Unity, Identity and Progressive Populism

The narratives of the Democratic presidential candidates

Richard Kirsch – May, 2019

Introduction

What are the big stories about America that the Democratic presidential candidates are telling? What pictures are they painting of the country, of the concerns Americans face and what they will do to improve people’s lives if they are elected? What’s the case each candidate is making that goes beyond their resume?

To answer these questions, I read the first major speech (usually the campaign kick-off) of twelve of the Democrats who are running for president in 2020. I looked at the big themes and overall narrative, which issues they are highlighting and which groups they seem to be appealing to, who they blamed for the nation’s problems, including how much they talked about President Trump and who they spotlighted as American heroes.

Although I’ve included each candidate’s slogan and brand, that’s not my focus. Nor am I focused on how candidates wrap their personal story with their story of America, which each of them do in at least some way. Instead, I’m looking at the overall story they tell.

The twelve candidates I included are: former Vice-President Joe Biden; six of the seven U.S. Senators (Corey Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren); two of the three governors (John Hickenlooper, Jay Inslee); two other candidates who are doing well in both the early polls and money race (Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke) and Julian Castro, the former cabinet secretary and lone Latino in the race.

Overall observations

In 2016, Hillary Clinton ran on the slogan, “Stronger Together.” Three years later, ending divisiveness is the one story that is centered in most of the candidates’ speeches and is present in all but one (Buttigieg). Clearly, Democrats believe that the country is eager to close the divides Trump has greatly widened since the election. However, some candidates focus more on his dividing people by race and other identities, while others appeal to a more general hunger to bring the country together. And still other candidates emphasize the economic divide in the nation, including how race is used by the powerful to divide people.

Given that Trump’s approval rating on the economy is 56% or higher in recent polling, and the strength of conventional economic measures, the various ways that candidates address the economy is one of the key elements that distinguish some of their narratives. In the last Democratic primary, Bernie Sanders ran on a populist economic platform, which emphasized the impact of wealth inequality on people’s lives, driven by the greed of the wealthy and big corporations. This year, two other candidates join Sanders in centering the economic pressures on families and about half of the candidates make that part of their narrative. But not all of those candidates rail against the powerful and many candidates barely acknowledge the economic strain on families. Other candidates tell a different economic story or barely mention the economy.

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What about how the candidates talk about Trump explicitly? With two exceptions, the answer is not much. Sanders and Gillibrand go after the President aggressively and at length. But most of the candidates spend little time talking about Trump explicitly – from not at all to one or two references. Most of the candidates have concluded that they need to make their own case for replacing the President, rather than spend time attacking the bogeyman in the White House who overhangs the campaign.

While of course no candidate tells the exact same story, in the following I’ve grouped candidates together when the stories they tell in their speeches are very similar. After describing eight candidates who I place in three groups, I review the narratives of the other four candidates.

I’ll also note that the kick-off speech is each candidate’s first version of their story and that already we are seeing candidates modify their approach. And events will also impact what candidates talk about. For example, just half of the candidates mentioned reproductive rights in their speeches and none made it a major focus; that is changing in response to the state legislation challenging Roe v. Wade. Having said that, I’m certain that the major themes and tensions in the campaign are contained in these speeches even if individual candidates change what they emphasize as the campaign develops.

The Candidates and the Narratives

Three candidates, Booker, Gillibrand and Harris, ground their narrative in values of common humanity and justice and prominently include the struggles of people of color and immigrants in their story, as well as talking about economic issues and the threat to our democracy. Here is an example from each of the values-based quest of their campaign:

o Gillibrand: “I am running for president to fix what has been broken; to repair our moral fiber and rebuild the common bond between us as Americans.”

o Her personal brand and campaign slogan is Brave Wins, taking on Trump’s bullying and divisiveness: “We deserve a president who is brave, who will walk the fire to do what is right. We deserve a president who inspires us to stand for something greater than ourselves.”

o Harris: “To be conscious and compassionate about the struggles of all people.”… “The fight for justice is everyone’s responsibility.”

o Her personal brand and campaign slogan is: For the People, a “tough, principled, fearless” protector of victims of a myriad of systems and powerful forces.

o Booker: “The only way to overcome the tough challenges is by extending grace, finding common ground, and working together. I believe we will bring our country together.”

o His personal brand and campaign logo is “Where there is unity there is strength.” But his version of unity is aimed squarely at Democratic voters.

