Hillary Clinton recently wrote a lovely op-ed in The New York Times praising Kamala Harris and wishing her the best.
Mark Yonkman is the founder of the newly created Super PAC Reclaim the Rural Vote and a rural vote messaging expert. Mark’s background straddles not only the rural and urban worlds but the black/white, gay/straight, and farm/professional worlds as well.
In it, Clinton advised the vice president to focus on her role as a prosecutor and the successes of the Biden Administration.
Clinton also used the opportunity to call Republican voters “deplorables” by another name: “MAGA Republicans.”
This is a moniker Harris should avoid in the coming months when addressing Republican voters because…
The majority of Republicans do not like being called “MAGA Republicans.”
To win and leverage the momentum the vice president currently has, she will need to convince those Republicans in the middle that she has a better vision.
Clearly, don’t call them names. When I advise candidates for office, I suggest that they never let the word “MAGA” leave their lips.
The majority of Republicans don’t like it, and it is being used in a derogatory and demeaning way. It is simply a surrogate for “deplorable.” Sure, there is a minority that probably revels in the term, but for any candidate, it is a minefield that is simply too difficult to navigate.
I cringe every time Hakeem Jeffries uses the term. Leave the term “MAGA” to the chattering class. Erase it from the candidate class and their allies. One of the benefits of living in a rural farming community of 256 households that was settled by my ancestors is that you know everyone and you interface with every possible kind of person who exists in a community.
The most liberal to the most conservative. And no one refers to themself as a “MAGA Republican.” It would be seriously offensive to call anyone by that label.
So when I read what Clinton wrote about “MAGA mouthpieces” chattering about Harris, I winced.
Would any of us even consider using a label for Black voters that Black voters have specifically said they do not want to be called?
Voters, especially rural, love strong women… of a certain type.
Voters want strength in the sense of resilience and grit in an elected leader. That’s why the Germans elected Angela Merkel for 16 years.
It is why the Chair of our county Republican Party commented in passing that Republicans were lucky Michelle Obama wasn’t running because she would win.
Hillary still blames her loss on sexism and the double standard in politics.
Don’t go there.
Politics has all sorts of bad things: homophobia, anti-semitism, anti-muslim bias, and on and on. We all have to overcome them. At the end of the day, sexism helped Hillary to run in the first place.
Remember, Joe Biden was vice president at the time and was expected to be at the top of the 2016 ticket. One of the arguments last week was that the current vice president “deserved” the spot at the top. Didn’t Vice President Biden?
Had he run, he would have won. I suspect twice. We never would have had the Trump era. And we now know that he just would have been able to eke out 8 years.
What voters object to is the kind of “strong” that stems from growing up in a privileged, elite, highly educated world where hardship was never on the menu. It can result in a smug, condescending “professor’s lounge” unrelatable demeanor that just doesn’t gel with the average voter.
The vice president is somewhere in the middle. She would be well served to poke some holes in the echo chamber in which she finds herself to get some diverse voices whispering in her ear. And by diverse, I mean rural, farm, military, hardscrabble – people with grit.
Yes, hiring someone like former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe is a move in the right direction.
Harris can’t afford to make the mistake of messaging to the rural Wisconsin Dairy Farmer that she thinks he is too dumb and incapable of figuring out how to make a copy of his driver’s license.
Focusing on abortion, her background as a prosecutor, Trump’s character, and past achievements under Biden will not move the needle.
The items Hillary highlighted in her opinion piece are not an agenda. They are nice things that can be used to fill out a vision.
Harris needs to pivot just 10 degrees and come out with her own vision. She needs to think of the swing states and needs to play to win – she already has the nomination. Act like it and pivot.
Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all have abortion. You can’t sell that property twice.
Her comments in Michigan last week that Trump was going to take away Michigan’s constitutional right to abortion fell flat – with Democrats.
Instead the vice president needs to address the “hard” issues and put housekeeping issues secondary. When she thinks rural she should put in her mind that Wisconsin Dairy farmer, not someone in Mississippi who will never vote for her. She needs to address her lack of a military background – looking at an astronaut and an admiral for vice president is a step in the right direction.
Stay tuned for PART II of Yonkman’s advice for the Harris campaign
