Kamala Harris’s Path to Swing Voters: Feel Their Pain
The pandemic of social disconnection that fueled Trump’s rise is most acute among the swing voters that will decide the 2024 election. The solution for Kamala Harris? Help them belong.
IF NOT FOR HITLER, Hannah Arendt might have been known as a prodigy who cut a romantic swathe through early 20th century German academia. Growing up in the face of rising anti-semitism, expelled at 15 for leading a boycott against a teacher that insulted her, she entered the University of Marburg at 16, earned her doctorate at 23, and studied—even had a fling—with Heidegger, before Nazism came between them.
The rise of that unprecedented political force left Arendt a political refugee for 18 years, fleeing in turn to Paris and New York, where she became one of the century’s most famous political philosophers.
But Arendt didn’t blame Hitler. His movement might have been the match that lit her world on fire. But the fuel was a broader phenomenon she analyzed in the work that made her famous, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)—a factor which explains much of Donald Trump’s rise over the last decade.
Arendt looked beyond—or at least deeper than—the causes of facism other commentators focused on: namely the humiliations of the Versailles Treaty, and the economic traumas it inflicted upon the Weimar Republic.
The real problem for Arendt was a psychological state these developments brought about in swathes of the German population. “Loneliness,” she wrote, was “the essence of totalitarian government… the common ground of terror as a form of government.”
This did not mean physical isolation:
I can be isolated [she wrote]— that is, in a situation in which I cannot act, because there is nobody who will act with me — without being lonely; and I can be lonely — that is, in a situation in which I as a person feel myself deserted by all human companionship — without being isolated.
The Impact of American Loneliness
Fast forward to last week, when Gallup released its latest findings on the state of American loneliness.
It may not have been surprising to see the feeling hit record highs among US adults during COVID, when it afflicted more than 1 in 4.
More shocking is the pollster’s revelation that it’s on the rise once again, hitting 1 in 5 in August.
This, of course, was when the flailing Democratic ticket had been revived by the arrival of Kamala Harris at its top, accompanied by “happy warrior” Tim Walz.
“The one thing I will not forgive [the Republicans] for is they try to steal the joy from this country,” said Walz. “But you know what? Our next president brings the joy. She emanates the joy.”
This re-energized a Democratic base demoralized by the failure of the historically old candiate Joe Biden to land a punch on the historically flawed candidate Trump, notably in their disastrous June debate.
Where it failed to move the needle? Among America’s disengaged swing voters, often characterized as those who have “low information” about politics and the candidates—and paradoxically, will ultimately decide the country’s path forward.
The Reality of Disengagement
If you’re reading this, you do not rank among them. Disengaged voters are a mystery to the Engaged, including the millions of diehard Trump supporters that check Fox News and other right-leaning sources multiple times daily to fuel their rage against “the Libs” and adoration of their dear leader.
The Disengaged are an interesting bunch. Many tell reporters that they intend to cast a ballot—they are deemed likely “voters” by pollsters, after all, as opposed to those who don’t vote at all—but need to do more “research”: a paradoxical claim given the country’s years-long campaigns and relatively high amount of daily political coverage.
What they also have in common, perhaps unsurprisingly, is their disconnection from their neighbors and communities. As Jack Lyons Reilly of the New College of Florida wrote in a 2017 study:
Those who are more socially isolated, it is found, are neither more conservative nor liberal on any particular political issues, but clearly participate in politics less than individuals who are well connected to those around them.
Here lies the key to winning the swing states. Trump, like Hitler and Mussolini in the 30s, has done a fantastic job of making his followers feel like they are part of a movement. The word “facist” literally descends from the Latin term fasces, meaning a bundle of sticks: weak individually, strong together.
The deeper problem facing America and the free world, of which figures like Trump and movements like MAGA and Brexit are but a symptom, is the failure of liberalizing, globalizing economies to take seriously the interests of their most marginal members.
Free trade may be an antidote to the misery caused by economic isolationism, which literally killed millions in the 1930s. But it was never a panacea. It destroyed countless communities and lives, and critically increased economic inequality. We are now paying the price of Western leaders’ failure to provide better guardrails for free market capitalism: a sociopolitical reaction that now threatens democracy itself.
“Joy” may have helped revive the Democratic base in the dog days of summer. But as Gallup shows us, a fifth of the electorate still hungers for connection. The last phase of the Democratic campaign must be about giving them somewhere to belong.
What Harris Must Do Now
The solution is to double down on another theme sounded in early August straight from Trump’s own playbook.
Harris’s campaign manager Julie Chávez Rodríguez, assisted by seasoned advisors like Obama’s David Plouffe, has run a tight ship. The campaign has taken swing voters’ desire to learn more about Harris literally, devoting much of its unprecedented war chest to filling the airwaves with ads about the candidate’s biography.
But much of these calls, like the need for more research, are in fact symptoms of the deeper problem that so troubled Arendt. Which unfortunately means leaning into a tactic she, and most on the centre-left, find distasteful – going negative – and giving disengaged voters a home.
These last weeks of the campaign must focus on attacking Trump for the risk he poses to the constitution and the Republic, positioning Harris as the true defender of American values.
We’ve already seen hints of this in the embrace of disaffected moderate Republicans like Liz and Dick Cheney. This helps. Remember, however, that disengaged voters are unlikely to be paying attention to headlines or attack ads. To close the deal, we need to meet them where they really are.
In choosing the bland “A New Way Forward” as their theme, the Democrats surely missed an opportunity. “Keep America Free”, or even simply “Save America,” might have attracted far more in the middle, looking for a place to belong and a sense of what their vote means to the world.
An invigorating sense of purpose, after all, is ultimately a feeling of personal impact.
The good news: It’s not too late to lean into these themes. Harris’s team has shown remarkable agility in being able to produce fresh, effective campaign ads seemingly overnight.
It’s time to dump “the politics of joy,” which was fun for media types to write about but has left struggling millions feeling like high schoolers who haven’t been invited to the party.
Saving America—not “democracy,” which is too abstract and politically ambiguous—must become the central message of the thousands of door knockers she has on her side, approaching those whose doors rarely get a knock.
Even more, it must figure front and center in the social media outreaches that are even more likely to reach the right eyeballs—because many of the socially disconnected don’t answer their doors.
The Closing Argument
There is no room for nuance in the final days of this critical election. There must be no fear of losing the base, which is already early voting in record numbers.
Many now know Yeats’s famous observation in his poem The Second Coming, penned in the lost days that followed the end of World War I:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”
Now is the time to embrace passionate intensity, to fight for every marginal vote as though it has the power to change the world—because it does.
Those who feel lost in today’s American economy feel like they have two options. To blow up the system, as Trump clearly promises to do. Or to fix it, as Harris has been promising in less obvious terms.
Donald Trump and MAGA pose an existential threat to America, every Harris and Democratic channel must chant in unison, as loudly as possible. If you vote only once in your life, make it November 5th, 2024.
Ironically, as compelling as she was in her analysis of the causes of totalitarianism, Arendt never crisply stated her antidote. Yet her last interviewer, the French jurist Roger Errera, helpfully paraphrased:
“Resist being swept up in the tide at all.”
America’s socially isolated citizens do belong to something. It’s called America. It’s not the one they hear about on Fox.
And only they can save it.
Stephen Butler is a management consultant and co-author of Why Is a Verb: How Well-Managed Teams Turn Purpose Into Productivity.