While each of these candidates talks about a variety of problems faced by Americans, more than most other candidates they highlight identity-based issues including: Harris describing “a deeply flawed criminal justice system” in which “unarmed Black men and women are killed” and Booker calling to “close the racial gap because we can’t be blind do the impact of generations of racism and white supremacy.”

In this quote, Gillibrand links democratic and economic issues to immigration: “The President has tried to reduce America to its smallest self by attacking the values of and institutions of our democracy and turning our most cherished principles inside out, rooting for bigotry and violence and closing our doors to immigrants and refugees, taking from the many to line the pockets of the few.”

This is not to say that any of these candidates ignore economic issues. Booker decries low wage and disappearing family farms saying, “Decades of unjust policies have destroyed our economy, extracted

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money from our common wealth and plowed it into tax cuts for the wealthy and wars overseas.” Harris, using words that many of the candidates echo – not just these three –describes an “economy not working for working people” with “families living paycheck to paycheck.”

Among the three candidates, only Gillibrand takes on Trump at length, making her announcement speech outside of Trump Towers in New York. Booker decries Trump behavior twice – neither time by name – and Harris doesn’t refer to him at all, instead criticizing the behavior of “leaders.” Although since her opening speech, Harris has been taking sharper aim at the President.

All three candidates highlight activists as heroes, whether in their own family history, in our nation’s history or those who are currently protesting Trump’s policies. They are not alone; seven of the 11 candidates we reviewed highlighted activists, most frequently as historical heroes.

In the culmination of their speeches, Booker, Gillibrand and Harris each return to the theme of standing up to divisiveness for moral leadership:

o Harris: “We can heal our nation… reclaim the American dream for every single person in this country… restore America’s moral leadership.”

o Gillibrand: “We’ll look back at this moment in history to say that we did something about it, we stood up, locked arms and proved to America and the world that when people come together to drive out the darkness, hope rises, fear loses and brave wins.”

o Booker: “The only way we build a nation of liberty and justice for all is by doing it together. … America we know our history-- it is perpetual testimony to impatient, demanding, unrelenting people who in every generation stand up for justice.”

While these three senators tell a clearly progressive story about division and unity, two other candidates, Amy Klobuchar and John Hickenlooper, center unity even more sharply, with an appeal beyond the Democratic base, based on a more traditional view of America.

Klobuchar’s campaign slogan is “Amy for America,” and she opens her speech using that great American symbol, the Mississippi River, as a metaphor: “all our rivers connect us… to one another. To our shared story.” “For that is how this country was founded, with patriots who saw more that united them than divided them.” She describes the U.S. as “the world’s beacon of democracy, one in which everyone matters.” For her the divisiveness is from “the petty and vicious nature of our politics,” blaming “leaders in Washington” who “sat on the sidelines.” She does put a slight populist turn on an otherwise anodyne story, describing “insidious forces every day that make it harder for people to vote, trying to drown out our voices with big money” and saying that “big pharma companies think they own Washington.” She never mentions or refers to Trump.

Hickenlooper’s slogan seems to be “Stand Tall” as the home page of his website declares "When we stand tall for all we believe in and stand up against all that divides us, America will be stronger than ever,” and asks for a contribution under the title “Stand Tall with Us.” Cowboys in American folklore stand tall in the saddle; Hickenlooper is running as a Westerner and a successful entrepreneur, who will bring the country together. “It’s time to end this American crisis of division. It’s time to bring all Americans together. And that’s why I’m running to be President of the United States of America!” He links our coming together to America as a “young country… teeming with possibility.” “We’re innovative, filled with the strength that dwells in the toughest alloys – the magic you get from combining all origins and outlooks into something resilient and wonderful.”

When it comes to how to solve the crisis of divisiveness, Klobuchar continues to tell a story based on her belief “that good will prevail” to “heal the heart of our democracy and renew our commitment to the common good.” Even her acknowledgement of the frictions driven by the right is bland: “Stop the fear-

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mongering and stop the hate. We may come from different places. We may pray in different ways. We may look different. And love different. But all live in the same country of shared dreams.”

