As dozens of pundits anxiously opine, the future of democracy is in limbo, awaiting whether Donald Trump will regain the White House. In the interim, the future of a free Ukraine—and possibly the future of Taiwan and our NATO allies—is hostage to the whims of Trump and those Congressional Republicans in his thrall, a point President Joe Biden will surely make in his national State of the Union address.
We know how we got to this point.
As my colleagues and I have written for the Brookings Institution, we ignored the proud people of once-mighty heartland regions, the decay of their communities, and their isolation from the national discourse not just here in the United States but in the United Kingdom, as Brexit sent a message to London-focused politicians that residents of neglected communities were determined to be heard.
In 2016, the twin surprises of Trump’s election (made possible by voters in a handful of industrial swing-state regions being left behind) and the U.K.’s vote to withdraw from the European Union were wake-up calls for the world. The alarm has not stopped ringing.
In the intervening years, populist leaders of all stripes stoked resentment—and offered scapegoats, whether they be “elites,” “illegals,” or the “system” itself.
Serious political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic have responded by reconnecting rural and former industrial heartland community residents to economic opportunity. When communities find a path to renewed success, it restores pride and optimism and diminishes the appeal of polarization.
Thanks to President Joe Biden and a bipartisan coalition on some issues, the U.S. is finally making unprecedented investments in place-based industrial policy and economic growth that is more inclusive. In the U.K., the in-power Conservative government and the opposition Labour party share an agenda to “level up” the country’s in-decline regions. The European Commission—including its member states’ governments, universities, civic organizations, and policy partners—is enhancing and improving adjustment and cohesion policies to diminish the political threat to member countries. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development is doubling down on efforts to bring countries together to share knowledge and develop policies based on successful transformations—political reasons for tamping down anti-democratic sentiment and movements.
These efforts will likely make a big difference over time. But with 2024 being the “year of the election”—when voters in 64 countries holding nearly half the world’s population head to the poll—time is one thing democracy can’t afford.
Leaders working to tackle big problems—closing economic divides in our neglected heartland regions, tackling climate change with green transformation, rebuilding infrastructure, or closing digital skills divides with education and training—offer substantive solutions, not just angry rhetoric.
This is what Biden has been doing. The inward investment policies enacted by the White House and Congress—specifically, the American Rescue Plan Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, potentially worth some $3.8 trillion are the most significant heartland place-focused investments and incentives in American history. These regional investments dwarf previous large-scale historic place-focused investment programs such as the Tennessee Valley Authority under President Roosevelt and the Appalachian Regional Commission under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.
As my Brookings colleague Mark Muro and I recently wrote, these investments bring new economic promise and, potentially, new economic identity to regions like my own industrial Midwest, which has been too often tarred in national media as a backward-looking “Rust Belt.”
But the benefits from these investments in new good-paying jobs from investments in innovation, research and development, and infrastructure are hard for a candidate to explain. And these are policies that will take time to be felt.
These critical transitions must be delivered to rebuild local economies and retain national democracies. Serious politicians take up this job to provide a constructive rather than rhetorical response to working families’ legitimate frustrations and anxieties.
Meanwhile, populists don’t have to deliver anything. They fuel anger and disaffection, blame, pledge to bring back the past, protect voters from change, and encourage blowing up the system.
They don’t even pretend to attend to the root causes of voters’ unease, frustration, and anger.
This makes the job of affirmative leaders delivering policy doubly hard. Voters remain cynical, and given that implementing big policies takes time and effort, cash, and coalition-building before people feel that their lives and communities are looking up, the cynicism lingers.
Meanwhile, populists get to attack all the policies that support a successful transition, stoking the “going green” backlash or anything that feels like more change.
Democracy’s champions still need to do the hard and messy work of policy delivery.
But they need to haul up some different and more effective messaging artillery—right now. Representative Ro Khanna is one of the U.S. leaders who get it—helping spread a gospel about the aspirational aspects of economic change—calling on people’s pride in showing the way to a better economic place. As he told Fast Company magazine:
“(In places like) Appalachia, technology now can be not just disruptive and negative, but positive and uplifting and inspirational. Folks now have more opportunities to engage in the workforce while staying in their communities than they’ve ever had before, …because of the connectivity of the internet, because you can stay in your community and still have jobs. (What we ought to do) is to talk about the aspirational possibility of technology to help provide work and opportunity in communities that haven’t had them as a solution: One part of a solution to problems that have existed for the last 50 years where we haven’t made much progress.”
This year’s elections in the U.S., U.K., and across Europe will be a message war, a political food fight. Meaningful solutions delivered by good policy—from reducing inflation to new jobs being created from U.S. infrastructure, CHIPS, and IRA legislation to the fruits of the green transformation in Europe—won’t be felt by voters.
What does that message look like?
First, it is not about facts or policies. It is about emotion and identity. Many voters are anxious and angry. As Khanna says, “We have to meet people where they are. And they don’t think we are in a great place right now.”
Leaders who understand, feel, and share that anger—and can communicate that—at least have a chance to engage with disaffected voters.
You can’t persuade people the economy is better, with the fact that it is—all you can say is If you are not feeling it—I’m not done!
Also, democracy preservers can’t “other” their constituents.
So much of the alienation is because voters, particularly the working class in communities in economic decline, can’t identify someone in charge who wants to help and support them or listen to them. So, they turn to those they feel do.
Biden wisely talks about delivering for middle-class families on issues they care about. Trump, meanwhile, promises “retribution.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the height of the Great Depression, talked to citizens about what “we” face: “My firm belief is that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” Don’t talk about policies. Talk about identity: We will make the system work for us.
Well-intentioned leaders need to up their game. No leader, no matter how well-meaning, can force change on people or do “for” or “to” people. The message from leaders must be, “It is not okay that your prospects and your communities’ conditions aren’t what they should be. We see and hear you. We understand why you are upset with the conditions of your community. You and your community and your future success are a national priority. We support you and your ideas for a brighter future”.
This year will be a battle for the pissed-off’s hearts, minds, and loyalties.
Those sowing more division will not fight fairly. They will put out fake AI videos, lie on TikTok, and have allies in Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran.
Those who care about making a difference and democracy, like Biden, have to offer more of what Khanna calls “economic imagination.”
President Barack Obama demonstrated that hope can trump fear. Last fall, Poland offered another hopeful counterpoint to the assaults on democracy as voters turned out to embrace Europe and the world. The Ukrainian students I recently met in Poland showed a fierce determination to be free and to lead the change that can and will conquer despots.
Leaders who want to improve the lives of their citizens must first listen respectfully and then join hands to build the future their people want.
