Issues and Messages of the 2024 Presidential Race
Simplicity is the key.
To modest fanfare, former President Donald Trump held the first major event of his campaign in New Hampshire last weekend. He addressed about 400 people in a high school auditorium as part of the New Hampshire GOP’s annual meeting.
The lack of media attention can be attributed at least partially to the reality that there are 21 months until the election and most Americans cherish ignoring politics in odd-numbered years. Trump also trailed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis 42%-30% in a recent poll of likely GOP primary voters in the state and delivered what many thought was a boring speech. His biggest applause line came toward the end of his remarks when he condemned critical race theory.
The early, unheralded event nonetheless raises the question of what will resonate with voters during the long trudge from now until November 2024 (or longer if Arizona officials are doing the counting). President Joe Biden recently turned 80 and has presided over a disturbed economy and humiliation overseas. However, Republicans looking ahead to a certain victory against him or a younger Democrat replacement were caught off guard by mediocre Republican performance in midterm elections last November.
There is also the historical trend that when the White House switches political parties, voters usually give that party (if not a specific president) at least two terms in office. Trump and Jimmy Carter before him governed over the only periods in modern history to buck that trend—exceptions that prove the rule. Republicans will need a unique candidate to win in 2024: someone who can take the best of Trump (a blue collar focus, a willingness to fight, a refusal to let the media set the rules of debate) but who is also likable and accomplished with a solid message.
Simplicity is also the key in communicating effectively with the entire nation.
The economy is often the leading issue in any presidential election. Absent a general war with China or Russia, there is no reason to expect 2024 to be different. Spotlighting inflation, especially high energy prices, didn’t help Republicans as much as expected in 2022. One reason was that the White House and media blamed Russia for inflation. The claim is untrue. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine disabled no energy production but sloppy U.S. sanctions on Russia—unfortunately backed by both parties to the detriment of U.S. consumers—upended world energy markets while Congress and the Federal Reserve caused other inflation. But the argument worked, at least somewhat.
Shifting the messaging on the economy to prosperity, the cost of living, and a return to normalcy would be most effective. Here, actions will speak louder than words. Governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis have an upper hand. They can simply point to economic success without the persistent shortages and rising cost of living. Candidates should still speak about expanding domestic energy production to bring down prices, especially fracking and pipelines in swing states, but this is not a sufficient national message.
Possible messages for 2024 candidates: “Joe Biden has brought down living standards for all Americans except the super rich. He also caused inflation by racking up huge deficits. We need to get Joe Biden and the rest of the government out of the way of the economy and restore the boom that existed before COVID.”
On cultural issues, crime and the chaos at the southern border also disappointed as national issues in 2022. The reality is that many voters who express concern about crime in cities don’t live there. Those who do tend to vote Democrat instinctively. For example, even amid a surge in crime, homelessness, and decay in Los Angeles, voters opted in the mayor’s race for the status quo over a moderate challenger.
Immigration will also fail to pack the punch it did in 2016 unless there is a sharp increase in unemployment. A message of secure borders will be more poignant if it is tied to the fentanyl crisis that is driving record-high addiction and overdose deaths in the USA. Most illegal drugs imported into America come via Mexico, often with Chinese ingredients. Most voters believe there is an invasion afoot at the border and support for a border wall is actually greater now than when Trump was president. The wall remains a simple and effective message.
Possible messages for 2024 candidates: “Joe Biden has presided over a national crime wave, an open border, and an overdose crisis instigated by China. I will complete the border wall in my first two years in office and decouple economically from China and Mexico until the drugs and uncontrolled immigration stop.”
On other cultural issues, Americans still overwhelmingly buck the progressive elite and its support for redefining America’s character and history in the name of wokeness. Most voters support the color-blind meritocracy advocated by Martin Luther King Jr. instead of the discrimination advocated by today’s Left. Governor Glenn Youngkin also proved by winning in Virginia that parents and other voters are sick of bureaucrats telling them how to run their lives and raise their kids.
Possible messages for 2024 candidates: “Joe Biden wants to divide America and treat you and your kids based on what you are rather than who you are. I believe in equal opportunity, ignoring race, and generous tax credits to pay for raising kids.”
It’s better to be on the offense instead of defense in communications, but it isn’t always possible. Biden administration officials have already demonstrated they will claim Republicans want to cut Social Security and Medicare, and they will use abortion to their advantage again in 2024 as they did in 2022.
Republican candidates should confront these messages head on: “Joe Biden is the one putting Social Security and Medicare at risk by racking up trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. I will preserve these essential programs for future generations by sending Congress a balanced budget.” On abortion: “Florida has enacted a law restricting abortion after fifteen weeks of gestation, which most Americans think is a more-than-reasonable requirement. This is now an issue to be decided by individual states, where it belongs, and I will oppose any taxpayer funding for abortion. We will ensure women who have children have the support they need.
Finally, foreign policy is seldom at the top of voters’ list of concerns, but it plays a key indirect role since voters grasp that they are sizing up a prospective commander in chief. Beltway Republicans have surrendered foreign policy to Biden by supporting his de facto Europe-first policy of paying for the Ukraine War and neglecting defenses against China and Iran. They should have insisted that wealthy European moochers pay for Ukraine’s defense and avoided energy sanctions on Russia that harm Americans and give discounts on oil and gas to the Chinese.
This latest foreign policy fiasco from Washington foreign policy establishment cannot be undone, but some prospective candidates like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have shown that a very strong focus on China might attract voters who, unlike the experts, never mistook Beijing for a friend. There is also an opportunity in criticizing Biden for alienating allies over human rights matters—both real and woke make-believe—but not adversaries with much worse records.
Possible messages for 2024 candidates: “Joe Biden gave Afghanistan to the Taliban and has encouraged Chinese belligerence by neglecting defenses in the Pacific. We need to stop lecturing allies just because they aren’t woke, especially when they are standing up to cruel adversaries like China and Iran. Only the American flag should fly over U.S. embassies, not woke political symbols.”
Sticking with those messages again and again should resonate with the American public and break through a hostile media that will seek to misrepresent whoever becomes the GOP nominee. Voters will respond to a positive, decisive, disciplined, unapologetic alternative to the floundering status quo.
Simon & Whiton
In our latest podcast episode, Mark and I discuss Ukraine getting Taiwan’s weapons, demographics and destiny in China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, woke M&Ms, the Gallagher Committee, and little Britain.
I don't know that a lot of people want to decouple economically from Mexico. I would see it as fundamentally different from China in that it's not even close to clear that we have an issue with the Mexican government, so much as we just would like the two countries jointly to have the capacity to totally control the flow of people and goods across the border (in both directions by the way, Mexico complains about a lot of illegal guns going south).
I don't know that what/who is the best way to communicate the dichotomy between the new racism and the general consensus around colorblindness. Personally, not sure that anyone will ever state it better than content of character versus color of skin.
I would violently oppose that way of talking about Social Security and Medicare. I think it gets lost in DC-centric circles, but out here in the hinterlands, "balanced budgets" don't belong in the same conversation as "cuts and threats to Social Security and Medicare". SS and Medicare are supposed to be social insurance programs versus social welfare programs, all of us pay in and then those funds collectively guarantee our own care later on in life. The betrayal in my view at least is the way in which they have been at least partially transformed into welfare programs, subject to annual budget negotiations. Then it becomes very easy for Democrats to portray Republicans as anti-SS and Medicare if they advocate for even the most basic levels of fiscal responsibility.
Youngkin vs Yang.