Once upon a time, I thought Americans valued fairness. It was a value people embraced. I will make a leap of assumption that it is still a value with more voters than those who are completely self-absorbed and self-promoting. What about a good gut cry: "It ain't fair" and proposing a " fair deal for all". The implication that "all" means rich who need to chip in their fair share and ordinary people, who are just hard working people, trying make ends meet, caring for others or themselves and their families, who are very disadvantaged, sick, aged, uneducated, or victims of racial or cultural discrimination.
Packaging it always the challenge, but I heard a way to do it recently. Whatever you think of former Rep. David Jolly, who morphed from a Florida Republican Congressman to an independent and finally to a Democrat to run for Florida governor, or even if you think he has no chance to win, he has a way with words 6/6/ and 6/7, 2025. He had two short phrases in a recent CBS interview that hit home to me and he repeated it on other media: He is for Democratic values that "fights for an economy for all and a party that lifts up everyone.", providing a context for the economic fairness and cultural issues he then fleshed out in short soundbites of issues relevant to Florida.
Perhaps I am a cockeyed optimist, but Democrats I think understand that the goal of the anti DEI application of the radical MAGAs is to roll back the civil rights movement and it is not fair to all , tax policies that give great deals to the very rich at the expense of the very poor are not fair to all, or propose tariff policies that screw the budget conscious families to satisfy some notion of a power grabbing president, are also just not fair.
Democrats' messaging to date not been put into clear, sharp words. Democrats have backed into it by decrying each issue as it comes up as bad for ordinary people. It has become a predictable background noise. Democrats should reverse the order and state the value up front instead of delivering it as a conclusion before getting into the brain-numbing weeds of public policy issues and data, as cable talkers, those at political rallies, town halls, and sound-bite interviewees often do.
Democrats have a history of the New Deal, the war on poverty, and promoting consumer and environmental protections that attempt to bring fairness in public policies to more than just the rich. Why not resurrect the slogan from a true populist president, Harry S. Truman: "a fair deal". It's roots go deep in Democratic party traditions and Truman's version was as timely then as it is today, if more so."President Truman's Fair Deal ensured the survival of social security, preserved the American welfare system, and prioritized civil rights legislation." Truman's Fair Deal | Overview, History & Significance - Lesson | Study.com It just needs to be packaged a bit differently, as a value applied to our modern times. It is both an implied attack on MAGA as well as a positive message of what Democrats stand for today that has appeal across party lines.
.The truth is the MAGA core group will never be moved off whatever appeals to them, including dog-whistles and attempts by Trump to execute unconstitutional policies that favor one race or economic power over another. There are voters out there who still value being fair or who count themselves as victims of the MAGA unfairness policies. Democrats do still have to make sure those being hurt know who to blame, but that is a subpoint, not the theme alone. It needs to be put in context of fairness.
No comments:
Post a Comment