"Medicare for People on Medicare" Democrats
Fighting doesn't have to be left wing. Loss aversion can avoid losses in the future.
Advocates are often terrible at understanding downside risk to their actions.
Voters say they want change while their actions - re-electing incumbents and rejecting ballot initiatives - often display a sharp status quo bias. When push comes to shove, Americans are wary of big changes.
But political activists often have the opposite mentality: they say protecting the vulnerable is the focus, but much of modern advocacy is all about offense, not defense. It’s all about the upside. All about change. Never about protecting what we have now.
Years ago, I wrote an academic-ish paper for the Stanford Social Innovation Review on this problem which made the case that advocates too often think like investors in financial markets, where any specific investment has unlimited upside but limited downside. This “market approach” to advocacy takes the perspective that you can lose only what you put in.
But that is not what voters want, and opponents who take a “non-market approach” can seize on your mistakes to maximize their advantage on the risks that you took.
Progressive immigration advocates push for “abolishing ICE” and “decriminalizing the border”? Opponents can weaponize that, and now tattooed hairstylist residents are being deported to third world prisons.
But there is another way, where advocates can meet voters where they are to protect what they care most about - and then actually do so by winning elections.
Combative Centrism
Patrick Ruffini highlights some new data that might initially seem contradictory: Democratic voters want the party to move to the center, and be more combative.
The disconnect is recent - right now voters associate the progressive movement with a pugilistic anti-Trump attitude. But it’s not always been the case - in 2004, “fighting Democrats” like Jim Webb had appeal even among the blogosphere like Daily Kos despite not holding progressive views on many issues. Even the Netroots progressives were more obsessed with fighting Bush than getting deep into the weeds on left wing policies. Webb won over progressives with his anti-Iraq War views but he launched his campaign with an ad of Ronald Reagan praising his military service and was a staunch gun rights supporter. Webb’s appeal in 2005 was similar to Biden’s in 2019, he made the case to the Democratic base that he was the best candidate to win.
That’s what we need again. Moderates who are fighting to protect programs like Medicare and Social Security from Musk, not pitching voters on expensive policies like single-payer healthcare. It’s not Medicare for All that raises taxes and abolishes private health insurance.
It is “Medicare for People on Medicare” Democrats.
The last Resistance shows us one potential path.
Though the media focused on AOC and the left, the Democrats who actually won back that House in 2018 were Democrats like Abigail Spanberger, Conor Lamb and Elissa Slotkin, moderates who emphasized the threat of Trump to Affordable Care Act benefits.
“Medicare for People on Medicare” Democrats can focus on Elon Musk’s cuts to Social Security and Medicare, rather than being distracted by programs like USAID that don’t resonate with voters.
According to Blueprint polling, USAID was the second most popular agency to cut.
Messages that call Musk "dumb” and call him the “real President” didn’t work. Instead, the most popular messages are classic Democratic fare: Republicans want to cut your Medicare and Social Security to give a tax cut to the wealthy.
“Medicare for People on Medicare” Democrats
Compelling centrism wins elections.
Democratic voters want Democrats to fight and win.
So why is it that progressives are associated with fighting? It doesn’t have to be that way.
Moderate Democrats have the better message to beat Trump: protect the benefits you’ve earned.
The path to victory isn’t far-fetched promises that we can’t keep. It’s the real promises we can: we won’t randomly fire federal workers. We won’t strip away the protections of the Affordable Care Act. We won’t claim you’re dead and cut off your Social Security benefits. The other option is to move to the left, and make promises Democrats can’t keep.
Are you a Medicare for People on Medicare Democrat? Join us at WelcomeFest on June 4 in DC.