I think it’s just in the past few elections, Trump’s rhetoric has been really good at speaking to those groups. He will say some things that they like, and he will put on a hard hat and get into a semi-truck and act like he is going to do things for people who drive trucks for a living. And so I think that’s part of it. I think that’s a huge part of it and an underrated part of it.
Bacon: So unpack. With all that said, we’re now in a place where there’s a New York Times story about how every Democratic figure is using the word affordability now, and you can really see that even some Republicans are using that word.
I think Abigail Spanberger might mean different things when she uses it, but a lot of people are using that word right now. You also have the Democrats deciding to cancel the DNC autopsy—to decide that they’re not going to release an autopsy of 2024. So the question I want to ask is this: Post–2024 election, we’ve had a lot of discourse about what Democrats should do to win the quote-unquote working class.
If you were asked this, would you say, I reject the premise of the question—Democrats should win voters of all kinds, and this working-class framing is silly—or is there a Monica Potts plan for Democrats to win? How do we define the working class, and is there a specific set of things they should do?
Potts: I think, yeah, I think I would reject the premise of the question because I think that one of the things that is always under-discussed when looking at results is the role of non-voters.
And I think that the turnout in the United States is so low in general—a high-turnout presidential election has 66 percent of eligible voters voting in it or something like that. That’s high, and so that’s abysmal, to think about how much is at stake. How many Americans are not voting who could vote? So I think that you have to think about why aren’t people engaged in general, and why aren’t people… so many people who do vote are just voting just on partisanship.
Most Americans aren’t like rabid partisans, but they’re the voters. And there’s really just a small number of people who are making up their minds every year. And it’s hard to think about the kind of idiosyncrasies of why they make up their minds.
And I’m not a strategist, but I think the idea that Democrats need to go through their policy platform with a scalpel and excise the things that might be bothering working-class voters is really silly because that’s just not how voters make their decisions. I think the thing that Democrats have to decide if they want to win is what to be loud about and how to be loud about it.
And so one of the things we know for sure is that their message is just not getting through as well as Republicans’ messages about them. And there’s a host of different reasons for that. But the decline of local news plays a huge role. We don’t live in a world anymore where you can sit down with a local editorial board at a newspaper, and that holds a lot of sway with the voters in that area.
We don’t live in a world anymore where a nationally televised interview is going to be watched by a lot of people at the same time who are going to use it to make up their minds. And I think that the way to reach voters is changing. And I think that how to be loud about the thing that voters care about over and over again—in a way that makes them believe that you too care about it—is really this: just do politics, go door to door, talk to people, get your message right, repeat your message over and over. I think that this idea that Democrats have tried to become too much of a surgeon and they need to just be a politician.
Bacon: I want to probe this a little bit. Okay. So it seems honest to me that Trump in 2016 was very loud about immigration—build the wall, the Muslim ban. And we can say Zohran Mamdani was very loud about affordability—freeze the rent.
I also thought Kamala Harris was pretty loud about Donald Trump as an authoritarian, crazy person who would end democracy. And I would say Hillary Clinton was loud, too. So are you saying don’t be loud about certain issues that don’t work to be loud about? Or what are we saying here?
Potts: Yeah, I think that there’s a few reasons that didn’t work. I looked at polling, and voters believed that Donald Trump would try to do bad things. But they didn’t believe the worst things that he said he was going to do, and they believed that there would be institutional stops on him. They believed Congress would be able to stop him, and they believed the Supreme Court would be able to stop him. And so they just didn’t see it as a real threat.
Another thing too—one of the things that voters did in states around the country is that some of them voted for Donald Trump while they also voted for a constitutional amendment in their state to protect abortion rights. So they didn’t believe that Donald Trump would go after abortion because he said he wouldn’t, even though he was head of a party that’s had that on their platform for generations.
And so I think we have to keep that in mind again: that voters did not think that he could do… they think he just says crazy things and maybe he would try to do it, but the United States itself is a strong enough institution to stop anything really terrible from happening. And I think that’s a lesson to be learned too, because being head of a party that has promised to raise the minimum wage and protect workers’ rights for decades doesn’t get you anywhere unless you as a candidate are also saying that all the time.
Bacon: So when you say get—okay, so that’s an interesting point. Because I guess there’s this discourse about the party and the platform, but there’s also a discourse that the groups have too much of a voice and that they’re getting in the way. And it’s probably the case now, the way you framed it.
The groups are loud. They are the people who were saying defund the police. They were small in number, but they were loud, and they were very clear about what they were saying. Abortion-rights groups are very loud. I guess you’re right—if you’re Kamala Harris and you have a complicated tax credit to do X, and a group says something loud, that cuts through.
Okay, so this is—so what does a party look like when it’s doing that? Is that what it is? How would they sound loud, about what? How would that look? Play that out. They need to sound loud about some things. What does that look like?
Potts: Yeah, I mean I do think that part of what they need to be loud about is changing the economic story of America, because I do… overall, Americans do say they vote based on the economy—like that’s their number one issue almost all the time. And that’s… the economy is a huge word, and we could get into what they mean when they say that, but they do want to feel that they’re doing well in their lives. They want to have savings. They want to be able to relax and afford the things that they need. They want to think that their kids are going to do better than they’re doing. That’s like the fundamental American dream. That’s what they want: that they want a president who helps us do that, or doesn’t stop us from doing that.
And I think that Democrats need to work really hard to change the economic story that Ronald Reagan told. And they need to say, “Right now, private wealth is bad. It’s keeping you from affording the things that you want. America right now is actually still one of the wealthiest societies that the earth has ever seen, but it’s really unfair that there’s no starter homes to buy if you’re, like, a family where the one person is a teacher and one person is like a mechanic.” Like, it’s hard to buy a house if you are that family.
