Democrats aren't communicating. They need to.

Notes from election canvassing 2024.

By now you’ve had some time to read pundits and historians regarding the 2024 election. I figured I’d wait some of this out before commenting. Early on, Heather Cox Richardson offered a great distilled history of the past several years. It will be worth re-reading for a long time.

If you voted for Trump and you work for a living, you’re probably overjoyed, but you may find some concern creeping in. Those promised tariffs? You’ll pay them as a retail customer. Some of your friends or relatives may be deported, if the U.S. has the resources to do it. Trump plans to fill his administration with billionaires and loyalists. He’s promising yet more tax cuts for the wealthy — but not for the average working American. Plans exist to gut the Federal Emergency Management Agency, repeal the Affordable Care Act, trim or eliminate Social Security, and much more. Just check out Project 2025, with introduction by Vice-President-elect J.D. Vance. If you find the entire 900-page document daunting, try this fact check. It’s shorter.

If you voted for Harris, my guess is that at least you are disappointed, and very possibly horrified, frightened and depressed. I don’t have to look far on social media to see reactions. People don’t understand how other voters could miss what is obvious to them. They don’t know what to do. They’re ready to dismiss friends they consider immoral. I’ve been reading a lot of blaming, questioning, angst … and some urgings to the side of hope and action.

I’m interested in the action side, and what can happen next. But what I encountered during nearly two weeks of canvassing for Democratic presidential candidates informs my sense of where the Democrats keep going wrong, and what they can do about it. I’d like to share some stories with you.

I canvassed in Forsyth County, North Carolina, where I live. I’m an unaffiliated voter who can’t vote Republican because I believe the party has lost nearly all ethical and moral moorings. Based on his own statements and long record, I believe Donald Trump poses a direct threat to democratic governance. Mind you, I have my problems with the Democrats too, but nothing so severe as with the Republicans. I made a choice. No regrets there.

My canvassing experience foretold the outcome of the presidential election. And it reinforced my long-simmering feeling that Democrats are almost completely failing to communicate the value of their policies that polls — and this election — reveal most voters already prefer.

I visited homes of known Democratic voters and unaffiliated voters believed likely to vote Democratic. The goal was to get people out to the polls.

Forsyth County is a former tobacco-growing, cigarette-manufacturing, furniture industry, textiles and banking center. Its largest community, the city of Winston-Salem, fell upon tough times starting in the 1980s when the banking industry consolidated, Hanes started moving hosiery and apparel operations overseas, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company discontinued cigarette production in the heart of the city. Median household income was about $61,000 in 2021. The county has made efforts to attract high-tech employers, with some modest success. But for people once in manufacturing or farming or simply not suited to ride the tech revolution, it can be very hard to make ends meet, much less save for retirement or weather a medical crisis. The good-paying jobs in tobacco, furniture and textiles are largely gone. The working middle class really has been hollowed out.

Walking door to door showcases a considerable number of detached homes, town houses and apartment buildings that look good from a distance but reveal financial struggle when seen closer up. There’s evidence of deferred maintenance, families with too much to get done in every area of life, and not nearly enough cash to go around. There are signs of despair, with efforts to clean, garden and neaten seemingly given up at some homes.

Among the families in these homes are people the Democratic Party used to target successfully, but no longer persuades.

I stopped at one house to see an aging Hispanic couple, longtime Democrats. Their granddaughter, appearing to be somewhere in her 30s, answered the doorbell, but declined to let me see her grandparents. She said they are both quite infirm. She didn’t know whether she’d be able to get them to a polling place.

And then she stepped outside and asked if she could explain something. She told me she had been born in Puerto Rico but grew up mostly on the U.S. mainland. She said she had been a loyal Democrat who has become a firm Republican and Trump backer. I asked her to explain why.

She said she has really been struggling, and she doesn’t see the Democrats helping people like her. She’s deeply concerned that immigrants — especially undocumented ones — are granted social services for which she says she would be turned down, while she pays for them with her tax money. She’s worried about the way high grocery and fuel prices blow out her budget. She said she didn’t know what Kamala Harris’ policies would be, and she felt Harris to be insincere, changing positions, accents and colloquialisms depending on whom she was speaking with. She called out Harris for changing from a firm opponent of fracking to tolerating it. She said that during the Trump years, prices and inflation were low and her taxes were lower — something I heard repeated several times over my canvassing, though I had no way of checking other people’s tax returns.

