Forget DC, the Trifecta Democratic States should Drive the 2024 Election Message
GOP has used state policy to drive national politics for decades; Dems need to use their Trifecta states to show what Dems actually do in office
The brinksmanship over the National Debt is just a taste of the insane political stalemates that will dominate national policy for the next two years. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema will continue to frag Dems, so any focus on national policy where Dems will just be failing to deliver on policy promises will just be an embarrassment for Joe Biden and the Dems in 2024.
They can run on having saved the economy and the quite good policy delivered in the last two years, but voters always want to know: what have you done for me lately?
And that’s where state policies come in. Democrats mocked the GOP for having no public agenda in the Senate but McConnell understood that the policy agenda was rolling out in the states every day.
On Covid, GOP governors led the attack on Biden policies for two years; Ron DeSantis launched himself into national contention among Republican voters with his policies attacking local mask mandates and other safety precautions.
The Republican culture war is driven by state leaders, from anti-CRT policies to restrictions on abortion, even as those leaders push race-baiting anti-immigrant and anti-crime policies like Stand Your Ground laws - with Kyle Rittenhouse becoming a poster child among GOP voters because he was let off based on Wisconsin’s version of that policy.
On economic and budget policy, the GOP has enacted big tax cuts across the country in the last two years, largely paid for by federal relief funds (Dems letting that happen is a conversation for another day). Arizona has just eliminated its progressive income tax brackets in favor of a 2.5% flat tax and Gov. Tate Reeves in Mississippi promised the “complete elimination of the income tax” as part of his reelection campaign. Seizing on pandemic schooling frustrations, twenty states have expanded school vouchers, with Arizona and West Virginia enacting policies to offer them to essentially every family.
The GOP puts big money into coordinating state policy, with institutions like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEX) driving a whole conservative agenda for the states.
Democratic Trifecta States Can Take on GOP States - and then Some
The thing is, Democrats are well positioned to run a counter-agenda across states they control. With the 2022 elections, Democrats hold trifecta control - the governorship and both chambers of the legislature - in seventeen states plus D.C. with a total population of over 139 million people. That’s more population than in the states where Republicans have trifecta control. And that’s a higher population than Japan or Germany and more than the population of the United Kingdom and France combined.
And if we look at economic heft, there is no comparison. The total GDP of the blue trifecta states is almost $12 trillion, a third more than the red trifecta states and nearly half the total GDP of the nation. This reflects how much of the core economic activity of the nation happens in blue states - and is therefore subject to significant regulation by Democrats if they take coordinated action at the state level.
This is economic power that matters not just within the nation itself but matters in the global economy, especially when we talk about issues like stopping climate change. The combined GDP of blue state America is larger than every country in the world other than the U.S. itself and China. In fact, it’s more than the GDP of the next three countries - Japan, Germany, and India - combined.
And in the next two years, these blue states will be passing new, exciting policies, while Capitol Hill will be mired in frustrating stalemates designed to alienate base voters. A better option is for Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries - along with every progressive activist - to do everything they can to keep Blue Trifecta successes in the public debate.
Some examples-
Minimum Wage: Instead of talking about the failure to pass a minimum wage increase in D.C., let’s have national Dem leaders visit Washington State, which now has the highest state minimum wage in the nation: $15.74. Washington State has required the minimum wage to increase with inflation since 1998, a key principle that should be extended to every regulation and benefit for working families. Dem leaders could also stop by Seattle City hall to highlight the city minimum wage of $18.69, which is applied to all employers with 500 workers or more, the highest minimum wage in the nation. Across the blue states, the average minimum wage is around $14.10, almost double the federal rate that applies in most red states. Keeping that number rising in every blue state should be a key political calling card for Dems in 2024.
