"Democracy is at stake" messaging only works in a democracy

Why the Democratic case against Trump is falling flat with voters.

A new survey testing various election messaging strategies in the battleground state of Pennsylvania challenges a central premise of the Biden / Harris campaigns according to the Center for Working Class Politics. Their findings, reported in Jacobin, show that populism and economic-focused messages perform significantly better than others — and that “messaging around Trump as a threat to democracy underperformed all other Harris messages among virtually every group.” The money chart is here:

One obvious lesson from this chart is that class warfare still matters. The strength of the “strong populism” message is particularly noteworthy in that regard, because as Matt Karp notes, it is aimed at “big corporations and the politicians in Washington who serve them” rather than “Donald Trump and his friends on Wall Street.” This is a nonpartisan message aimed at both parties of capital, and it’s one that also correctly frames politicians as subordinate to capital. It seems telling that voters would rather even hear a message pushing “moderate economics” than one than simply revolves around partisanship.

But why are voters reacting so negatively to the Democratic Threat message?