ECONOMIC TALK — Amid national recriminations about the Democrats’ electoral flop this week, one successful candidate’s warnings on the campaign trail now seem prescient. That person? Elissa Slotkin, Michigan’s new senator-elect. The congresswoman narrowly defeated a Trump-endorsed Republican in a state Trump has now carried twice. She’s also one of a handful of Democratic candidates for Senate who outran Kamala Harris on Tuesday, winning more votes than the party nominee. With her Michigan-specific message on industrial economics and affordability, voters got a candidate who could separate herself from the “coasties” in the national party. Slotkin focused on trumpeting the Biden administration’s industrial policies. Everywhere she went, she mentioned the “44 new factories” under construction in Michigan thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act. She kept at it even when that meant she had to confront awkward elements of those policies — like a Chinese-backed battery factory outside Big Rapids, or voter backlash against electric vehicles. Slotkin tried to warn national Democrats they were on the wrong track — that despite passing historic industrial policies, those laws weren’t resonating with voters amid inflation. “If you’re not talking about the economy and the future of work in the Midwest, you’re having half a conversation with the voters,” she told POLITICO back in September. Along the campaign trail, Slotkin also delivered some clear-eyed analysis about just what would happen to Democrats — and the country at large — if they did not convince voters that the party truly has their economic best interests at heart. Take this passage from her stump speech in September in the tiny town of Lapeer, outside of Flint: When I was a child, you were either in agriculture or you worked at the Flint engine plant. So as things change and manufacturing changes and farming changes, people are often living a lower standard of living. They have less, less in their savings account than their parents did. And those things that come with the middle class – buying a house, having a little place up north, a little fishing cabin, going to Disneyland once a decade, taking the kids somewhere fun – those kinds of things are harder and harder for people to accomplish. And what happens – when you can’t provide for your kids what was provided to you – you feel anger and shame and grievance. And you start blaming people who don’t look like you, or who are from somewhere else, and people can turn on each other. And in a diverse, multiracial, multiethnic America, that’s bad, bad news. More or less, that’s what appears to have happened on Election Day. Voters who felt economically comfortable broke largely for Harris, while those facing hardship embraced Trump ( just as Nightly predicted last month). For many Trump voters, nothing could outweigh their perception that the former president was simply better for their pocketbooks. Intermittent Democratic messaging on tariffs — couched awkwardly as a “middle class tax increase” — just didn’t get traction with voters. Neither did the Democratic ticket’s occasional messaging on industrial policy, though the campaign did try to lean into it a bit more after warnings from Slotkin and other Midwestern Dems. Of course, Slotkin wasn’t alone in her warnings about her party’s economic messaging. And there were likely a few other non-economic factors that enabled her to run ahead of Harris. Slotkin was a known quantity in Michigan, aggressively courted Trump-friendly areas, and perhaps wasn’t as tarred with the war in the Middle East as Harris (though Slotkin was steadfastly supportive of Israel and wasn’t shy about it on the trail). Still, Slotkin’s analysis provides a starting point for Democrats as they try to rebuild their economic message in the age of Trump. And despite the backbiting swirling through the Democratic Party, there’s an increasing realization among all factions that the party needs to speak to working-class concerns more. Do that, and folks may be more amenable to your social agenda — whether it’s LGBTQ, DEI or being less harsh on immigrants. At least, that’s Slotkin’s theory of the case: economic security begets social progress, and in that order. “There’s a whole theory of the case that we got the Civil Rights movement in the ‘60s because after World War II, America was so strong economically, we had such a strong middle class, that people understood that someone else having rights doesn’t take away from my rights,” Slotkin said. That’s the gist of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ message this week — albeit with a different tone — that Democrats have “abandoned working class people.” And it’s the takeaway from progressive activists on the ground, who were begging Harris for months to distance herself from billionaire backers and sound a bit more populist. Their request now? That the former party of the working class begin sounding like it again. “After inflation and corporate price-gouging, working class voters of all races felt like they were falling further behind,” said Maurice Mitchell, director of the Working Families Party, a progressive party that generally supports Democrats. “Harris started with a more populist tone but pulled back from naming the culprits — corporations, billionaires — who were raising prices and making it harder for people to get ahead. In that vacuum, Trump’s pseudo-populism made him look like the change candidate.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at gbade@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @GavinBade.
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