Republicans ate up two precious weeks of valuable time fighting over whether the GOP stands for or against the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. It was a political gift.
Now Democrats need to get on track with their 2022 messaging. First, please spare us all the bleak outlooks. As Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin noted, having a Democratic strategist go on CNN Sunday to tell viewers that Democratic "prospects are pretty depressing in the midterms right now" isn't exactly helpful.
Nor should anyone be declaring defeat this far out when the miles to go between now and Election Day include a potentially cataclysmic ruling on Roe v. Wade along with a steady drumbeat of Jan. 6 revelations and primetime hearings.
What is perhaps most concerning for Democrats at the moment is inflation—a top economic issue in most surveys these days. Unfortunately, some Democrats still don't seem to have put a formula together for responding to questions about inflation. When President Joe Biden was asked about inflation in a pre-Super Bowl interview with NBC News, his answer meandered a bit and he ended up invoking Nobel laureates to reassure Americans that inflation would "taper off" over the course of the year.
Without picking apart the entire answer, President Biden is undoubtedly capable of better. His super power is empathy and it's hard to understand why he didn't lead with that. He also failed to invoke all the measures Democrats have passed to help blunt the impact of the pandemic on American pocketbooks.
Democrats' answers on inflation seem like they should be relatively formulaic by now given that it’s a top issue for so many voters.
Feel their pain
Democrats must let voters know that they empathize—that the price of gas and meat and dairy is outrageous, and they get it.
Plug Democratic work on the issue
Democrats can't miss the opportunity to remind people that the economic pressures caused by the pandemic are exactly why they passed the American Rescue Plan that included putting checks in people's bank accounts, increased the monthly child tax credit payable to families immediately, and helped small businesses stay afloat, saving millions of jobs. It's also why Democrats passed the infrastructure bill, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs.
Stick it to corporatists
Remind voters that this is also a lesson in corporate greed, with many companies profiting off a bad situation. A Navigator Research poll last month found that 73% of Americans agreed that “corporations being greedy and raising prices to make record profits” was a cause of inflation, including 44% who believed it to be a “major cause.”
Here's what else we're working on
Democrats can tout the new initiatives they are working on to continue easing economic pressure, such as a new bill temporarily suspending the gas tax or the America Competes Act. Obviously, Democrats should invoke something they are legitimately working on and feel passionate about, but the policy itself isn't exactly the point right now. The point is to let people know that inflation is the issue they go to bed thinking about and get up thinking about, and here’s what they’re doing to help.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi offered some glimpses of what this messaging should look like in her Sunday interview on ABC's This Week.
“What unifies us is the empathy that we have for America’s working families and the priority of meeting their needs. Lower cost, bigger paychecks, lower taxes, all paid for by making everyone pay their fair share," she said. “Who is more empathetic than Joe Biden? Who has a bigger vision, more knowledge, more strategic thinking about all this, more authenticity in associating with America’s working families?”
Pelosi had more good midterm messaging tidbits in that interview, but I'll leave it there for now. At the very least, Democrats have got to get their inflation messaging down. And frankly, it shouldn't be that hard—it plays to their strength of identifying with the plight of average Americans.