I gently tried to point out that inflation was largely sparked by the pandemic, and that to some extent, food and fuel prices had remained high because executives wanted to keep them that way. Did you know, I asked her, that oil companies have been banking record profits since the start of the pandemic, and stand to do even better in a second Trump term? Did she know Trump favors fracking and promises to help oil companies extract ever more oil and gas? She didn’t have much of a response, and these facts didn’t shake her loyalty to Donald Trump.

I pointed out that Trump lies prolifically every day, that employment did not improve in his term, that he intends to reverse environmental initiatives and grant tax breaks to the very wealthy but not to her. I didn’t get to ask her why she thinks, in the richest country in the world, she is having trouble breaking even every month. By this time a visitor from a social service agency arrived to see her parents and stepped into the conversation uninvited. The two started interrupting me and nearly shouting me down anytime I tried to speak, as though we were on a right-wing talk radio show. I could no longer finish a sentence.

My host responded that she knows Trump lies frequently, but she feels that at least he’s himself. Despite the fact that Harris had published a platform, she said she didn’t know what Harris was for or against. She claimed Harris laughed at flood victims in the North Carolina mountains; I responded I’d have to see the video in context. She didn’t believe Harris and other Democrats care about people like her and her family. She resented that the U.S. was spending money in the Middle East and Ukraine while she couldn’t get a decent paycheck or social services she needs. She bemoaned that illegal immigrants and convicts in prison were receiving gender identity treatments and operations paid for by public funds. There was no changing any of this.

She never mentioned the topic of abortion and reproductive rights, a key Harris campaign theme.

I rang the bell at another home, to speak with a long-registered Democratic woman. Her husband, a Black man, opened the door and quickly informed me that his wife may be a Democrat, but he is a Republican and very religious. He said he and his wife were in the midst of prayer meeting. He declined to make her available to talk with me, citing limited time. But then he started on a long monologue.

He told me he is 75 years old, had served in the military, and had found God at a difficult time in his life. He said Donald Trump deeply repulsed him with his language and behavior, but made it clear he would absolutely vote for Trump. I asked why.

It came down to abortion, transgender rights and acceptance of homosexuality. I tried engaging him on other topics such as the economy, taxes, the environment, mentioning that failure to tackle environmental issues could spell doom for us all. None of that mattered. He said he would never vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights, no matter what else they offered. As for gender ID, he said, “There is man, and there is woman. That is all.” He said he despised what he called the transgender and homosexual agendas.

In a quite downtrodden neighborhood of small single-family homes, I met a Black woman who said she and her immediate family had already voted Democratic. Filled with enthusiasm for the election, she said she was having trouble persuading young people in her extended family to vote. We fist-bumped and the whole interchange seemed to re-energize her resolve to bring her younger relatives along.
Then, she looked straight at me, and said, “Thank you so much for coming to see us here.” It seemed as though it had been a long time since a Democratic Party visitor of any sort had stopped by. She’d felt forgotten.

Across town, in a much more upscale community of new single-family houses, I rang the doorbell at the home of a White registered Democrat in her 80s. She said her husband is a Republican and wasn’t home. She wanted to speak with me.

She said she was undecided on who would get her vote. She was thinking of Trump. I asked why. Her top issue turned out to be illegal immigration and border security. I mentioned that President Biden and members of Congress had negotiated the most significant immigration bill in decades, and it was headed for passage until former President Trump stopped it, so he could keep the issue for campaigning. “I didn’t know that,” she said with evident surprise.

She was concerned about inflation, and taxes, and how our country could pay for social services and new initiatives. “Where would the money come from?” if Harris were president, she asked. I mentioned that it would partly come from taxing the wealthiest Americans at the same rate as lower-income Americans. If everyone paid their fair share, I said, there would be resources to do all we need and promote a vibrant, productive society. I noted the Biden administration’s focus on building the economy from the middle had worked, that Trump’s 2017 tax cut primarily benefited the wealthy, and he was planning more cuts for wealthy individuals and big businesses.

