It’s no secret that a good chunk of the American electorate thinks the deck is stacked against them. It’s also no secret that Democrats have had a hard time convincing those voters that we’re ready to unstack it.
Winning Jobs Narrative Action thinks one way to change that is by putting those voters at the center of the story, rather than at the mercy of it. And by doing so, we can convince people that Democrats can help them afford to raise a family, retire with dignity, and create the kinds of lives we all go to work every day to build.
This week, I connected with WJN Action’s Executive Director Steve Pierce to talk about “aspirational populism,” and why Democrats across the party spectrum might benefit from talking a little less about billionaires and a little more about buying a home.
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5 short questions. 5 quick responses featuring the wisdom of Steve Pierce, Executive Director of Winning Jobs Narrative Action.
Steve, what does an aspirational populist message look like? And why is it more likely to move voters?
Aspirational populism starts with a simple principle: working people should be the protagonists of our economic story.
That means starting with hardworking Americans’ deepest aspiration: to build a good life for themselves and their families. Of course, what that looks like can be different for different people — affording a home, raising a family, getting ahead, retiring with dignity, giving their kids a better life — but it’s ultimately why they get up every morning and go to work.
Once we show that we understand what people are trying to build, then we can identify the obstacles standing in their way and offer tangible solutions that help them move forward.
To be clear, none of this means we should leave billionaires, big corporations or other powerful interests out of our messaging. It means putting them in the right role: as obstacles in a story that is ultimately about working people and the future they’re trying to build.
It might seem like a small thing, but our research suggests that distinction matters. In head-to-head testing with Blue Rose Research, aspirational populist messages outperformed more adversarial, villain-centered alternatives by an average of 43% across taxes, energy affordability and housing.
Every poll seems to tell us that voters are angry about how stacked the deck is against them. What would you tell Democrats who think our focus should be on harnessing that anger?
The anger is real, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Democrats should run away from it. We need to harness it — but anger is most powerful when it’s attached to something people are fighting for, not just something we’re fighting against.
I’m a huge Star Wars fan, so I always think about it this way: Darth Vader is one of the most iconic villains in the history of film. He’s absolutely essential to that story — you almost can’t imagine it without him. He raises the stakes and clarifies the central conflict just through his presence. But Star Wars isn’t really about Darth Vader. It’s about Luke Skywalker and the Rebel Alliance — what they’re fighting for and the future they’re trying to build. We haven’t kept coming back to that story again and again for 50 years because we want to root against Vader. We come back because we want to root for the Rebels.
Political storytelling works the same way. We should absolutely identify the bad actors that are rigging the rules or standing in working people’s way. But if the whole story becomes about how terrible the villains are, working people get pushed to the side or reduced to victims.
So yes, harness the anger. Name who is responsible. Hold them accountable. But make sure that anger is in service of a larger promise. People don’t just want to know who screwed them or see the bad guys taken down a peg. They want to know what becomes possible if we change the rules — and how their lives can actually get better.
What Democrat is doing a good job delivering this kind of message?
One thing I’d emphasize is that aspirational populism isn’t really an ideological or policy prescription. It’s about how you tell the story — and there are Democrats from very different wings of the party who are doing versions of it.
Pat Ryan is a good example from the New Dem world. He calls it “patriotic populism,” but the storytelling architecture is very similar: start with working people, their contribution and what they’re trying to build; identify the powerful forces standing in their way; then offer a way forward.
Chris Deluzio comes from a more progressive lane and often uses sharper rhetoric, but he also consistently keeps working people at the center of the story and makes concentrated corporate power the obstacle rather than the protagonist.
Jon Ossoff and James Talarico offer two other versions on bigger stages. Ossoff is especially good at pairing sharp critiques of corruption and concentrated power with a broader argument about what government should do for ordinary people. Talarico’s “New American Dream” message begins even more explicitly with aspiration — the job, home, education and time with family people are trying to attain — before explaining what’s making those things harder.
That range is part of why I think the framework is useful. You can have different ideological identities and different policy solutions and still tell the story in a way that keeps working people — what they contribute, what they want and the life they’re trying to build — at the center.
What do you want to shout from the rooftops?
Democrats need to start building the Democratic brand, not just selling Democratic candidates.
We do almost the exact opposite of what every marketing textbook would tell you to do. Nike doesn’t spend all its time telling you that this year’s shoe is 12% more comfortable or that its newest shorts have better stretch. It sells Nike as an idea — what the brand stands for, what it says about you, and the kind of person you are when you wear it. That brand affinity then transfers to the individual products.
Democrats mostly do the reverse. We rarely build the party brand proactively. Instead, every cycle we launch hundreds of individual products — candidates — and ask each of them to define themselves from scratch. Often they also have to spend time distancing themselves from a party brand that voters either don’t understand or that our opponents have negatively defined for us.
That is a huge strategic handicap, especially because most voters are not political obsessives. Many know very little about the candidates farther down the ballot; even nationally prominent congressional leaders are unfamiliar to huge swaths of the public.
So when voters step into a voting booth and see a bunch of names they don’t know on the ballot, the party label becomes one of the strongest cues they have. We should want the “(D)” next to our candidates’ names to immediately communicate something meaningful about who we are, what we believe, what kind of country we want to build — and what it says about you if you’re part of it.
Right now, we ask every candidate to sell the shoe without ever bothering to build Nike.
Who else should we make time to talk to?
Richard Trent at the Middle Out Center.
A core part of our framework at Winning Jobs Narrative is what we call “people-driven growth”: working people and families aren’t just supposed to benefit from economic growth; they’re the ones who create it. When they have more money in their pockets, they spend it in their communities, businesses grow, jobs are created and the economy gets stronger.
Richard and the Middle Out Center are very much fellow travelers on that idea. They come at the question more through economics and policy, while we tend to approach it through narrative. But we share a basic belief that a strong economy starts with the people who actually power it.