The 2024 Formula for Electoral Success

FDR/LBJ-Style Compassionate Economic Populism + Social Common Sense

President Biden will be running for reelection in perhaps one of the most critical times in our nation’s history. Indeed, his reelection campaign is taking place during one of the inflection points of world civilization as a whole.

The President has much to tout with his Build Back Better Agenda from the Bidenomics track record & legislative accomplishments, to executive actions, international collaboration on the world stage, diversity in the executive branch, judicial nomination records, and real and substantive bipartisan victories. And let’s not forget the major electoral successes of 2022 against all odds.

The President has done this despite the deep hole dug under Trump from the coronavirus pandemic response and the resulting economic recession. He has done this despite the failed policies of trick-down economics, a failure 40 years in the making. He has done this despite the cultural wars and divisions in our country, and despite the major conflicts that test the strength of democracy abroad.

But in truth, the country has many more issues to contend with. We cannot simply wave the “Mission Accomplished” banner and pretend we have done all we could do. Not when the costs of healthcare, education, housing, energy, and food remain largely unaffordable for working families because of decades of Republican Party legislation and economic crises like the Great Recession. Not when this country refuses to recognize that healthcare and education are human rights. Not when the climate crisis comes closer and closer to a boiling point (pun not intended). Not when Corporate America continues to crush the workers, consumers, and small businesses that once were the foundation of our country’s prosperity. Not when the social safety net was attacked and weakened, and corporate welfare expanded ever more.

Poverty and inequality have risen for decades under Reagan, Bush, and Trump—in inner cities and small towns alike. Coastal areas are the only places thriving while the Industrial Midwest, the South, Rural America, and the rest of “Flyover Country” all fall behind. And instead of addressing these crises with substantive action, the Republican Party chooses to encourage the intimidation and demonization of people of different racial, gender, and religious backgrounds. We can and we will do better.

President Biden and his Administration know this well. The United States can do almost anything it desires to do, so long as it has the willpower and the courage. It can again make life better for working families & the middle class, and it can bend the moral arc towards justice, opportunity, and equality. Our government can overcome any challenge if the talent, skill, and determination of the American people are on our side. How else could FDR challenge Americans to fear nothing but fear itself? How else could LBJ have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the policies that formed the Great Society? And how else could we have won the Space Race, heeding on JFK’s words.

At the same time, we must realize that the greatest threats to the American experiment come from within. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The House Speaker Pro Temp—and indeed the entire Republican House Caucus—should remember Lincoln’s words and heed them now.

Biden and Congressional Democrats can and should offer an antidote to the failed GOP formulas. In 1994, House and even Senate Republicans ran on a Contract with America to listen to the American people, and went on to have a stunning electoral success. But have they really listened to the American people since then? Flash forward to 2024. What we see now is a dysfunctional House of Representatives held hostage by Freedom Caucusers, an obstructionist Senate MAGA conference hamstringing our the courts and our military, and an unhinged GOP presidential field. Is this the type of government the people want? The Contract with America has failed. It is a time for a “Progressive Promise” to America to take its place.

President Biden can run on his rather impressive, remarkable presidential record and a pledge to unite the country. He can draw on his working class background and experience, legislative skills, bipartisan overtures, and his resume of taking on special interests and helping to rebuild the middle and working classes of this country. Even when difficulties are present, he has stood with working families with words and, most importantly, with action. Glenn Youngkin, Brian Kemp, and Nikki Haley might try to talk a good game, but talk is not action. Biden takes on the right causes even when it’s hard—and he delivers. Don't take it from me. Take it from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jon Tester, and Biden’s many former legislative colleagues, Democratic and Republican alike.

Bold action to make Build Back Better the New Deal & Great Society of our time will require a United States governed by Congressional Democrats and not obstructionist Republicans like Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and ex-Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Congressional Democrats have delivered consequential pieces of legislation and laws for working families over special interests under the Biden and even Obama presidencies; advances not seen since the 1960s. Republicans, meanwhile, have offered nothing but government shutdowns, threats of debt default, impeachments, investigations, conspiracy theories, and chaotic fights for the Speakership.

Republican extremism has no limits. Instead of addressing the real issues, they choose to make democracy their new target. From litigating the past two years of elections to new 2024 schemes involving Southern gerrymandering, state election law restrictions, and hostile takeovers of local election boards. Is it any surprise that, instead of supporting Ukraine in its own struggle for democracy, Republican extremists chose to defend Vladimir Putin?

The American people have had enough of the Republican Party chaos. They support common sense ideas like bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform, a restoration of civil rights and voting rights protections, campaign finance reforms, sane criminal justice policy, abortion rights codification(before Dobbs), and reasonable gun safety and training laws (like the ones that we had from the 1930s to the 1960s).

The “Progressive Promise” to America is our best chance. Think back to how Obama’s 2012 messaging towards the working class gave him a surprisingly decisive victory over Bain Capital’s Mitt Romney. Remember how Obama ran up the margins in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Ohio relative to Kerry and Gore with union and non-union voters alike(and while remaining competitive in deindustrialized cities and small towns).

We need a balanced message. A referendum on failed GOP economics and an example of steady leadership in a divided country. This message would provide us two rather unique coalitions capable of making a long lasting governing majority. First, we would create a Midwestern, and even a national, farmer-labor movement revival to strengthen and expand our broader working class coalition. Second, we could consolidate continued suburban support that solidifies our hold on the Rocky Mountain West and gives us greater electoral inroads in the South (North Carolina, Texas, Florida, etc.).

Biden-era progressivism can and must replace Clintonian appeasement—i.e., NAFTA, PNTR, CAFTA, welfare reform, fiscal austerity policies for working families, tax cuts for corporations and the rich, for-profit charter school lobbying, fossil fuel expansion, Glass-Steagall repeal, union abandonment, big business consolidation, corporate welfare expansion, etc,. This shift is long overdue for the betterment of America post-pandemic. And it can reap enormous success at the ballot box against Republicans in the upcoming 2024 elections, with the help of regular, concerted outreach efforts(such as targeting Rural America and reviving the 50-State Strategy), and a desperately needed wave of youth voter turnout and enthusiasm.

On those notes:

Stay tuned during the next few weeks and months for news of the GOP’s redistricting and election law power grabs, with the Southern US being the bullseye. This week, North Carolina is the key national bellwether. But maps in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee are also at stake.

Why should you care? Consider this. Think of the proportion of majority-black congressional districts vs. Southern state population proportions. In SC and AL, 26% of the state population is black, while only 1 of the 7 districts are majority African-American. In GA, LA, and MS, the proportion of the African-American population is even higher(33% to 38%) and the current election maps do not adequately represent them either by any stretch. One way these maps dilute the power of the black vote is by dividing up majority-minority neighborhoods into multiple districts, as is happening now in Nashville and Charleston.

African American voters support Democrats at roughly 80%-20% at worst (and likely support Democrats at closer to 90%-10%). Democrats and Republicans know this data. As such, these Southern GOP congressional maps blatantly violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and the many provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The challenges to these maps are clearly just, and we must continue to pursue legal action through the courts to correct these egregious injustices.

And, there’s two sides to every story Gina(and not just on the pensions). Regardless of what happens in the months to come there, here is my promise to you: the truth that you have hidden from the President, Congress, and the press in your secret closet(figuratively-speaking) will come out. And when it does, you will have no one to blame but yourself for deceiving the people of this great country.