I guess this is yet another “what went wrong” column. In all the discussions I have seen so far, there is little recognition of what I consider the very post important factor in this loss. And it really is quite basic, dating back millennia, and certainly raised to a fine art by Hitler and Goebbels.
The essential principle is to focus your rhetoric on things that can be made to be visceral and personal, even if there is no basis in reality. Conversely, avoid the things that are situational, and apply only to smaller subsets of the population.
Let’s look at the things that Harris was proposing. Here are the main ones:
- A $6,000 child credit for new parents.
- Increasing the small business tax credit to 50k.
- Build 3 million new homes.
- Home nursing care covered under Medicare
- More drug price negotiating by Medicare
- Roll back Dobbs
What these all have in common is that they apply directly to small subsets of the population. And for others to give them any credit requires a great deal of empathy. That’s a lousy formula. Let me illustrate:
- If you are not a new parent, you may not care, may even be resentful of others getting something you can’t get.
- If you aren’t a small business owner, this means nothing to you.
- This is only a benefit if you expect to buy your first home several years from now.
- Easily ignored if you aren’t old or sick.
- Easily ignored if you are young and don’t need expensive drugs.
- Hard for men to care, and only directly applies to young women of voting age
Of course, Harris’ ideas are all things that would be good for our society. But the point is each one moves only a small segment of the population, and may turn off an equal number of people who don’t see the big picture.
Contrast that with Trump. He didn’t make ANY proposals that depend on one’s individual situation. Here are examples of his proposals:
- Deport 20 million “illegals”. You don’t have to know anything about the situation in order to believe that these people are taking your jobs and causing a crime wave. Everybody can share in those fears.
- 40% tariffs on all imported goods, and we’ll make the other countries pay. Again, it doesn’t depend on your personal situation. Anybody can get excited about “sticking it to the Chinese and all those other countries taking our jobs.”
Trump made various other boasts and they all follow this same pattern of identifying a vague bogey man and then inflaming emotions.
IMHO, this asymmetry in the rhetoric is the main reason for this loss. And this is no accident. Trump and the people around him have studied how Hitler and Goebbels did it, and they simply applied that same formula to today’s issues. We really need to understand how this works and why our approach has no chance against the Goebbels formula.