Unlike Klobuchar, Hickenlooper does link the political crisis to Trump, calling our divisions “a crisis - years in the making - spawned by dysfunctional politics - and defined above all by this president.” And going on to say that, “Donald Trump is alienating our allies, ripping away our health care, endangering our planet, and destroying our democracy. The daily insults he hurls range from shocking to unconscionable.” … “But it’s more than his tweet storms. Real people are being hurt: he’s closed down the government. Hate crimes are up. He’s forcibly taking kids from their parents.”

Hickenlooper incorporates themes that bridge the economy and identity, saying we should measure our success by: “the number of working families who end the day feeling more secure about their future; the number of children who have enough to eat, who feel safe in their homes and in their schools, who have access to the skills for a changing economy; celebrating those who may not have been born in America - but America was born in them; and the number of us who look at a fellow American, of a different race or sexual orientation and feel in our heart, ‘neighbor, you belong here.’”

Still, he concludes with the same kind of sunny call for unity as Klobuchar: “No one person can heal the fractures in America today. But if enough of us accept the challenge, if we work hard enough, we can make the impossible, possible. … Together, we can turn this winter of division into a season of hope.”

It will not surprise any observers that two candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, tell a different story than the candidates we’ve looked at until now. What may be surprising is that in his stump speech, Joe Biden is telling a similar story to the progressive populist champions. All three focus on the economic squeeze on working people and families, driven by corporate greed.

The overall quest is, in Sanders’ words, “an economy and government which works for all Americans, and not just the one percent.” Sanders brand is as the fiery champion leading a populist revolution, with a 2019 slogan of “Not me. Us. No one candidate, not even the greatest candidate you could imagine, is capable of taking on Donald Trump and the billionaire class alone. There is only one way we win — and that is together.” Sanders frames his quest for justice in terms that will be found in the mission statements of many progressive groups, “The principles of our government will be based on justice: economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental.”

“Our fight is to change the rules so that our government, our economy, and our democracy work for everyone,” Warren declares. Her slogan is “Fighting for American’s Promise, for All of Us,” with an emphasis on the powerful forces she is fighting against and the everyday Americans she is fighting for. But she’s a champion with more than rhetoric: as a t-shirt for sale on her website proclaims, “Warren has a plan for that.”

Biden’s slogan is also the anodyne “Biden for America,” in his case as the champion of America’s middle-class: “The major moral obligation of our time is to restore, rebuild and respect the backbone of America, the middle class.” But Biden’s economic story, like Warren and Sanders, makes it clear who’s responsible for the weakening of that backbone: “They [CEOs] treat their employees in a way that it's only about how can they maximize their profit, not how can they maximize the circumstance for the employees who help them build the operation.”

Biden is more temperate than Warren and Sanders in that while he blames “corporations” and “CEO’s” as a group, the two senators list the villains who they hold responsible for the inequities and inequalities they decry.

Warren: “So today, our government works just great for oil companies and defense contractors, great for private prisons, great for Wall Street banks and hedge funds, it’s just not working for anyone else.”

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Sanders: “This struggle is about taking on the incredibly powerful institutions that control the economic and political life of this country. And I’m talking about Wall Street, the insurance companies, the drug companies, the military-industrial complex, the prison-industrial complex, the fossil fuel industry and a corrupt campaign finance system that enables billionaires to buy elections.”

And Biden further softens his attack by, rather than bashing the banks and Wall Street Biden, saying “It's not enough for the stock market to rise. That's not a bad thing, but it's just not enough.”

As the reference from Warren and Sanders to private prisons indicates, they both have intentionally broadened their narrative from an economic focus to one that incorporates race. Sanders declares that “that the underlying principles of our government will not be… racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia and religious bigotry.” Warren that “families of color had been systematically discriminated against and denied their chance to build some security.”

Warren embraces a story about the powerful using race to divide working people, popularized recently by Demos : “Whether it’s white people against black people, straight people against gay people, middle-class families against new immigrant families — the story is the same. The rich and powerful use fear to divide us.” Sanders declares that “Donald Trump wants to divide us by the color of our skin, our country or origin, our gender, our religion and our sexual orientation.”

