Rebuilding the Democratic Brand: Security for Everyone
Kyleanne Hunter & Joel Day
Democrats stand poised to elect a new, national leader to rebuild a party that suddenly and surprisingly lost an election that had all the odds stacked in their favor. . . The new DNC Chair will undoubtedly focus on a series of structural and organizational changes to the party. While the Chairman candidates may understand the need to rebuild the party, noticeably absent from the DNC conversation is an articulated, unified message about the Democratic Brand. .This was exemplified by the fact that the recent debate between the candidates for DNC Chair was heavy on policy, but light on crafting a unified political message. Sure, winning back local seats and growing national grassroots is essential, but what exactly do Democrats stand for? To be truly successful in the future, the Democrats must be more than just the party that opposes Trump; they must be one that proactively stands for something that the American people can, and more importantly want to, support. The task of the new DNC chair will be to present a unified message that captures the heart of the Democratic Brand and reaches the soul of the American population.
The current Democratic Brand is not only tarnished from loss, but remains a fragmented set of poorly-coordinated causes and weakly directed hobby-horses hardly resembling the Clinton mantra of “Stronger Together.” The Republican Brand that led to a 2016 victory was based largely on unified messaging that centered on an appeal to a basic human need — law and order and national security. The Democrats, conversely, focused on social issues that were criticized as soft, out of touch, or only applicable to special interests and “city liberals.” The problem with a coalition of affinity groups is that it lacked the overarching rhetorical framing that #MAGA gave the GOP.
The reality is that while Republicans talk a big game on security, their policies undermine the everyday security of all Americans. Talk to anybody at the brink of foreclosure or unemployment and they will tell you: economic security is their priority. Talk to a young mother working two minimum wage jobs and she will tell you that access to child care and education is the number one thing on her mind. For those facing preexisting conditions, health security is paramount. Today, over 42 million Americans face food insecurity. To address these realities, Democrats should frame their argument, not as a coalition of diverse “identity” politics, easily dismissed as special interests, but one unified agenda around the core brand of Everyday Security.
Everyday Security focuses on the fact that the ability of the everyday person to live their lives free from harm is directly related to overall national security. Equality, both social and economic, are thus not just soft liberal ideals, but are in fact the foundation of American safety. Security for America doesn’t begin with confrontation with China: Security for America begins at home.
The new DNC chair should rebuild the brand and messaging of the party on three central pillars of Everyday Security:
First, personal security should be the frame for advocating for the needs of the working poor and middle class: security in food, health, housing, and other elements of security in everyday life.
Second, economic security should frame America’s position as setting the rules of global trade and investing in economic models that most directly benefits US business and workers.
Third, community security is a moral agenda around the logic that protecting minorities, women, LGBT, children, and refugees is central to the security of our entire country.
Framing the Democratic message in this way allows for direct connection between progressive ideals and national security, elevating the core message to one with the chops necessary to stand up to the rhetorical strength of appeals to physical security. It is time to stop building walls and focus on the policies that build everyday security for all.
Personal Security
The main challenge facing the DNC Chair is that the party has centered its strategy around coalition-building by targeting special interests rather than offering a comprehensive vision of American public policy. Democrats would be better served to frame public policy as a fight for basic personal security for all Americans. Security in everyday life and access to basic needs transcends color, religion, or sexual orientation. However, that security for millions is in jeopardy: 15.8 million households don’t know where their next meal will come from; the nation’s cities, dozens more than Flint, have contaminated water; millions are still without any health coverage, and there is a home affordability crisis throughout the country. If one focuses on identity politics it is easy to see why caring about the largely-black community in Flint can be framed as an attack on the largely white rural poor. However, when Flint succeeds, the entire nation benefits. Stable communities breed a stable nation. Addressing these insecurities as national priorities that increase the security of all speaks to the everyday concerns of the “Obama coalition” while unifying around a theme greater than the sum of its parts. Indeed, all lives will matter when black lives matter, and the Democrats would be well served to adopt a narrative that unites all interests, rather than attempting to add them up in a game of electoral math.
The everyday security is about access to affordable, healthy food and safe water, and it can serve as a central frame for a DNC Chair seeking to re-establish the brand in rural towns and suburbs, key areas where Obama won in 2008 but flipped to Trump in 2016. After all, it is actually rural Republican districts where food insecurity is most prevalent. To promote everyday security in a policy agenda, Democrats could champion block grants to municipalities to update filtration systems and water pipes as well as a national subsidy school-supplied meals. Passing a new Farm Bill should be a centerpiece of this campaign, with explicitly vehicles to reduce the cost of food for American households. Such a policy has direct implications for our security and stability. Food insecurity, especially when a result of rising food prices coupled with declining wages, has a strong tie to both local and national level violence. Food for all is security for all.
