The story of who was key in defeating Trump is a critical contest in framing Biden’s popular mandate.

A message strategy thread:

Trump’s defeat is the result of a massive multiracial working class movement fighting back—as opposed to an intervention of elite forces, former GOP operatives, or of conservative “swing” voters.

A core challenge in this narrative contest is cutting through the noise and the bunk “common sense” of the dominant narrative asserted by the political class.

Our media environment has prepped news outlets and reporters to look for “Trump → Biden” swing voters and to tell the stories of the white suburbanite minority that is supposedly decisive in battleground states.

This story ignores the massive multiracial working class base of the Democratic Party, which has moved into high gear over the past four years to do the hard work to defeat Trump.

In the weeks ahead, economic elites and political class operatives (e.g., The Lincoln Project and The Third Way) will try to claim credit and translate that credit into a “return to normalcy” agenda.

We need to contest their claims with a more compelling narrative about everyday working people—young and old, urban and rural, black, brown, and white—stepping up to deliver Biden the presidency; and now he had better deliver big for working people.

Central to this effort is lifting up stories and spokespeople that show the strength and breadth of the multiracial working class movements that defeated Trump.

We also need to constantly emphasize the extraordinary crisis we’re in as a central reason for why Biden has a popular mandate to go big. The nation needs our government to step up and deliver.

Trump failed working people.

America is still in the midst of the biggest health, economic, and political crisis of our lifetime. Trump let hundreds of thousands die or be injured by COVID-19. Trump let the pandemic destroy our economy and put millions of Americans out of work.

While income inequality rages at an all-time high, Trump and the GOP have ignored the plight of millions of Americans pushed to the edge—prioritizing a hyper-partisan packing of the Supreme Court over delivering desperately needed relief.

Even before COVID, Trump’s big legislative achievement was a tax scam to transfer trillions of dollars to the very wealthy.

So working people fought back.

A massive multiracial working class movement delivered a resounding rebuke to Trump. We voted for a better future—from healthcare to racial justice, good union jobs to fully funded education, pre-k to college, and a livable planet for our kids.

Community organizations, Latinx organizations, Black Lives Matter activists, union members, laid-off workers, and youth organizers filled the gap left by the Biden campaign and the pandemic to knock millions of doors, make tens of millions of calls & texts, and get out the vote.

Biden and Democratic officeholders must deliver bold policies that meet the needs of working people who put them into office.

Working people in this country have been suffering for decades. In this time of crisis, tinkering around the edges won't cut it. If Biden and Democratic leadership do not deliver, they're likely to see a wave of defeat in 2022 and 2024—by a new crop of far-right nationalists.

Young people were also key in this election. We have to tell the story of their record turnout and their work to deliver the win. Telling this story is key for contesting and neutralizing the ‘suburban moderates / Lincoln Project won it for Biden’ narrative.

There are several reasons why youth are key. For starters, the youth vote is an ‘angle’ that news outlets and reporters are more prone to latch onto than an explicit working class frame (which they tend to be dense about).

This doesn’t mean we’re giving up on either class or race as central to our narrative, but one important way to get this message through is by telling a compelling story about young people…

One great thing about this generation is that it is the most racially diverse generation in American history. And this generation is in an economically (and ecologically) precarious position, which is another entryway to framing demands that will benefit all working class people.

Moreover, journalists already know that Gen Z + Millennials are the most progressive generations in US history. So if young people are seen as key to Trump’s defeat, it's that much easier to contest the notion that Biden should now govern “cautiously” instead of delivering big.

Bottomline: the crisis gives weight to the imperative to go big.

In the midst of unprecedented national crises, Joe Biden has a critical window to deliver for the working people who got him elected.

Our country is facing a public health crisis, an economic crisis, a climate crisis, and a crisis of democracy. Biden must listen to the working class he claims to have come from—not the corporate elitists whose unfettered greed set the stage for Donald Trump and authoritarianism.