Biden is also making Trump’s hate inspiring divisiveness central to his narrative. In his speech, as he did in the video announcing his campaign, he uses Trump’s lauding of White supremacists at Charlottesville and attacks on synagogues to frame his campaign as a quest of the nation’s soul: “…we saw hate in Charlottesville, we saw it again in Pittsburgh at the tree of life synagogue… And we're reminded again that we are in a battle. We are in a battle for America's soul.”

Biden brings race and identity to his economic analysis when he says: We need this rebuilding [of the middle class] to be all-inclusive. Opening the doors to opportunity for all Americans no matter their race, their gender, who they love, no matter who or where they're from, no matter whether or not they have a disability. All America has to be included as we rebuild.”

More than any other candidate, Sanders excoriates Trump as “the most dangerous president in modern American history,” including a long section where he contrasts his personal story with Trumps, including this: “I did not come from a family of privilege that prepared me to entertain people on television by telling workers: ‘You’re fired.’ I came from a family who knew all too well the frightening power employers can have over everyday workers.”

Biden spends much less time on Trump, although he makes it clear that he’s running to beat Trump because of his attack on America’s core values and his refusal to represent all Americans.

Warren spends little time on Trump, choosing in each of her references to his administration to emphasize that the problem is systemic: “We all know the Trump Administration is the most corrupt in living memory. But even after Trump is gone, it won’t be enough to do a better job of running a broken system.”

Sanders and Warren are explicit about government as a potentially positive force, with Sanders’ saying, “government in a democratic society had a very important role to play in protecting working families.” Warren frames her change the rules metaphor as: “Our fight is to change the rules so that our government, our economy, and our democracy work for everyone.” Both propose bold policy solutions.

While Biden proposes policy solutions, he never refers to “government.” And clearly Biden is putting forth a more centrist version of the corporate squeeze on the middle-class than the other two, with less ambitious policies (although he comes out for a $15 minimum wage, free community college; and raising taxes on the wealthy.) But rather than putting a major focus on those, he speaks at length about

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the dignity of work, “Which is about being able to provide security and share the joys with your families.” And unlike the other two, he doesn’t talk about institutional racism. Like the other candidates, Sanders, Warren and Biden conclude with a call for united action, but Sanders and Warren do so in more feisty way, with Sanders declaring, “If we stand together, if we don’t allow Trump and his friends to divide us up, there is nothing we cannot accomplish.” And Warren saying, “We come from different backgrounds, but, we come together — ready to raise our voices together until this fight is won.” Biden instead emphasizes that by choosing “hope over fear, unity over division, and maybe most importantly truth over lies,” America can “own the 21st Century,” because “nothing is beyond our capacity.”

Beto O’Rourke’s narrative is a combination of all of the above: the call for unity, the comfort with identity and a populist economic and democratic analysis. He is running for an America where “everyone counts, everyone matters,” where no matter “how red or how rural, how blue or how urban, we showed up with the courage of our convictions and a willingness to listen and learn from those who we sought to serve.” And he makes it clear that today we have “An economy that works too well for too few and not at all for too many more.” And that “unrestrained money and influence has warped the priorities of this country…corrupted our democracy.”

He does this under the slogan: “Beto for America: We’re all in this Together,” which underscores his brand of listening to people and bringing us together across all our possible divides.

O’Rourke is another candidate who embraces the narrative that “They [the powerful] have used fear and division in the same way that our current president uses fear and division. Based on the differences between us of race, of ethnicity, of geography, or religion to keep us apart, to make us angry, to make us afraid of ourselves and of one another.”

At the same time, he acknowledges the validity of structural racism: “the idea that we are founded on the principle that we are all created equal, to equal opportunity, is justifiably seen as a lie to those who have experienced gross differences in opportunity and outcome when it comes to education or healthcare or economic advancement or justice.” He leans into this: “confronting the legacy and the consequences of slavery and segregation, and the continuing suppression of our fellow Americans is the only way that we will begin to repair the damage and keep ourselves from committing the same injustices.”

But unlike Sanders and Warren, O’Rourke tells his story without identifying specific villains. His only reference to Trump is in the quote above. “Corporations and PACS” is as specific as he gets in defining who the powerful and privileged are. Like most of the other candidates – and unlike Sanders and Warren – the problems he identifies don’t have specific agents that are to blame for issues like climate change, mass incarceration, high debt or low wages.

