant recitation of what the opposition party offers. These things do matter. But it can’t come only at election time. It can’t be in policy-speak. It has to be in the language and idioms and visuals of social and alternative media where people are really getting most of their information.
Added to that, the country is now covered with embryonic factories, businesses, economic redevelopment projects and more courtesy of Joe Biden’s CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. Most of them are only just starting to get off the ground. And they’re disproportionately in red states or areas of Trump strength. There needs to be a concerted and consistent and voluble effort to brand these as projects and jobs brought to you by Democrats or Joe Biden, the precise mix there is open to debate.
This is first of all to take credit for what Democratic votes accomplished with an eye to future elections. But it’s as much to prevent them from being canceled by Trump and the Republican Congress. Different projects are more or less easy to cut or cancel. And many of these factories and manufacturing enterprises will be protected by Republican members of Congress because no one likes losing jobs in their states or districts. But it’s critical to start doing this now.
This is not a plan for Democrats’ future. There are a bunch of other things that are necessary too. But it’s a critical part, albeit by no means the largest, of any plan for the future. Winning elections turns much more on creative and forward-thinking new means of blocking and tackling than it does on ingenious strategies.