Overtime: While in Washington State, Dem leaders could highlight that Washington is one of a handful of states protecting overtime for salaried workers. Obama tried to raise the wage level below which white-collar workers automatically qualify for overtime, only to have federal courts strike his regulations down. So most salaried workers making more than $35,568 per year get no overtime under federal law, but in Washington State, almost everyone making less than $65.5K at larger employers will qualify for overtime- as do those making less than $64.5K in California and less than $58.5K in New York. By 2028, almost all workers in Washington making less than around $90K will get overtime - and imagine if all the blue states emulated that and Dems could argue in 2024 they were delivering the right to overtime for millions of additional Americans?
Paid Parental Leave: Dem leaders could highlight Massachusetts where new mothers qualify for up to 20 weeks of paid leave to deal with their own health and bonding with a child, or highlight states like Maryland and California where low-income workers are receiving 90% of regular pay during family leave to make sure they can afford to take that leave. Having more blue states adopt family leave to care for new children or sick family members is the way Dems can highlight real pro-family policies in 2024.
Using Pension Funds to DeCarbonize the Economy & End Corporate Worker Abuses: Blue state pension funds control trillions of dollars in assets and Dem leaders can highlight how New York’s pension leaders are demanding all companies they invest with move towards net zero emissions by 2040. Or they can promote other states emulating Illinois passing a law in 2022 mandating pensions evaluate every investment for climate risk, And they can join joint press conferences where blue state pensions team up to demand companies like Amazon clean up their workers’ rights abuses. Contrasting blue state use of taxpayer-funded pensions to support decarbonization and workers’ rights compared to red states running interference for the fossil fuel industry could be a winning theme in 2024.
There are a lot of other issues which Dems can move in multiple states - many of which I plan to discuss in more detail in coming months - but with the upsurge in union organizing in the last year, I want to revisit a story I wrote a few years ago about the stark difference in unionization in red states versus blue states - and the role of state policy leading to that difference.
The U.S. unionization rate is low by international standards but that rate conceals vast differences between different states, notably the fact that in blue states, three times the percentage of their workforces are union members compared to red states. Looking at international comparisons (see graphic below), blue states are not that different from union membership levels in many European countries- but red states are completely off the charts with low union membership levels.
As detailed in the linked piece, this difference is not accidental or even based purely on history, but is part of active modern policy in blue states. This shows up most clearly in their support for public employee unions but also in policy promoting unions in public contracts, as in construction work on public buildings or among child care workers or home health care workers. In the absence of passing the federal PRO-ACT to support federal labor law reform, a coordinated movement of states passing new pro-labor policies would be another great policy message for 2024, especially with the approval of unions hitting a modern high point of 71% this year.
National Dems Need to Get Serious on State Policy
The reality is that Dems face a brutal Senate map in 2024 and it could be years before we get a majority ready to finally eliminate the filibuster, so states may remain the main arena for moving progressive policy for several years. And if we are going to regain real national power we will need to win more state elections, so strong media messaging on how people benefit from Democrats running state governments may be critical in expanding political power into more states.
Years ago, when I was a founding policy director at Progressive States Network, an underfunded attempt to take on ALEC, I co-wrote this piece in 2006 called “Forget D.C.—the Battle is in the States.” If that sounds similar to the title of this piece, that’s not accidental. As I wrote then:
…in the face of this daunting right-wing machine, many progressive leaders and activists remain fixated on Capitol Hill and the White House, leaving state legislators, local political organizations and unions to battle ALEC all alone. The problem is compounded by a national media that barely covers these state struggles. Even the most sophisticated national political commentators typically see fights for control of state legislatures as important only insofar as they impact redistricting of federal congressional races.
Too much of that is still true.
In some ways, national Democratic support for states has improved, especially in helping to elect state representatives- one reason Dems held their own and even gained in places in state elections in 2022. But there is still nowhere near the coordinated national support for moving state policy in a coordinated way and even less on using successes at the state level for effective national political messaging.
To repeat, half the US economy is under state Democratic Party management now. Using that power to advance progressive policy in a coordinated way - - and making sure we move that message of success in national media outlets — is both a key to improving people’s lives and convincing voters in the other half of the economy that they would do better electing more Democrats.