Kamala Harris’s closing message might be a mistake

Former President Donald Trump once fomented an insurrection against the US government, in a bid to block the peaceful transfer of power. He has described his political opponents as an “enemy from within” that should be jailed — or else “handled” by the US military. His own former White House chief of staff says Trump praises Hitler in private and would like to establish a fascist dictatorship. And he has dehumanized immigrant communities, and vowed to deport them by the millions (including many whom are legal US residents). 

Meanwhile, Trump’s allies and running mate have touted plans to purge much of the civil service of disloyal elements, bend federal law enforcement to his will, and nullify any court decisions that get in their way.

In recent weeks, Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign has tried to alert undecided voters to these facts. The Democratic nominee has played clips of Trump’s most authoritarian remarks at her rallies, called him a fascist on national TV, and released an ad focused exclusively on the threat he poses to liberal democracy. On Tuesday, she will deliver a closing speech at the site of Trump’s January 6, 2021, rally.

All this represents a departure for Harris, who had focused more on conventional political issues — such as abortion and taxation — earlier in the campaign. Many Democrats believe her new message is a mistake — and they’re plausibly right. 

To be sure, their case is counterintuitive: Common sense dictates that, when running against a Hitler-admiring authoritarian, it’s wise to emphasize that your opponent is a Hitler-admiring authoritarian. 

But judging by the available data, swing voters are largely unmoved by such assertions, however objectively true and important they may be. Specifically, recent research by political scientists and pollsters suggest that undecided voters are less responsive to negative messages about Trump’s authoritarianism than positive ones about Harris’s economic agenda.

This shouldn’t be entirely surprising. In the wake of historic inflation, the threat of higher household costs is far more tangible to ordinary Americans than that of authoritarianism. According to Gallup’s polling, the economy is the electorate’s top issue this year. 

This said, Harris’s closing argument remains defensible — but only if her warnings about Trump’s authoritarianism complement her economic message, rather than overshadowing it.

The case against the case against Trump’s fascism

The theory for why Harris should focus on bread-and-butter issues instead of Trump’s autocratic ambitions is simple: Nine years after Trump launched his first presidential campaign, voters already know what they think about him. And if undecided voters still aren’t convinced that Trump is an authoritarian menace, they probably can’t be persuaded on that point.

After all, Trump-curious voters remember Democrats issuing apocalyptic warnings in 2016, yet did not personally suffer nor witness any political repression during his time in office. To the contrary, they tend to recall life under Trump as utterly normal — at least, before the pandemic for which, in their view, he had little responsibility. 

For such voters, this theory goes, claims about Trump’s “fascism” just sound like more of the overheated invective that have made our politics so toxic and divisive. They simply aren’t interested in debates over Trump’s character — what they care about are the election’s implications for their own finances.

On the other hand, these Americans know relatively little about Harris or her economic plans. And they don’t know much about the downsides of Trump’s policy agenda, which command less attention from cable news networks than his incendiary rhetoric and personal scandals. 

Therefore, the way to maximize Harris’s support is to focus the public’s attention on how she would materially help ordinary Americans — and how Trump would materially harm them. 

This theory is buttressed by recent political science research, messaging testing, and survey data. 

Earlier this year, the political scientists David Broockman and Joshua Kalla conducted an experiment to determine the Harris campaign’s most effective message. They recruited 100,000 survey respondents — a far larger sample than a typical poll — and randomly assigned them to watch one of 76 campaign advertisements of their own invention. Then, they asked the respondents how they would vote.

Broockman and Kalla found that Harris did best when voters were exposed to messages concerning pocketbook issues. In fact, the five highest-performing ads in their test focused on Harris’s support for Social Security, Medicare, Covid-19 relief spending, a minimum wage hike, and reducing the cost-of-living, respectively. By contrast, an attack ad centered on Trump’s threat to democracy was the 27th most effective message. 

These results might surprise politically engaged readers: If Trump’s authoritarianism is old news, how could the Democratic Party’s support for Social Security not be the same? 

Yet in a survey taken by Broockman and Kalla earlier this year, half of respondents did not know Harris opposes cutting Social Security benefits, while a third were unaware she wants to raise taxes on the rich and corporations. 

The largest super PAC aiding Harris’s candidacy, Future Forward, has replicated Broockman and Kalla’s basic finding. According to an email obtained by the New York Times, the PAC’s message tests have found that “purely negative attacks on Trump’s character are less effective than contrast messages that include positive details about Kamala Harris’s plans to address the needs of everyday Americans.”

Survey experiments conducted last week by the Democratic data firm Blue Rose Research — in partnership with the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy PAC — yielded the same conclusion. In their tests, Blue Rose asked respondents how they intended to vote, then showed them one of 30 Democratic messages, and asked them about their voting intentions a second time. The highest-performing message, which produced a 1.2 percentage point increase in Harris’s support after voters were exposed to it, went like this:

This election is a choice between two different visions for America. Harris will take on price gouging to bring down grocery prices and lower the cost of health insurance. Trump wants to cut taxes for the wealthy. Harris wants to cut taxes for the middle class. You may not always agree with her but she will lift up the middle class and be a President for all Americans.