She was unaware of all of this as well, and asked where she could get more information. I referred her to several sources. I departed feeling amazed that none of Harris’ message had cut through the noise to reach this earnest woman.

I met several younger men and women in my travels — Black, Hispanic, Asian, White — who were undecided or seemed unmoved by Harris and Walz. Some indicated they would vote for Trump; others said they remained undecided or might not vote at all. It was clear to me that voter demographics were changing, and these interchanges left me apprehensive about Harris’ chances.

I also met people who were desperate for information and wanted help finding out how and where to vote. Many more said they’d already voted. Some were relieved to find out about curbside voting. One young couple would be voting for their first time. A young mother who spoke so softly I could barely hear her said she would be voting Democratic for her daughter’s future, and was trying to persuade the daughter to do so. A couple who appeared to be immigrants, citizens already registered to vote, asked me to sit with them and guide them through candidates and the process of voting. I helped them obtain a copy of their ballot via computer so they’d be familiar with it when they went to vote.

As I considered the evident poverty and undone tasks I saw at many homes, I felt I was bearing witness to one family after another that the Democratic Party had been missing, and not helping.

The thing is, the Democrats actually have an agenda that helps working people. Though he’s widely disapproved of now, President Biden has been enormously consequential in lasting, good ways. But Biden and President Obama before him did not communicate with voters, step by step, as they realized their agendas. After campaigning, they have tended to disappear from view. Trump is the exact opposite, demanding to be a newsmaker every single day. I feel that pointing out progress and providing a sense of hope are wise things to do, even if not to quite the extent Trump does it.

To me, it seems Democrats have also been focusing too much on polarizing issues that don’t necessarily win campaigns, rather than explaining how they’re working at the basics to balance the economy, control inflation, protect the environment, and set up good conditions for job creation.

There is a communication war on. Democrats are losing it. Republicans and especially their their right wing and various misinformation campaigns, are winning it.

I wish politicians would simply answer questions. As the Harris-Trump debate started, I hoped for clear, powerful, concise messages from both. The first question for each candidate was, “Are Americans better now than they were four years ago?”

Harris had the high ground, a chance to reset the conversation. She needed to start with the headline, saying yes, that on balance, Americans are better off, but we still face challenges. She could have then pointed to the need to cut inflation and better balance the economy with a higher minimum wage, equitable tax rates, reasonable food and fuel prices, even more accessible health care, and social services that help us work and care for our families. She didn’t make any of these points in an organized way. What a powerful message that would have been.

Harris left Trump with an open field on which to lie, insult, and blame others.
He persuaded viewers that the surging economy was actually a terrible economy, that crime was raging when it is in fact lower than during his term. And no one was reminded that Trump killed the bipartisan immigration bill. In his own way, this convicted felon, adjudicated sexual assaulter, and documented liar was convincing. He even started to make me feel resentful about various injustices.

On Election Night, my last night of canvassing, I noticed how quiet it was at polling places in Forsyth County. I saw no lines outside, and not that much traffic. Had everyone voted early? When I returned to local headquarters, team leaders were on the phone trying to get more people out to the polls. I felt North Carolina Democrats might in trouble.

Donald Trump won the presidential election. Yet North Carolina voters who voted for him also helped elect a Democratic governor, state attorney general, some new judges, and ended a Republican supermajority in the state House. Here, as in many other states, it was clear that Harris’ campaign had failed even as voters approved many of her objectives. They simply reached for Democratic objectives without the Democrats.

Some of Trump’s supporters have told me they think he is here by divine intervention. They may be surprised by what he does compared to what they thought he would deliver. But it is late now.

If Democrats want to win in the future, they will need to focus, and act.
I read about meetings and consultants trying to figure out what went wrong.
A walk through some of the neighborhoods I visited, to actually meet and talk with people, to really take time with them, might help Democratic leaders plot a realistic winning strategy and reclaim their core constituency.

A question now is, with the Supreme Court’s decision establishing presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts as president, will Donald Trump decide there should not be another election?