Editor’s Note: Richard Gabriel is president of Decision Analysis, a national trial consulting company and author of “Acquittal: An Insider Reveals the Stories and Strategies Behind Today’s Most Infamous Verdicts.” The views expressed in this commentary belong to the author. View more opinion at CNN.
As a trial consultant, I have spent the better part of my 35-year career helping lawyers understand how trials can be easily lost even when they clearly have all the evidence and law on their side. It’s an uncomfortable conversation and it comes down to a simple question: “Would you rather be right or would you rather win?” Often, you can’t have both.
With less than 30 days until the election, an infected President minimizing the risk of the coronavirus, the first raucous Presidential debate under our belts, and a high probability that the Republicans will be confirming another Supreme Court nominee, it is time for the Democrats to face the same difficult question.
Let’s take a good hard look at the facts that we should use to judge a sitting President. To date, more than 210,000 people have died in the US as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 10 million jobs have been lost between February and September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and we are in the midst of a brutal economic recession. After nearly four years in office, Donald Trump has been embroiled in countless scandals, and the President has been impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress (although the Republican-led Senate voted to acquit him on both counts).
Those with close ties to Trump have written books accusing him of incompetence, narcissism, and racism (even though Trump believes no one has done more for Blacks than him) and an extraordinary number of retired military officers, national security leaders and high-profile Republicans support Democratic nominee Joe Biden, with many citing the threat another four years of Trump would pose to our democracy.
Yet Trump’s job approval ratings remain steady at almost 40%, with an average of 87% of Republicans approving of his handling of the presidency. Yes, Joe Biden is currently ahead in the national polls, but if the evidence shows Trump is a failure on several accounts, why isn’t this a complete blowout for the Democratic nominee?
The answer to this question is the abject failure of the Democratic Party to understand and communicate effectively with the voters who decide elections. It is no coincidence that the Lincoln Project, a Republican political action committee to prevent Trump’s reelection, has created some of the most effective and hard-hitting campaign advertising this election cycle.
Democrats on the other hand, have shown that they are incapable of controlling the narrative. They have also mistakenly believed that voters mainly use policies, facts, and logic to decide on candidates. They have consistently communicated their disdain for Trump’s base, as evidenced by Barack Obama’s “guns or religion” comment in 2008 and Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” comment in 2016.
Here are some harsh realities that the Democrats need to confront to win this election. First, many people don’t vote on abstractions — they vote based on things that affect them personally. Democracy is an abstraction. Divisiveness is often an abstraction. For the most part, policies are abstractions. The voters that decide elections often don’t care about abstractions.
Second, Democrats must understand that fear as an emotion is much more powerful than hope. And third, Democrats must paint a stark picture of who Trump is, what he has done to this country, and what his reelection would really mean.
So, with apologies to former first lady Michelle Obama, it is time to go low.
And by going low, I mean the Democrats have to be brutally honest in order to reach the voters they need and attack two core values of Trump’s authoritarian message: his “strength” and “success.”
As a trial consultant, I work with clients to ensure that they use the evidence presented in a case to create a powerful story that compels a jury to vote in their favor.
If I were in charge of creating political ad campaigns for the Democratic Party, they would focus on how Trump’s failures have a tangibly negative effect on voters and I would target Republicans, independent, and swing voters with messages that are personal and specifically designed to evoke an emotional response, like these:
Donald Trump is weak. He has failed to stand up to Russia, China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia on key issues. He failed to stand up for our troops and confront Vladimir Putin for months following the US intelligence assessment that Russians offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill US troops in Afghanistan, calling it fake news instead. He didn’t act when he knew about the dangers of the virus in January, which could have potentially prevented the US death toll from exceeding 200,000, claiming instead that he is the country’s cheerleader. He acted irresponsibly throughout the pandemic and failed to follow basic public health guidelines that would have minimized his risk of exposure to the coronavirus. He can’t protect you. He can’t even protect himself. His weakness has made America weak.
Donald Trump is a failure. His economy has failed you. His failed response to the pandemic could cost you your job, if it hasn’t already. He is a failure at business, with his companies having filed for bankruptcy multiple times. He has failed coal workers, the manufacturing industry, and farmers with empty promises and a disastrous trade war. He has failed our soldiers by groveling and kissing up to our enemies. His failure makes America a failure. A Democratic ad could show footage of shuttered factories in battleground states, bare supermarket shelves, home foreclosures, drought-stricken farms, food lines, crying babies, and thousands of hungry, homeless people, warning that that’s what people could face in Trump’s America in 2021.
Donald Trump despises you. He is trying to take away health care from millions of Americans. He has proposed cuts to Social Security, despite his own promises not to, and denials that he will. He wants to slash spending on your children’s education if schools don’t reopen. He wants to take your freedom of speech (online), even though he claims he’s fighting censorship.
He is willing to deploy federal law enforcement agents, some of whom beat a military veteran and broke his hand. And even if your mother, grandmother, brother, cousin and best friend all died from Covid-19, he might still insist it “affects virtually nobody.” This ad could feature a running tally of Covid-related deaths, while clips show Trump minimizing the coronavirus risk and golfing, juxtaposed with images of body bags, overcrowded emergency rooms and sick people.
This messaging can also be used for tight Senate races. Democrats should drive home the failures of incumbent Republican senators when it comes to the economy and their pandemic responses and hold them responsible for the deaths and loss of jobs in their states.
While I would prefer to communicate the usual hopeful messages of unity that Democrats do so well, I know that too much is at stake to just take the high ground and hope for the best. Republicans have spent decades developing think tanks, which have mastered the psychology of language. Meanwhile, our education system has failed to teach citizens how to distinguish fact from fiction, with 47% of Americans who believe it’s difficult to know if the information they encounter is true, according to an AP-NORC and USAFacts poll from 2019.
It is a classic authoritarian method to control populations: keep them ignorant and keep them in fear.
As a result, we now live in a post-proof, post-truth world where the message is perception and perception becomes reality if repeated frequently enough.
Fascism and propaganda flourish in the fallow fields of ignorance. Until we can improve our education system and make critical thinking a priority, we must communicate in a way that shakes voters and wakes them up to the harsh reality of the consequences of this election, even if it makes us uncomfortable.
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Both of my parents lost family members during the Holocaust before they were blacklisted under the reign of McCarthyism in the 1950s, so Republican authoritarianism casts a much darker shadow for them than me. I enjoy my righteous indignation and moral superiority as much as the next Democrat. But in this campaign, we can’t afford to be righteous losers just to maintain the ethical high ground.
It is not enough to complain about this administration or despair at the decline of our political environment. It is not enough to fend off the constant attacks on the principles we hold dear. It is not enough to naively believe that voters will use evidence rooted in facts and judge the candidates based on their platforms.
If we truly want to fight for the legacies of Rep. John Lewis and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we must fight to win. And we must use the weapons of language and persuasion to accomplish that goal. Only we can make America great again. Our very democracy will depend on it.