Julian Castro tells a sunny story about his quest for making the United States “The smartest, the healthiest, the fairest, and the most prosperous nation on earth.” Rather than decrying division he focuses on the value of diversity, seeing San Antonio, where he served as mayor, as the model for “America’s future –“diverse, fast-growing, optimistic, a place where people of different backgrounds have come together to create something truly special.” Accordingly, his slogan is “Julian for the Future.”

Unlike the conservative story of the American Dream, based on the individual, Castro focuses on the importance of community, “A community of good people. Humble people. People who show up for work early and stay late—oftentimes at more than one job—so they can provide for their family.” For them, “the American Dream is not a sprint or a marathon but a relay.”

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The rest of Castro’s narrative is a combination of the main themes that most Democrats share. He names just two safe villains: “Big PhRMA” and “big [health] insurers.” He decries that “opportunities… are reaching fewer and fewer people,” that “too many poor people… can’t afford bail,” that “too many families are spending more” than half their income on rent” and declares that “the biggest threat to our prosperity in the 21st century is climate change.” His only comment on Trump is that he “has failed to uphold the values of our great nation.”

His concluding call to action does a fine job raising the same heroes lifted up by many of the other candidates: “There have always been patriots who came together to get us closer to our nation’s highest ideals—who fought to abolish slavery, suffragists who organized for a woman’s right to vote, a generation that sat in at lunch counters and marched across the Edmund Pettus bridge, the activists at Stonewall, and this generation that is Marching for Our Lives—people who have challenged us to perfect our union. You and I, we stand on their shoulders, generations of men and women who made beds and made sacrifices, who fought in wars and fought discrimination, who picked crops and stood in picket lines… And now it’s our turn to take that baton and to make our nation better than ever.”

For Pete Buttigieg, it’s all about the historical moment for a new generation to lead. His tagline is “It’s time for a new generation of American leadership.” Buttigieg claims the special status of his generation by the problems they face: “I come from the generation that grew up with school shootings as the norm, … that produced the bulk of the troops in the post-9/11 conflicts, that is going to be on the business end of climate change …the first ever in America to come out worse off economically than our parents.” He declares that “The question of our time is whether families and workers will be defeated by the changes beneath us or whether we will master them and make them work toward a better everyday life for us all.”

Buttigieg’s only direct reference to Trump is that “in the year 2054, when, God willing, I will come to be the same age as our current President.” And his most direct criticism of Trump stays within the generational frame: “To tell a different story than ‘Make America Great Again.’ … people who think the only way to reach communities like ours is through resentment and nostalgia, selling an impossible promise of returning to a bygone era that was never as great as advertised to begin with.”

Buttigieg structures most of the rest of his speech around three values: freedom, security and democracy. And while every other candidate explains the problems facing the country and then solutions to address those problems, Buttigieg’s address is framed almost entirely through problems. In a typical section, he uses the value of freedom to address both economic and social issues, saying: “You’re not free: … if you can’t start a small business because leaving your job would mean losing your health care; … if you can’t sue your credit card company even after they get caught ripping you off; …if there is a veil of mistrust between a person of color and the officers who are sworn to keep us safe; …in your own classroom if your ability to do your job is reduced to a test score; …if your reproductive health choices are dictated by male politicians or bosses;… if you can’t organize for a fair day’s pay for a good day’s work; if a county clerk gets to tell you who you ought to marry based on their political beliefs.”

The listener is left to infer what Buttigieg would do about these problems. He argues that “the pulleys and levers of our government can be used and if necessary redesigned to make the life of this nation better for us all.” But with a handful of exceptions he doesn’t provide even the broadest policy prescriptions. Instead, he concludes where he began, “Are you ready to turn the page and write a new chapter in the American story?”

While Buttigieg’s story is all about generational change, it does encompass a wide panoply of issues. By contrast, Jay Inslee’s is a one-note candidate on climate. “I am calling on America to engage in a new national mission—a mission to fight climate change,” “the first, foremost and paramount duty the

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United States.” His campaign slogan is: “Inslee – Our Moment,” with the tagline, “This is our moment to defeat climate change.”

