Tom Walton is an attorney in Dallas County.
An analysis of any political defeat must start with the message—what did you say to voters about why they should vote for you, and how did you say it? When you’re shut out of every branch of government, the only thing you have left is your message.
When commentators have focused on the Democratic losing message in 2024, they criticized many things, including “performative ‘wokeness’—the in-group messaging used by hyper-online and overeducated progressives” and “the stale politics of identity.” Too much about abortion—not enough about how hard it was for folks to just get by.
Sometimes, it not what you say, but how you say it. More specifically, it’s not what you say or even how you say it, but what buttons you push when you say it. Donald Trump knows how to push people’s buttons, mostly for ill. His messages touch on people’s fears, insecurities, and self-interest. Then, he touches those sensitivities over and over again in as many ways he possibly can. Could Democrats do the same without sacrificing the merits of their policies?
Effective plaintiff trial lawyers do the same thing to win multi-million-dollar verdicts. They do what they can to convey to jurors that they are in danger or at risk of losing something of value because of the defendant’s conduct. This triggers a mostly unconscious “fight or flight” response. That in turn causes jurors to act reflexively—to fear the defendant and want to punish (or protect themselves) by awarding a huge verdict against the defendant, regardless of the facts.
Trump did this with his ghastly tales of Central American prison gangs roaming wild in American cities, who were portrayed as only slightly more dangerous than Kamala Harris. Here are just a few examples of this “safety and security” technique from the transcript of Trump’s speech at his Madison Square Garden rally in New York on October 27, 2024:
- “I will protect our workers. I will protect our jobs. I will protect our borders. I will protect our great families. And I will protect the birthright of our children to live in the richest and most powerful nation on the face of the earth.”
- “She has violated her oath, eradicated our sovereign border, and unleashed an army of migrant gangs who are waging a campaign of violence and terror against our citizens.”
- “Kamala has imported criminal migrants from prisons and jails, insane asylums and mental institutions from all around the world, from Venezuela to the Congo. A lot of people are coming from the Congo prisons. They’re coming from all over the world. Over the last month, 181 countries violated our laws. And she has resettled them into your communities to prey upon innocent American citizens.”
Then Trump played a video about alleged “migrant crime,” focused on an alleged Venezuelan prison gangs taking over apartment complexes in Aurora Colorado and San Antonio, Texas, including gruesome details about the alleged killing of women by gang members.
Then, he asserted the Federal Emergency Management Agency is failing in disaster relief because “they spent all of their money on bringing in illegal immigrants and flying them in by beautiful jet planes.”
Then he pulled out the big guns, no pun intended: “She would get us into World War Three. We’re very close to World War Three. If you don’t have a smart president, you don’t have a president that gets it.”
He returned to migrant crime stories repeatedly, including this especially gratuitous one:
You know, we had a case in Long Island where MS-13, one of the other really bad gangs, killed two young girls, 16 years old, walking to school. They didn’t shoot them. They knifed them and they cut them into little pieces because it was so painful. Perfect, perfect, young, beautiful girls were cut up into little pieces by knives. MS-13, they’re animals. And you know who took care of it for us? ICE. ICE. They had no problem.
The whole point of this rhetoric? To scare the living crap out of these people making them fear that they or their daughters will be the next victim of a Hispanic prison gang unless they vote for Trump. It is a very poisonous mix of exaggeration, lurid appeal, and fear of the other. And it worked.
As suggested by his comment about undocumented immigrants flying on jet planes, Republicans mixed their anti-immigrant animus with another tactic—envy. Immigrants are getting more and better stuff than you, like a nice hotel room in Manhattan!
The only weak response from Democrats: “We agree immigration is bad, and we tried to do something about it, but we failed,” albeit due to Trump’s interference. That didn’t work at all. A better Democratic message on this issue in the age of fear and loathing?
“Trump hates Hispanic immigrants. Well, super rich people like him won’t need them when he needs [more] nursing care. But, if you want safe and secure nursing care while on Medicare, you’d better hope we can fill the shortage of nursing aides in this state with these new arrivals, and fast. It’s either better senior care for you and your loved ones or infected oozing bed sores. Your choice. By the way, your beef and chicken will double in price when ICE busts the packing plant.”
Coarse? Yes. High-minded? No. But will it move people? Maybe, yes.
Would similar messaging work on environmental issues, for example?
“I’m tired of these huge corporate farmers getting multi-million-dollar federal subsidies while they dump stinking raw hog manure and poisonous chemicals into our rivers and lakes. Those rivers and lakes are your property. If you dumped shit on your neighbor’s yard, you’d have the sheriff knocking at your door. Why should they get it away with it? They need to clean up their own mess. Make them pay to clean it up, not us.”
How about public money for private schools?
“You ever pay a contractor for doing nothing? Of course not. But that’s what you’re doing when you give your tax money to rich parents who are already sending their kids to high- priced elitist private schools. Public schools must teach a state-mandated curriculum. Private schools don’t. Public schools are required to enforce state attendance requirements. Private school don’t have to. Public schools can’t use corporal punishment. Private schools are totally unregulated. What are you paying for? It’s your right to know.”
Flat 3 percent tax?
“You’re getting ripped off by our flat tax rules. It comes down to your dollars. Three percent of $35,000 hurts you a hell of lot more than three percent of $250,000. The less you make, the more a flat tax hurts you. Don’t be stupid. It’s just not fair.”
The closest Democrats came to this kind of “you-against-them” or “don’t tread on me” tone was on the issue of abortion restrictions. Pictures of candidates in examination rooms, stories of women bleeding out in hospital parking lots, or having to carry a severely deformed fetus to full term probably moved voters in states where the issue was directly on the ballot, such as an abortion-rights constitutional amendment.
Why it didn’t work so well in Iowa in state legislative races is a good question. Maybe because it wasn’t a direct constitutional amendment on the ballot? Voters did not think Democrats had a realistic chance to flip both chambers and rescind the 6-week ban? Or Iowa is just too solidly anti-abortion?
One angle on this issue was mentioned only in passing, but it may be more of a motivator, if highlighted. That is the threat to IVF treatments, given the sometimes use of selective reduction of multiple fetuses in the practice. That threat gets at the very private and personal desire to be a parent or a grandparent. There’s lots of self-interest, which could be turned on.
An approach may be to get a soon-to-be retired Democratic IVF doctor to risk having his or her license revoked or other disciplinary action by the Iowa Board of Medicine for violation of the ban. The Board is the only state authority with the power to enforce the ban. It is supposed to have ten members, but only seven positions are currently filled. All seven are physicians, and six are Republicans. There’s also one independent, and no Democrats.
First, the law may be subject to a good equal protection argument because it punishes one person but not the other for the same conduct. But, if the Board punts or only slaps the doctor’s wrist, then the law looks like a paper ban only that is unenforceable. If the doctor is disciplined, make him or her a cause celebre and then strike up the chorus:
“Where will you or your children go for help conceiving a child, now that doctor’s providing IVF health treatments are endangered in Iowa? Longing for children or grandchildren, but can’t find a doctor to provide the needed healthcare? Thank the Peeping Toms in the Iowa legislature and Dr. Kim Reynolds.”
Of course, there are risks to such messaging. Some may be turned off by its tone, profanities, or name-calling. Others may call it exploitative. If Trump has showed us anything, however, it is that today in politics you cannot be too bold or brash when it comes to branding.
Top photo of Donald Trump speaking at Madison Square Garden is cropped from an image first published on his campaign’s Facebook page.