It WAS "the Economy"

And, how "an economy" is "told"... as story.

If I keep rewriting this, I will never send it off. I’ll explain my hesitation at the end of this blog and ask you to understand.

As exit surveys become available, we learn that large numbers of Republican voters were not in favor of specific Trump policy positions. Yet virtually every identifiable group (demographic and geographical) moved together toward the Republican candidate, an individual that many found deeply flawed as a person. This election was not about specific issues, nor a mandate to give Trump a free hand. It was about the one overriding issue that impacts us all: the cost of goods and services.    

But if that was all I had to say, I would stop writing at this point and probably tear up what I have written.  Yes, it was about the economy, but what the voter worked with was not an abstraction, not a set of numbers or an economist’s analysis. What people held in their minds as they voted for Trump was a “story.”

It started with how much, before Biden was President, they used to pay for rent, or groceries or new appliances, and ended with how much they pay now.  In the middle was a government that was weak and incompetent and overmatched by a monster they created and couldn’t control (called Inflation) which forced people to pay more than they could afford for the good life they once had in the good old Trump days. 

Stories to most of us are a natural way of understanding the world.  I remember how first year students at the colleges where I taught, when given an assignment to explain a phenomenon, almost always wrote a story of events, not a critical analysis of possible hypotheses and relevant evidence.  

We want to be told “the story.” And simpler, thank you, the better.

We don’t have time to listen to a lecture about economics, and don’t have the tools or training to analyze causal structures and contingent possibilities. 

American culture, as most students of our history have noted, is forward thinking with happy endings.  We do not anticipate a smooth ride, but we expect solutions to the roadblocks.  Trump offered such a narrative of change.  Harris for all the rhetoric of aspiration lifting, seemed to be offering more of the same, i.e. nothing.  Aspirational words sound hollow, almost formulaic, when the other side is offering a “strong man,” who will break the logjams that are limiting the prosperity we believe we deserve (because we are Americans).  When the Democrats said that Trump was dangerous because he called for strong and decisive action, the voter responded.  “Just what we need.” 

Of course, this “story” of the economy does not do justice to reality.  Factually, the first year to two of the prior Trump administration continued the Obama legacy economy.  We were well off then because of Obama policies, that it if government had much to do with it.

Presidents don’t have magic wands.  New policies take time to have an effect, if in fact they ever do.  The American economy is a strong, stable, deeply sourced and managed, reality.  It operates within a framework of law and regulation that are tenaciously in place even when events impact the stability of the global economy (wars, plagues, climate, etc.) of which we are a part. Obviously, initial actions, speeches and policies, of a new Administration, if they do “kick in” at all, don’t kick in right away.    And the same can be said for Biden’s policies.

History, though, may be kind to these past four years. And Biden may get his share of credit. Jobs were saved and created, supply line disruptions fixed, infrastructure repaired, the economy “soft landed,” and we began to build a new “greener” economy.

That matters. And will matter to the students of American history and government. It is the important part of the historical story. But it was not an important part of the story that voters accepted and that won the election.

I am not saying that once Republican Party story was told and retold, the election was decided. But I am saying that the Harris campaign did not fight back in the right way.

To battle a story, you have to offer a counter narrative. (While, in addition, you ridicule your opponent’s story.) 

You have to start with what is already in people’s minds.  That’s the material out of which people weave successful stories.  You have to know this material. What you have “in your mind,” is not what others have in theirs.

You then appeal to their willingness to believe, you heighten the risk and you imagine a future victory.  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”—a great beginning for FDR, especially because it involved us. That is the kind of story that the Democratic Party has told in the past.  In it we are not passive victims and don’t need a Superhero. We ARE the heroes.  

To summarize, the Democrats might have won the battle of stories…and the election.  They didn’t try and they lost. 

And now, a brief reflection on why it was hard to write this. Of course, it is more complicated. I don’t have a fully worked out theory about the role of narrative in political communication. I suspect that the border and immigration “stories” can be dealt with in the same way and that, including the economy, may be part of a larger story. I’ve left a lot out.

And I don’t have a complete the rival story that could have been told.

In this post, I’m only trying, modestly, to suggest, that the Democrats will do a lot better in the future if they respect ALL the voters and treat them as friends, invite them to sit around a common campfire and listen to their stories. And tell a good story themselves in turn. If this is naive, so be it.