Unburdening young professionals from the yolk of student debt would allow for better personal security for young professionals people and working families. Under the burden of college loans with eight percent interest, many are forced to put off buying a car, a home, and other quality of life milestones, and instead direct their paychecks to banks, who themselves borrow at interest rates below one percent. Framing the student loan debate in terms of personal security offers a broader, comprehensive political narrative about the country, not merely handouts to a reliably Democratic voting bloc. A reduction in personal debt results in both an increase in personal savings and investment in local communities. Stable local communities are essential for a strong national security. From reducing petty crime to combatting violent extremism, communities with engaged citizens are the building blocks of a strong nation.
Finally, health security is seemingly more turbulent by the day. The prospect of over 20 million Americans losing health insurance through the repeal of the Affordable Care Act should cause Democrats to focus not on wonky minutia of the law, but on the fact that the GOP is making the entire insurance marketplace unpredictable for everyone, likely spurring jumps in rates for those in the ACA and with workplace coverage. The threat to the basic right of care impacts people with preexisting conditions ranging from cancer to pregnancy: the rhetorical position is not merely that the government owes you a positive right to health, but rather that the GOP policy of repeal without replace makes all of us less secure in everyday life. A nation that does not prioritize the health and physical strength of its citizens, will not be a real superpower on the international stage.
Economic Security
Wile the DNC race has re-litigated the Sanders-Clinton split in the party, the new Chair can unify the party around the theme of economic security. Global trade and commerce are also essential building blocks of Security for Everyone. Economic security is foundational for human beings to be able to engage in other aspects of personal security. Democrats must refocus talks about trade on the security that it guarantees for the American people. The free flow of goods, labor, and capital promotes international cooperation by making the success of the rest of the world directly linked to the success of America. Global frameworks like the WTO, NAFTA, and even TPP have one critical function beyond trade: they tie the economies other world powers to the American market, bolstering security from the local to the global level.
This can be easily seen in basic trade economics. The number one buyer of American goods is Mexico, and because of its reliance on the US, every dollar earned by Mexico in exports returns 40 cents back to the US. Likewise, China may export a lot to the US, but when our economy sours, they are left in freefall without either consumers or product innovators. A Chinese economic collapse would make our latest financial crisis “look like a garden party,” not to mention result in mass unemployment and instability in an already unstable region of the world.
Rather than focus on how much is made in America, economic security must be framed around our competitive advantage in the global capital market. While dozens of other countries produce the raw materials that make a computer, we produce the software and algorithms that give that hardware meaning. While others produce more crude oil, our shale oil extractive industry has revolutionized the global energy market. Trade that makes the world dependent on our know-how, capital, and innovation is trade that makes the world’s interests align with American success. Our strategic, comparative and competitive advantage is not in our raw materials, or even in our unskilled labor force, but in the intellectual capital to create methods of production the rest of the world depends on.
In a material trade sense, America must lean into agreements that make other countries dependent upon our advantages. For example, America remains the breadbasket of the world, and our farmers can be globally competitive under trade agreements that forbid other countries from subsidizing their crops to “dump” them below market rates in the US. Getting tough with China should be about enforcing patent and intellectual property laws, which undermine the immense advantage we have in scientific and technological sectors. Trade agreements might not be perfect, but they bind other governments to the rules that America sets and enforces.
The demonization of trade is also a deflection from the true economic challenges of the 21st Century. In manufacturing, a recent Ball State University report found a resounding 88% of jobs in were lost to automation, not foreign markets. Production in every industry is steadily increasing, while jobs in low-skilled markets are stagnant. This indicates that the deep threat to traditional American jobs is automation, artificial intelligence, and robotics, which will impact office jobs, truck driving, ride sharing, welding, factory jobs, and the food service industry. While the next decade promises a surge of 3.5 million advanced-manufacturing jobs, those hired will be programmers, engineers, and scientists, while low skilled functionary positions will become automated.
The Democratic Party would thus be best served by talking about economic security as comprehensive sector reform, focusing on a robust retraining, education, and new workforce development, rather than pandering to bring back poor-paying jobs from China. Walls, whether they be brick and mortar or tariffs and embargos, are solutions to 19th and 20th Century problems like invading armies and competing textile mills. The challenge of the 21st Century is that technological change is moving faster than human institutions like education, commerce and government can catch up. In this world, a true visionary political party will seek to promote America’s competitive advantage abroad through trade, while investing into the US workforce.
While Trump and anti-trade progressives build walls to global economic security, the real debate will be between Never-Trump Republicans and Moderate-Liberal Democrats. This debate will center on the role the government should play in reforming public pre-K through 12 education to refocus on mathematical and cognitive skills applicable to the knowledge and innovation economy, funding retraining and on-the-job learning to address the realities of automation, mandating healthcare, and investing in transportation and infrastructure. Democrats should advocate for these robust investments not as entitlements or handouts, as they are often derided, but as essential to the economic, and by direct extension physical, security of all Americans in the 21st Century.
