If she loses, this is why.
Harris's recent messaging pivot is a bad strategy to win working class votes.
Yesterday, The Guardian published an editorial featuring new data and analysis from the CWCP. The author, a CWCP researcher Dustin Guastella, argues “To win, Harris should talk more about working-class needs and less about Trump.” He continues:
In line with our past research, we found that economically focused messages and messages that employed a populist narrative fared best relative to Trump-style messages about Biden’s competence, immigration, corrupt elites, critical race theory, inflation, election integrity and tariffs. No surprise there. Meanwhile, Harris’s messages on abortion and immigration fared worse than any of the economic or populist messages we tested.
Yet no message was as unpopular as the one we call the “democratic threat” message.
Unfortunately, according to a number of reports and an independent analysis forthcoming from the CWCP, the Harris campaign appears to be doubling-down on the ‘democracy’ messaging we found least appealing among working-class voters.
Guastella concludes:
If Harris loses, it’ll be because the campaign and the candidate represent a party that is now fundamentally alien to many working people – a party that has given up on mobilizing working people around shared class frustrations and aspirations. A party incapable of communicating a simple, direct, progressive economic policy agenda. A party so beholden to a contradictory mix of interests that, in the effort to appease everyone and offend no one, top strategists have rolled out a vague, unpopular and uninspiring pitch seemingly designed to help them replay the results of the 2016 election.
You can read the editorial here.
On the same topic, Matthew Karp, a US History Professor who sits on the CWCP board, appeared on Breaking Points with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti yesterday morning. “With Pennsylvania voters,” Karp claimed, “and specifically with independent and working class voters, the strong populist and economic-focused messages performed better than any other.”
Discussing the findings of the newest CWCP report he argues, “Yes, abortion and ‘democracy’ did bring out the Democratic Party base in 2022. But among the blue-collar voters Harris needs to win this year, with a much larger electorate, the populist and progressive economic messages were far more effective.”
You can watch Karp’s appearance below:
This newsletter is produced to promote new research and analyses produced by the Center for Working-Class Politics. Please subscribe and share so that we can grow our readership and support for the Center. Thank you.