Inslee paints the myriad ways that climate change is “the greatest threat to our existence, to our economy,” including to our health, to our economics and politics. He emphasizes that “communities of color … suffer from climate change first and worse.”

Inslee highlights the economic benefits of tackling climate change, saying, “… the economic growth opportunities inherent in clean energy are clear…. So climate change is not more important than the economy. It is the economy.” He reiterates that “climate change is as much a matter of equity as is it is a matter of ecology. So let's come together and build a future with clean air, clean water and economic opportunity for all regardless of zip code income, or the color of your skin.”

To rally people around his call he says: “We can all be heroes in this adventure” calling out the contributions being made by “our laborers, our electrical workers, our machinists, our scientists, our inventors, our dreamers, our entrepreneurs.”

While Inslee is hanging his entire campaign on climate, he uses his record as Governor of Washington State to establish his bona fides on other issues, including: public education; early childhood education; college affordability; family and medical leave; raising the minimum wage; investing in infrastructure; legalizing marijuana; gun safety; voting rights; and criminal justice.

His concluding call to action, like that of every other candidate is to unify, in his case: “let's unite Americans in this moment by solving our most pressing urgent and existential problem. … …we can all be heroes, joining in a grand mission. We are now involved in one of history's greatest endeavors, to save those living on this little blue planet from the dangers and massive threat of climate change.”

Issues Addressed

With the noted exception of Pete Buttigieg, every candidate proposes policy solutions to a variety of issues. In most cases, these are broad solutions rather than specifics, which makes sense for an introductory speech. And frequently a candidate just names that the issue, without an indication of particular policies.

For some candidates, being known as a policy leader is central to their narrative. Sanders continues to use bold issue proposals as he did in 2016, to dramatize that his populist rhetoric is much more than that; it is an actual program of solutions that would be game changing for the country and people’s lives. As I note above, Elizabeth Warren, is driving her campaign with a succession of bold policy proposals, defining her as the populist wonk who is doing what her narrative promises: rewriting the rules of a rigged system.

Several other candidates address a range of policies in their speeches, including in rough order by the number of policies: O’Rourke; Klobuchar; Booker; Castro; Gillibrand; Harris; Biden and Hickenlooper. Other than for climate change, almost all of of Inslee’s policies are raised by him listing his record as Governor.

The issue area most often addressed was health care, with some version of Medicare for All (not necessarily single-payer) being the most common reference. Klobuchar presented the most details for controlling drug prices including by Medicare negotiating prices; Booker was the only other candidate to call for drug price negotiation (although other candidates have sponsored legislation to do that).

Expanding the ability for unions to organize was the leading jobs issue, followed by increasing the minimum wage, although only three candidates (Biden; Gillibrand; Sanders) specifically advocated for $15. Four candidates spoke out for paid family leave; two candidates for pay equity. Biden called for increasing access to overtime pay, ending non-compete clauses and making it easier to get licensed for

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an occupation. Creating jobs through infrastructure investment (other than clean energy) was mentioned by more than half of the candidates. Affordable housing made it on to the policy list for four candidates.

Affordable college was mentioned by all but one candidate. Other frequently mentioned education issues included: career training and expanding pre-K, with a few candidates asking to increase teacher pay.

Almost every candidate addressed criminal justice reform, although for some that’s as specific as they got. Legalizing marijuana and/or expunging records for pot, ending cash bail, and eliminating private prisons were specific proposals.

Most candidates proposed some policies to address climate, led by investment in clean energy. Two candidates, Inslee and Castro, advocated ending subsidies for fossil fuels. Gillibrand endorsed a price on carbon. O’Rourke included carbon capture on his list.

Some version of a policy to increase taxes on the wealthy and or corporations made it to six candidates’ speeches.

Gun safety measures were raised by eight of the candidates.

About half of the candidates committed to “comprehensive immigration reform and some mentioned the Dreamers.”

Half of the candidates voiced their support for reproductive rights.

Rural issues were highlighted by four candidates, with only one touching specifically on farm policy.

Among the democracy issues, voting rights was advocated by all but three candidates. A few specifically mentioned Citizens United or gerrymandering. Only one, Gillibrand, came out explicitly for public financing of elections, although several talked about reducing big money in elections.