And I think that those kinds of stories are really important to change about the economy. I think that it would be undermining that idea that, like, private wealth generates wealth for all of us—that the government has no role in ensuring your economic security. I would change that story. Have a campaign speech written.
Bacon: As we were talking, I was thinking that maybe fighting oligarchy—I liked that, and I was glad that tour happened. But is Zohran Mamdani’s campaign a more effective form of whatever we’re talking about here? Like economic—I hate the term economic populism; it doesn’t really say anything. But is Mamdani, in a way, talking more about your life and how to make your life more affordable?
The oligarchy may be making your life unaffordable, but maybe you want to lead with affordability and then talk to people about the oligarchy, rather than leading with the oligarchy.
Potts: Yeah, no, I think fighting the oligarchy is a little too abstract. And sounds uninteresting—sounds like a class assignment or something, all due… But I think that, yeah, I think Mamdani’s campaign was better because it was… it started from the person’s position. And also just Mamdani was a fantastic campaigner. Like, he was out in communities getting to know people, knocking on people’s doors.
He was listening to the things that they were saying, and he was framing a lot of his… a lot of his messages around the things that people were concerned about. But he also brought people together, created a sense of community around his campaign. He did fun things and reminded people about why they live in New York, even though it’s so expensive. So it wasn’t just all “New York’s a hellscape and you can’t afford anything.” It was like, “Look at this fantastic city. Let’s do a scavenger hunt in it and look at your neighbors and how great they are. And also let’s try to make sure that it stays this great for…” I don’t know how you nationalize it, but I think it’s doable, and I think it… it would be really important to do.
Bacon: So your autopsy would start with worldwide inflation. Joe Biden waited too long to run. Kamala had a hundred—or whatever—107 days. I guess she has a book. So I guess I do know this: You’d start with that.
But then what was—so I guess, on some level, I know there’s a debate. It’s bad the party did not release its autopsy. On the other hand, I do think I know why Kamala Harris lost. Do we need it? What did you make of this whole thing over the last week?
Potts: I would personally be interested in reading the autopsy.
I’m a journalist. But I don’t think it matters. People aren’t going to remember in six months that they didn’t do it.
Bacon: No. Forget about voters. Do you think we would’ve learned anything?
Potts: No. I don’t think we would learn anything. I think we know why they lost. I don’t see in retrospect any way that she could have won. She was handed almost an impossible job. Fundamentally, I think that the thing that people keep forgetting—that I think it’s really important not to forget—is that last year was an anti-incumbent year across the board, around the globe, around the world.
Because there had just been in the four years that Biden was in office just a massive upheaval of the world—a once-in-a-hundred-year pandemic, a crazy economy that followed that, a lot of destruction and death and sadness. The start of the war in Ukraine, just a lot of stuff that really was no individual leader’s fault and a shifting world underneath their feet, and they wanted change. And so I think that was hard to combat across the board. And I think it’s really important not to think too much more. I don’t.
Bacon: The country was not—as this tells us—very little about the Democrats. It tells us the country is frustrated with incumbents and frustrated with Trump, not necessarily that Democrats have figured out affordability based on Mikie Sherrill saying these four things.
But how did you see the last result? I think the Democrats are right that they don’t necessarily need to release an autopsy, because they’ve figured it out. Because Trump being in the White House fixes—or accounts for—88 percent of their problems. Is that how you see it, too?
Potts: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like, I do think voters still want change. I think people voted for Trump not believing a lot of what he said, or not even really knowing a lot of what he said he was going to do. And now that he’s in, obviously they don’t like it, and for the next four years that is going to continue to be served up on a platter to Democrats. It’s easy to run against that. And so I do think that Democrats have to think about if they do get back in Washington, if they do get back power, they have to think about how to keep it.
And I do think that the affordability issue is important because it is true that people feel that they can’t be comfortable financially in their lives—that no matter how hard they work, it gets sucked up into their electricity bills. They end up paying more for their home insurance; every raise that they get goes out the door straight away. And that is incredibly frustrating and disheartening for thinking about what the future holds. And so I think pounding on that is good.
Bacon: Last question. You said when I said about should they focus on the working class, you were like, “I reject the premise of that…” So do you think about the world in terms of voting blocs, in terms of states, in terms of racial groups, in terms of like… how do you? Just think voters are the moderates? Ideology? Do you think about the world? Because we’re having a lot of discussion about which, how, who they need to woo. And your… and you said nonvoters is one thing you said. So is that the group you’d press on the most?
Potts: Yeah. They need to make sure that all their voters get out. They need to make sure that—which is going to entail getting them back in the game, because they’re frustrated and upset. They need to make sure that marginal voters get out and vote for them. They really should try to reach out to nonvoters. That’s harder, and that’s why politicians don’t ever do it. But that would probably change the game a bit. But I think also they just need to be loud about the right things.
And then swing voters who make their decisions in September of 2026 will just have heard more about them and be more likely to listen to what they’re saying because it takes so much to break through. I think they need to think about that. I think they need to—as far as voting blocs—think about how to reach those groups best. But the message, I think, is the same. Enough thinking.
Bacon: Is that something they should be loud about? Or do you mean loud economics, or being loud about a lot of other things, too?
Potts: Yeah. They should be loud about what’s going on with ICE, because it’s terrible, and people truly did not want that.
They voted for it, but they might not have realized that they were voting for it.
Bacon: Great place to end on. Great to see you. Happy holidays. I don’t think I’ll see you before the holidays. Take care.
Potts: Yeah, you too. Happy holidays, everybody. Thank you.
Bacon: Thank you.
Potts: Bye-bye. Thanks.