Joe Biden can deliver for a broad base of working people by pursuing bold and popular policy solutions: a Green New Deal to lead us out of the COVID recession and create millions of new jobs; Medicare for All to prevent the deaths of thousands more Americans due to COVID…

…an overhaul to our broken criminal justice system; policies that take back our democracy from GOP voter suppression and minority rule; expanding and balancing the Supreme Court; changing the Electoral College.

We need a visionary framework that raises expectations, delivers for working people, and sets us on course for an abundant and livable future.

Delivering big on policies that lift up the working class is the cornerstone for healing our nation. Platitudes won't cut it. We need government to deliver for the people.

If the Democratic Party fails to deliver, then the next Trump will be even more dangerous than the one we just defeated.

The status quo is not working. It hasn’t worked for decades. Those who are pushing for a return to “normalcy” are the same as those who helped build the Republican Party that Trump easily took over, and the Democratic Party that was steamrolled by Trumpism.

We need to let the real base of the Democratic Party—the multiracial working class voters who’ve been with the Party for decades + the young people whose loyalty the Party desperately needs to win—to finally have a say in how things are run.

A return to “normalcy” means a continuation of extreme inequality and a return to the conditions that gave us Trump. We have to stem off the “second coming” of Trumpism, which could be far worse than the first.

In this framing contest, we need to emphasize our mass base (multiracial working class + young people), not “the Left” per se.

It could be tempting to try to challenge a story about the Lincoln Project + suburbanites with a story about ‘The Left’ delivering Biden a victory.

Of course we want our movements to get the credit they deserve — and we have to tell a compelling story about the need to rebuild people’s organizations, labor unions, and working class political power.

But we also have to be cognizant and strategic about our opponents’ stories and stereotypes about “activists” and “leftists” that are intended to inoculate working people against identifying with the vehicles that we need to win power.

We need to re-narrate our vehicles by introducing them through our stories and spokespeople, more than relying on less relatable shorthand labels about “progressives” or “the left.”

One compelling way to reframe here is to tell the story of our organizations through the individual stories of relatable protagonists who represent the experiences and the breadth of our multiracial working class movements.

The story of a young person, for example, who worked hard to register their friends and family members to vote, and who volunteered with their union (or joined X organization) because they realized that our strength is in our numbers…

That person sharing their story, their motivations and stake, and what they need a Biden Administration to deliver on will be much more compelling to a broad audience than a proclamation that “the Left delivered Biden the election.”

To effectively claim that a multiracial working class needs Biden to deliver big, we have to be presenting ourselves as that multiracial working class, and combat our opponents’ efforts to otherize us as “leftists” or “activists”—even if we proudly identify as such—to dismiss us.

In short, we always have to be telling a story about a BIG US that other everyday working people of all races can see themselves in—and not inadvertently be tell a story of a 'small us' that feels like a 'special interest' or even an exclusionary clubhouse to broader audiences.

And of course we should be going after our political class opponents (e.g. Lincoln Project and Third Way) as out-of-touch elites and careerist operatives.

The political operatives behind the Lincoln Project are the same people whose earlier actions gave rise to Trump in the first place.

For decades they used dog whistle racist appeals and inflamed culture war fights to throw “red meat” to their base. Ultimately, these political class elites unleashed an extremist base that they couldn’t control — and Trump was able to wrest the helm of the GOP from them.

Of course we’re glad that they turned on Trump. But political operatives who lost control of their party aren’t heroes for trying to get it back. These are political opportunists who made careers off of screwing the working class.

They want to return us to the same status quo that gave rise to Trump in the first place. These folks are as culpable as anyone for the crisis of runaway inequality that is decimating America’s working class. This untenable status quo is the “normalcy” they want us to return to.

In terms of numbers or a voting bloc, these operatives don’t matter. If Biden & Dems in Congress want to hold onto the massive voting coalition that just defeated Trump, they'd better deliver big for young people & the multiracial working class. Those are the numbers that matter.

The Democratic Party is a broad and diverse coalition, but when it comes to the big numbers, it’s working class people, white, black, and brown, old and young.

The Democratic Party has been bleeding out working class voters for decades. Many such voters turned out this year to defeat the unique threat of Trump.

Now Biden & Dems in Congress have a critical window to deliver big for working people or risk losing their support once again.