For much of the mid-term campaign, Democrats have struggled to define their message, weighing slogans like “Democrats Deliver” and “Build Back Better” and issuing warnings against “ultra-MAGA” Republicans.
Now a coalition of progressive organizations has reached an agreement on what its leaders hope will be a unified tone of the left. In November, they plan to argue, Americans should vote to protect the fundamental freedoms “Trump Republicans” are trying to take away.
That pitch is the product of a months-long interim messaging project called the “Protect Our Freedoms” initiative, fueled by polls and ad testing.
The messaging project is a sprawling effort by progressive groups, activists, and strategists to align Democrats as they crystallize the choice between the two parties and emphasize the consistency of the midterm elections.
“Freedom is a powerful framework for this election, to make clear what the stakes are,” said Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, an architect of the messaging project and co-founder and vice president of Way to Win, a collective of left-leaning Democratic donors and political strategists.
What is most striking about the initiative is not the initial size of the investment — there is a $5 million national paid media component associated with the campaign, a relatively modest sum — but the fact that left-wing organizations are now embracing language more closely associated with small-government conservatives.
“We have witnessed for far too long how the right wing masterfully mastered and captured the language of freedom,” said Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party, one of the organizations involved in the “Protect Our Freedoms” effort. .
Such language has never been confined to the right: For example, former President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted the “Four Freedoms,” and a major campaign for marriage equality was framed as Freedom to Marry. But Republicans have long portrayed their party as the bastion of freedom — whether the defender of free markets or more recently, opposed to coronavirus-related mandates.
In a statement, Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, highlighted efforts to portray Democrats as anti-freedom over pandemic measures, calling the party “closed businesses, school lockouts, masks on toddlers, and forced vaccines.” ”.
Advertisements based on the “Protect Our Freedoms” message argue that core American values—such as free elections that uphold the will of the people, or freedom for individuals to make decisions for their families—are now uniquely jeopardized. Just last week, a group of academics issued Mr Biden sharp warnings about the state of democracy, The Washington Post reported.
“We’ve seen what happens when Trump’s Republicans claim to be for freedom, only to take it away and impose their will,” says an ad paid for by Way to Win Action Fund, like January 6, 2021 images, attack on the US Capitol flashes across the screen. “Remember in November: you are part of the fight for freedom.”
Ms. Fernandez Ancona said the national ad campaign “sets the example of the message we are trying to get across,” one that the initiative’s leaders hope will be reflected in grassroots efforts and individual organizations’ advertising.
MoveOn Political Action plans a television and digital ad purchase for later this month targeting statewide races in Arizona and Pennsylvania that will include “Protect Our Freedoms” messages, said Rahna Epting, the director of MoveOn. And officials from several organizations said the lessons on messaging will determine how they engage voters at their door or on the phone.
Ten organizations were involved in the ‘Protect Our Freedoms’ messaging initiative, including Indivisible and Future Forward.
Within the wider democratic ecosystem, candidates and party institutions still follow a wide variety of messaging tactics.
But in an interview last week, after Kansas voters rejected an anti-abortion measure, Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House’s Democratic campaign branch, also reached out to “freedom” language when he presented the choice between the two. political parties described.
“The MAGA movement will take away your rights, your benefits, your freedoms, and you should vote Democratic if you care about those things,” he said.
Research collected by the “Protect Our Freedoms” campaign helps explain why Democrats view such messages as powerful: A data point cited in a campaign presentation said that, when asked in a survey to identify the values that mattered most to them if Americans chose “liberty and liberty,” far superior to other options such as equality and patriotism.
The presentation also said that the overthrow of Roe v. Wade had opened a “persuasion window,” bringing more voters into the game. Anat Shenker-Osorio, a forward-thinking consultant involved in the messaging project, said there was a strong opening to “link actions against Roe and abortion with this broader framework of taking away our liberties.”
Ms Fernandez Ancona said that “the idea of ’freedom’ is really emerging.”
“People need to understand that if this Republican Party wins, they’re going to lose things,” she added.