In the panic following the loss of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania many Democrats started debating whether we need a shift in strategy. Should we go after the white working class voters who we have apparently lost to the racist Republican wacko? Everybody is asking: who are these people and what do they want? Chris Arnade has interesting, controversial views on it. Greg and Armando of Daily Kos Radio disagreed on air Feb 6, 2017. Countless think pieces have been written, but all seem to have a very simple logic: Trump voters are X. Therefore Democrats need to consider doing Y.
Some say Trump voters are racist. Others say they feel shamed. One group says they’re angry because they’ve been left behind economically. Some say class warfare. Others brainwashing by Limbaugh and/or Hannity.
The key point that everyone is missing: Trump voters are various and sundry. There are 62 million people who cast a ballot for Trump. They did not all have the same motivation. While it may be useful to establish some broad categories for the sake of discussion, overall any paragraph that states “Trump voters want X” is simply wrong. To be accurate we need to say “A certain, unknown percentage of Trump voters want X”
- Some Trump voters are undoubtedly hard core racists.
- Some are simply 95% uninformed. They know nothing about government, but they think “bring jobs back” sounds good.
- Some have been dysinformed. They think Hillary really did kill Vince Foster and the guys in Benghazi.
- Some blame Washington DC for their economic troubles, so always vote for the outsider (every presidential election winner for the last 40 years, except H.W. Bush, has been perceived as a DC outsider)
- Some really think that Trump is a successful businessman. They might even think gov’t should be run like a business.
- Some are simply misinformed. They think crime is rising, unemployment is high, and black people receive generous gov’t benefits not available to whites.
- Some honestly believe that the mythical homosexual agenda must be stopped or a plague of gay will infect everybody.
- Some were very excited about voting for Trump.
- Some held their noses and/or decided at the last minute.
- Some didn’t think he would win. They thought they were casting a protest vote.
- Some honestly didn’t want a woman to be POTUS.
Trump voters are various and sundry. The wide variety of their motivations means that any targeted response would be more or less meaningless. There is no way to design a PR strategy that would reliably reach them, because they are simply all over the map.
Hypothetically the Democratic Party could win over some GOP voters by pretending there really is a terrible crime wave because rapists are pouring over the border. In practice, however, it would never work. The base would never accept lies like that.
My solution is simple and not dramatic. Keep telling the truth. Most Trump voters simply won’t accept it. They probably won’t even listen. That’s OK. Don’t panic. Those living in denial always get smacked in the face by the truth sooner or later.
So we come to another mostly forgotten but exceedingly important point: GOP voters are not the only group. While it would be really nice to win the affection of the Donald’s 62 million, it is dumb to forget that over 100 million eligible voters didn’t vote at all last November. There is every reason to believe that motivating just 10% of them would result in a Democratic landslide of 1932 proportions.
In short, changing our core message just to please some wishy-washy uninformed, dysinformed, or maybe outright deplorable voters is misguided and counterproductive. Our election strategy should be: Energize the base, Get out the vote, Be inclusive, Talk to everybody, Play offense. Yep, basically what Obama did in ’08 and ’12.