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We “rethink the week” with Valerie Endress, Professor of Political Communication at Rhode Island College, and Bill Curry, two-time Democratic nominee for Governor of Connecticut and a White House advisor in Bill Clinton’s administration.
First we consider an overview of what we need in a presidential candidate. We need candidates not merely to demonstrate that they are “likeable,” that they genuinely care about and will champion the needs and concerns of ordinary working people. That is an important skill for a candidate who wants to win the election. But in addition, we should require the candidates to articulate clearly the specific policies they intend to enact, if elected. We can’t just assume that the charismatic “nice person” candidate will lead the country in the direction that works best for the 98% of Americans.
We also discuss the way Pres. Trump and his extremist allies undermine our democracy with their rhetoric (as well as their policies and actions). They intimidate any dissent — no matter how benign or nonviolent — and retaliate against journalists and scholars who challenge their rants with actual facts. They endanger the very lives of people — including sitting members of Congress — by inflaming their followers’ hateful passions and encouraging them (directly or indirectly) to take illegal/violent actions.
Finally, we analyze why millions of working people who had voted for Barack Obama (twice) were persuaded to vote for Trump in 2016. They had trusted the Democratic Party over the decades, but their needs and concerns had not been addressed. They saw Wall Street being bailed out but not ordinary Americans (who apparently were not “too big to fail”). The 2016 Democratic platform may have mentioned policies that could help the lower 2-3 economic quintiles, but the campaign itself failed to address the very real hardships in people’s lives: living at the margins, paycheck to paycheck, ever wary that one unanticipated medical expense or car repair could push them over the brink into bankruptcy or homelessness, having to choose among buying groceries, paying the rent, or their children’s medications.
On the other hand, Donald Trump appealed to these same people by pounding away at social wedge issues, playing to the fears, xenophobia, and potential bigotry of many struggling people, dividing them rather than uniting them into one community. If the Democrats want to win the 2020 election, they will have to capture the attention of these same folks — not through emotional appeals to hate but through economic and social policies that can help us all succeed together, by pursuing policies that create a better society for all of us.