There was scant discussion of foreign policy, although three candidates expressed support for more diplomacy and O’Rourke called for bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans issues were also mentioned by a handful of candidates.

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Conclusion

One question that this analysis raises is how much Democrats are repeating the same debate they had in 2016, where Hillary Clinton ran saying she would bring people together against Trump’s divisiveness, with policy proposals that were moderately left of center.

Bernie Sanders challenged her by championing “an economy country that works for all of us, not just the 1%,” leaning into the economic pressure facing people and proposing solutions which he framed as revolutionary.

As we’ve seen in our review of the candidate’s narratives, challenging Trump’s sharp divisiveness is likely to be a key theme of whoever the Democratic candidate is, a note that is certain to be more resonant after four years of American society and politics being torn apart by his actions and rhetoric. But will that be enough to defeat Trump and create coattails long enough to flip the Senate and keep the new Democratic majority in the House? How important will it be for Democrats to take on Trump’s biggest strength, the economy. How will Democrats balance appeals to base Democratic voters and swing constituencies? And how much will candidates go after Trump as opposed to making the case for their own election?

Events will also impact what candidates talk about. Gender is not nearly as prominent in the candidates’ speeches as race and only a few candidates mention, let alone focus on, issues like paid family leave and pay equity. Given the GOP attacks on Roe v. Wade in state legislatures, we are seeing that change and should anticipate gender become a more prominent issue.

Trump is certain to campaign on two issues: the economy and immigration. The immigration debate, which is at the center of Trump’s divisiveness, is aimed at rallying his base, although most analyses of the 2018 mid-terms conclude it backfired and turned off more voters to Republicans than those who turned out in response.

His economic argument will be the main way he hopes to keep voters who don’t like him personally on his side, building the margin on top of his base that he will need to win. He has some reason to believe he can pull that off. With record low unemployment, wages finally beginning to rise faster than inflation, and a continued bull stock market, his approval rating on the economy is above 50%, ten points higher than his overall rating. Democratic pollster Mark Mellman has argued that if the 2020 campaign is around the economy, Trump will be reelected: “... unless something changes dramatically, if Democrats choose to fight the 2020 election on the economy, it’s likely to be a losing Mellman wrote proposition.

Another prominent Democratic pollster, Celinda Lake, along with two of her colleagues agree that while Trump has a big advantage on the economy, “a deep sense of anxiety continues to pervade the American electorate” driven by “economic worries.” Given Trump’s advantage on the economy and job creation, “It is imperative that Democrats develop a strong economic platform that employs a clear anti-special interest frame, contrasts with Republicans, and appeals to and energizes voters to show up in record numbers next November.”

The three candidates who are now leading in the Democratic primary polls – Biden, Sanders and Warren – are also the three candidates who are emphasizing the economic pressures on Americans, driven by corporate power.

To those who would say that Biden’s lead is simply because he was Obama’s Vice-President I would note that Obama chose him, and he is running on his reputation, as “middle-class Joe,” the champion of the working guy. And to those who would dismiss Sanders’ second place in the polls as due to his previous run; that run was based on economic populism. While Warren is getting credit for coming up with policies that are both bold and specific, each of those policies tackles the power of the wealthy and corporations in order to relieve the real-life economic pressures that Americans face.

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These three candidates also take on Trump’s divisiveness, including in a way that directly rejects his racism and stresses the need for inclusive solutions. Sanders and Warren, as our review shows, do so more directly and more prominently than Biden.

They are not alone. As we’ve seen, most of the Democratic candidates are: 1) blaming Trump – directly or indirectly – for racist, divisive appeals; 2) addressing issues like criminal justice and voting that are particularly important to Black voters who play a central role in Democratic primaries; and 3) addressing the economic pressures facing families. However, not all of the candidates are as sharp on the role of race and propose real solutions to issues of racial injustice. And only a handful bring a populist frame to their economics.

And even as candidates address both to one degree or another, there are big differences in emphasis. The prominence of economics among the leading candidates leads me to believe that even in the Democratic primary field where identity politics are most significant, addressing the widespread economic insecurity that most Americans experience every day, even in this “good economy,” is essential to winning. And that the candidate who can do that convincingly, while also making it clear that he or she is committed to taking real measures to stand up against Trump’s racist appeals, will have the winning narrative in the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination.

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