Finally, the most significant second order effect is that trade and economic prosperity it brings reduces violent conflict around the world. By linking economies together, countries become interdependent in such a way that harming one’s neighbor harms one’s own interests. In this formulation, as the scholarly work of Hegre, Russett and Oneal confirm, international war becomes far too costly. On a local level, high youth unemployment and poverty are overwhelmingly correlated with terrorism, civil war, and regime instability. One of the surest ways of promoting global order is by building stronger economies for vulnerable populations. While there is a lot of room for sustainable development and fostering burgeoning economies in poor countries, there is very little debate that for growing countries to provide basic services to their people, their markets need consumers. The United States is uniquely poised to utilize free trade to not only get goods cheaper than we could produce them at home, but to actively combat the main drivers of violence in the world.
Community Security
Everyday Security is predicated on the idea that human beings, not abstract nation-states, are the center of local, national, and international levels security. When entire communities of people are insecure because of public policy choices, it results in discontent that breeds frustration, violence, and instability. Lack of trust in police and the criminal justice system creates an environment where civil society and democracy fundamentally cannot function at its highest level. Republicans have gained a foothold with a sector of the population by characterizing basic notions of equality as “extra” rights and a distraction from the “real” security issues. However, rather than being a peripheral issue, security for all our communities is the backbone for national security and stability.
Gender Security must be a component of the new Democratic Brand. While gender equality has taken a prominent place in the progressive agenda, women’s issue still frequently center on family leave and child care. This allows women to be pigeon holed into “soft” domestic areas rather than strong security priorities. However, as research has shown, the safety and stability of a nation is not dependent on the size and strength of its army, but rather on the level of equality enjoyed by its women. Democrats would thus benefit from making this connection directly by advancing the argument: when women are safe, we’re all safe.
Rather than emphasizing this direct connection to safety and security for all Americans, progressive politics have focused on a glossy version of gender equality. “Women’s issues” such as healthcare, child care, and family leave are essential for ensuring the everyday security of families, and a pillar of real homeland security. After all, the existential threat that terrorism possess to the US is not the ISIS flag flying over the Capital dome, but engaging the US in a war of provocation and attrition that drain the treasury to the point that the government cannot provide for the basic needs of citizens. The fact that Republicans are willing to divert resources away from family leave and healthcare in order to fund the military shows how poorly they understand the real threat of terror to American families.
The changing nature of war and security also rely on gender and LGBTQ equality for success. For the past 15 years, the US has been embroiled in a counterinsurgency war, fighting asymmetrical and atypical environments. Intelligence gathering and gaining the trust and goodwill of the population are essential for successful counterinsurgency campaigns. This success is predicated on women and gays being involved in front line roles in the military. Diversity makes us stronger and smarter, and therefore more successful in reacting to the evolving and complex national security environment. Harnessing the benefit of diversity in the forces relies on a pool of willing and able female and LGBTQ recruits. Social gender and orientation equality is an essential part of ensuring this national security. When we promote equality, we make the entire nation safer.
Everyday community security all frames the way in which we harness the benefits of immigrant and refugee communities. Refugees and immigrants have been vilified as criminals and terrorists. However, research and experience both show that far from undermining our safety or stability, refugees and immigrates serve as a value added to our communities. In a physical sense, non-US citizens’ participation in the military is on the rise, and they are more likely to remain in the military than their US counterparts.
Conclusion
While not all Democrats will agree on the public policy minutia, the Everyday Security frame allows for a new DNC Chairperson to advance a comprehensive and unified narrative against the GOP, while also giving the American people something to proactively believe in. Within this frame, the new Chair can talk about the party’s shared vision of America that provides personal, economic, and community security, while framing the entirety of the GOP agenda as rash, unpredictable, and unsafe
Research shows that while public opinion on America’s place in the world is mixed, national security is an overwhelming priority. Therefore, the ability to tie progressive values and policies to personal, economic, and community security is essential if Democrats are to advance their position on all levels of government. The root of national security in the 21st Century must begin with improving the everyday security of all Americans. Democrats must actually make the case that America is “Stronger Together,” by explicitly showing how they are better for the security of our families, our neighborhoods, and our economy. With this framing, America will be left with a choice between #MAGA platitudes hiding disparate and confusing policy platforms, or a substantive, comprehensive Democratic policy agenda that speaks to making their everyday life stable and secure.
Joel Day studies the impact of local communities in combatting violent extremism. He holds a PhD in International Relations and is Visiting Research Scholar at the University of San Diego Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice.
Kyleanne Hunter is a Research Fellow and PhD Candidate at the Sie Chou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver.
