This past Saturday, I volunteered for Elizabeth Warren’s town hall in Cincinnati.
I saw her speak several years ago and I have to say I think she’s gotten even better. She’s personal. She’s funny. She’s authentic. She connects with people. And her experience when it comes to economics is perhaps unparalleled. She’s also able to make the complex simple in a way that few others can.
You’ve probably heard about some of her policy ideas recently. Here, I’ll break down three powerful ways she communicated her ideas in her town hall and show you how these can help you in your conversations.
1. She answers the question “Why”
Warren poses in a selfie with a group of students.
People are inspired by a sense of purpose. They want to know why you’re doing what you’re doing.
The reason for this is that people don’t make decisions like computers. They don’t vote for issues. What they tend to look for is someone they can trust. And you tend to trust people when you know why they’re doing what they’re doing. For this reason, the first question anyone running for office, or broader than that, anyone, should be able to answer is: “Why do you believe what you believe?”
Why tends to be much more powerful than any details or policies. No matter what you think of Trump, I bet 10 different people would give me a similar answer about why he ran in 2016. Whether you believe him or not, he ran because he wants to bring back a “greatness” that he sees as lost.
Warren is running to change the culture of corruption in Washington.
Whatever issue brings you here today, I guarantee you it’s touched by corruption. So here’s how I think about this. We have got to make changes. Not nibbling change. Not one statute over here and one over there and a little piece of regulation over there. We need big systemic change in this country.
As primaries approach, one of the questions to ask yourself when it comes to a candidate is: “Why is that candidate running?” If you can’t answer the question immediately or the answer isn’t very powerful, that’s a warning sign.
The reason to look for powerful answers is because we’re all going to be having conversations where we’re advocating for a candidate. The best way to sell a candidate is to tell people their story. Tell them why they’re running. If they don’t have a good reason or they don’t have a good story, it’s hard to get excited and sell others on a candidate.
David Atkins makes a similar case in a recent Washington Monthly article titled: “What if electability is more about authenticity than moderation?” Authenticity is different from honesty. What Atkins means is that people understand why you’re running. They understand your motivation.
When you vote in the primary, take this into consideration. Can I get excited about this candidate? How hard will it be to talk to others about this candidate?
It’s easy to talk about Elizabeth Warren.
2. She’s a powerful storyteller
We tend to like others who we can relate to and one powerful way we relate to people is through their stories.
Warren has a powerful story about how she came to her conclusions in part through her own personal experiences. You can listen to the entire video below, but I’ve excerpted one of the most powerful parts of her story:
When we were growing up my daddy had a lot of jobs. And he sold a lot of different stuff. He sold fencing. He sold carpeting. He sold paint. And it was when I was in middle school, the boys were all gone, it was just my momma and my dad and me. And that’s when my daddy had a massive heart attack. It was a scary thing for me. The neighbors came from church. They brought covered dishes. Everybody spoke in whispers. Daddy made it through. But when he came home, he didn’t go back to work.
It goes on for a long time and our family’s station wagon is gone. And then at night I hear my folks … night after night … my mother tucks me in and when they think I’ve gone to sleep is when I hear her cry. And it’s when I hear them talk about what’s happening with their lives. That’s when I learned words like “mortgage” and “foreclosure.”
One morning I got up and I walked into my folks’ bedroom and there on the bed is “the dress.” Now some of you in this room may know “the dress.” It’s the one that only comes out for weddings, funerals, and graduations. And there’s my mama, she’s in her slip and her stockinged feet. I don’t even think she sees me when she’s walking in. She’s crying and she’s pacing. And she’s saying, “We will not lose this house. We will not lose this house. We will NOT lose this house.”
She was 50 years old. She’d never worked outside the home. And she was terrified. Finally she looks at me. And she looks at that dress. And she looks back at me and she wipes her face, pulls on the dress, puts on her high-heeled shoes, walks to the Sears and gets a minimum-wage job.
That minimum wage job saved our house. It saved our family. For many, many years, I felt that was the story that one mama taught to her daughter. That is … No matter how hard it is, no matter how scary it is out there, when it comes down to it, you reach down deep, you find what you have to find, and you take care of the people you love.
One of the things that makes her stories so powerful is that she starts with the personal and then she relates it to other people.
Now it was only years after that that I came to understand that wasn’t just the story of my family, that was the story of millions of people across this country. Every day, people would make that decision that no matter how hard it is, no matter how scared they are, they reached down deep, they find what they have to find, and they take care of the people they love. That’s who we are.
And then, she relates it to our system.
But here’s the deal … It was only years after that that I came to understand that that very same story about my mama in that bedroom was also a story about government. Because back when I was a girl, a minimum wage full-time job in America would support a family of three.
She starts with the personal, relates it to others, and then relates it to a systemic issue. That’s really powerful stuff that people will remember.
It’s not dry. It’s not data. It’s personal.
If we want change, we need to learn how to make the systemic personal. These decisions affect peoples’ lives. And things don’t just “happen.” People make them happen.
I taught in law school as a college professor. I taught everything that has to do with money. That’s been my central focus. I’ve taught contract law, commercial law, and corporate law and corporate finance and economics and bankruptcy law and all the pieces.
But there was always one central question in my work. And that is: “What’s happening to working families in America? Why is America’s middle class being hollowed out? Why is it that for people who work every bit as hard as my mother worked a generation ago that the road has gotten so much rockier and so much steeper? And for people of color, it’s even rockier and even steeper.
And the answer is like the answer on minimum wage. It’s not an accident. It’s about who government works for.
It’s not an accident. We can do better. Our elected officials can do better. We just have to make them do better.
3. She uses the power of threes
People get overwhelmed and our minds tend to disengage if you throw too much stuff at them too quickly. A good rule of thumb for what people can process at one time is three things. Stick to three things.
When it came time to talk about solutions, she kept it to three things:
- Attack corruption head on
- Rewrite the structural rules of the economy
- Protect our democracy
For each one, she got into a little bit more detail about what each meant. But she kept coming back to one of the three themes.
Here’s one quick example of how to rewrite the structural rules of the economy:
We’ve now got so much concentration in many industries—big Ag, big Tech, big financials, and so—and these companies get so big they just do what they want to do. If they want to roll over their employees, they just do it. They want to roll over their customers, they just do it. They want to roll over their communities, you bet. The way you change this structurally is you have to get more power into the hands of workers. That means making it easier to join a union and giving unions more power.
Close
There was more from her session but I’ll honor my own rule and stick to three things that can help you speak better about politics.
You can do this too. It’s not hard. Those who are good at it tend to be good at it because they’ve practiced. All you have to do is think about why you believe what you believe. Think about the stories that have made you who you are. What are the morals of your stories? What lessons can you draw from them?
A quick framework I often fall back on to help me reflect about myself is: “I believe _________ because _________.” Think about who’s inspired you and who’s helped you grow as a person.
Then tell these stories to people. And keep telling them. As Warren says: “Dream big. Fight hard.”
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook now available).