By contrast, one of the worst performing messages — which increased Harris’s support by only 0.3 percent — was as follows:

Trump’s own White House Chief of Staff, a former 4-star General, said in an interview on October 22nd that he agreed with many of Trump’s policies but still does not want him to become President again. The General said quote “he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators. So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.”

Notably, on this point, Democratic super PACs and Democratic socialists see eye to eye: The Center for Working-Class Politics, a think-tank founded by socialists, partnered with the market research firm YouGov to run different messages by Pennsylvania voters in late September and early October. They found that an economically focused, populist narrative was the most popular message, while a narrative emphasizing Trump’s threat to democracy was the least popular. 

Spotlighting Trump’s authoritarianism performed especially poorly with blue-collar workers, and best with educated professionals (though even the latter group preferred the populist narrative). That’s potentially significant, since the key Rust Belt battlegrounds — Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — are all less college-educated than the nation as a whole. 

The case for Harris’s closing message

Nevertheless, there is still a reasonable case for Harris’s current strategy. 

It case begins with the observation that Harris has not abandoned populist, bread-and-butter messaging. She is still airing ads touting her middle-class tax cut proposal, while spotlighting Trump’s plans for slashing taxes on billionaires.

And the two most heavily funded campaign ads during the first three weeks of October were both economic appeals from Harris’s top super PAC.

Thus, the question is not whether Harris should tell voters about her plans for the economy or Trump’s aspirations for a dictatorship. No one believes that focusing exclusively on the latter is a good idea.

Rather, the question is whether Harris should complement her populist messaging with warnings about Trump’s fascist instincts — or put every available resource towards making the case for herself on normal political issues, such as the economy and abortion. 

The argument for the first option is potentially compatible with the message testing cited above: Even if the best message for most undecided voters is an economic one, warnings about Trump’s authoritarianism could still be the best argument for a pivotal subset of that group. 

Let’s say that 15 percent of undecided voters are longtime Republicans who favor conservative economic policy but don’t like Trump. Ads focused on Harris’s fiscal agenda will do nothing to sway this group. But telling them that many former Trump administration officials believe the Republican nominee is a would-be dictator — and that conservatives like Liz and Dick Cheney are supporting Harris for this reason — could conceivably help them to reconcile a Harris vote with their Republican identities.

To be sure, most undecided voters care more about Harris’s support for Social Security than Liz Cheney’s support for her. But there’s some evidence that a few might feel the opposite. Indeed, one Democratic pollster has actually found anti-Trump, pro-democracy arguments performing well. In a survey experiment earlier this month, Blueprint found that Harris’s most effective closing argument was:

Nearly half of Donald Trump’s Cabinet have refused to endorse him. When Trump learned during the Capitol riot that his supporters were threatening to kill his own vice president, he said, ‘So what?’ and refused to do anything to ensure the vice president was safe. Republican governors, senators, and House members have all said the same thing: We can’t give Trump another four years as president.

Blue Rose Research tried and failed to replicate this finding. And it goes against most of the available evidence. In fact, in a subsequent poll of swing voters in swing states, Blueprint itself found economic messages outperforming ones focused on democracy.

Still, highlighting Never Trump Republicans’ concerns about his authoritarianism did work with one sample of voters. And that lends some credence to the idea that a small — but potentially significant — minority of undecideds are anti-insurrection conservatives. Given that this election is historically close, even tiny voting blocs could matter.

There is one other argument for Harris to devote significant time and money to spotlighting Trump’s fascistic tendencies: Cable news networks are never going to devote a lot of airtime to the economic implications of Trump’s agenda, which are neither especially newsy nor sensational. A detailed analysis of the impact of Trump’s tariffs on consumer prices probably won’t make for good television, but the Republican nominee calling for the military to crack down on “the enemy from within” does.

Thus, if Harris wants to keep the media focused on Trump’s vulnerabilities — and fill up airtime that might otherwise go toward subjects unfavorable for the Democratic Party — she might be wise to amplify her opponent’s most authoritarian remarks, or the most alarming revelations from former Trump White House officials. 

Considering the empirical evidence favoring economic messaging, however, Harris would still be well-advised to err on the side of an excessive focus on bread-and-butter issues.

The responsible message is the one that works

Some may feel that Harris has an ethical duty to sound the alarm about her rival’s contempt for liberal democracy, irrespective of what message tests say. After all, the American people deserve to know Trump considered having protesters shot amid 2020’s anti-police violence demonstrations, he plans to sic the Department of Justice on his political opponents, and many of his former aides fear he would be completely unconstrained in a second term. 

I sympathize with this sentiment. But responsibility for informing the public lies with the media. Harris’s job is to win. If that requires speaking less about the threat of fascism than the risk of higher grocery prices, so be it. Loudly condemning authoritarianism is good, soundly defeating it is better.