The White Strip Project is a new Democratic-aligned campaign with a fresh approach for luring white working-class voters back to the Democratic Party: emphasising issues of fairness and race more prominently.
Organisers claim that tried-and-true strategies for winning over white voters, such as relying on the advice of a select group of Democrats who advocate for a racially neutral economic message, are worthless. The White Stripes say they disagree with this strategy. They advocate for a strategy that is more specific and data-driven in order to maximise the return on investment.
White voters who are receptive to Democratic messaging but less likely to actually cast a ballot are the focus of this project’s efforts to create a robust infrastructure. Once identified, organisers are placing bets that enough of these people will show up for the party at the polls through tailored messaging and pinpoint engagement.
“White voters have disproportionate political power,” Erin Heaney, executive director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), told organisers on Monday afternoon. Together with communities of colour, we need a plan to actively involve and organise them.
In 2020, President Joe Biden fared better than Hillary Clinton did among white voters, but the GOP was still the clear favourite among white voters. The Pew Research Centre found that Biden won over 33% of this group, while then-president Trump won over 66%. Pew found that the number of votes Trump received from whites without a college degree was “nearly identical” to the number he received in 2016.
The White Stripes Project thinks they can win over these citizens.
“We need to have a public, non-defensive, data-driven conversation,” said Democratic political analyst and author Steve Phillips, who also serves as President of the Sandler Phillips Centre, which analyses voting patterns. It’s a part of the project’s progressive coalition.
Donors to the Democratic Party could be one group that doesn’t buy the message. Phillips claims that Democrats and wealthy contributors frequently adopt narratives about prior elections without sufficient empirical data.
He cited whispers within the party about how Stacey Abrams’ two defeats in Georgia’s governor race prove that racial and economic justice topics do not fare well in tight races.
Phillips does not think it is appropriate to downplay racial concerns in favour of an economic message that is more universally applicable. Another state where the Democrats lost the last election was Ohio, he says.
In addition, “we also don’t talk about Tim Ryan in Ohio, who really did manifest this playbook about downplaying race and leaning into economic issues, and he lost badly,” Phillips said. “So, what do we make of that?”
The White Stripes claim race is being used as a divisive issue and that this cannot be ignored. Instead, it should be confronted squarely as Republicans embrace culture-war themes like critical race theory and fighting the so-called “woke agenda.”
“We know that race is an incredibly powerful tool to keep people, white people, silent and separated from the multiracial coalitions we need to win,” said Haney, who heads one of the major groups spearheading the project.
It’s becoming evident that economic themes will be at the heart of Biden’s reelection campaign. In his campaign, the president is touting “Bidenomics,” a term first coined by his opponents to characterise an economy that has shown signs of recovery this year.
In order to emphasise this argument, Biden has spent the last month touring red-leaning South Carolina to talk up his theme of innovation and investment and how it is delivering rewards in districts that Democrats have little chance of winning in 2024.
In addition, Obama plans to travel to North Georgia, where one of his most vocal Republican critics, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, represents, for the groundbreaking of a solar installation.
“Joe Biden is going to go into areas that may not have been available to us before,” said Simon Rosenberg, a long-time Democratic strategist who is not involved in the White Stripe Project.
“That’s brilliant on a political level… and I anticipate his victory in 2024. How do you define success? We know that a difference of even 2% in the national popular vote can determine victory or defeat in an election,” he continued.
The Democratic National Committee has no plans to back down from his advocacy of racial equality, DNC officials told AWN, despite his recent campaign visits to majority-white regions.
They highlight how in the same week that Biden signed a measure designating a national memorial to Emmett Till and his mother Mamie Till-Mobley, Republicans were fighting among themselves over whether there was a “personal benefit” to being enslaved.
“The Democratic Party is a party that fights for diversity, fights for equality,” says Lis Smith, another Democratic strategist unaffiliated with the White Stripe Project.
She also argues that the party can’t rest on the support of white, working-class voters alone.
The Democratic Party has been losing support among working-class voters of all races. And that’s a problem we’ll have to solve,” Smith added. However, “turning our backs on some of our most devoted voters will not lead us to the answers we seek.”
The White Stripe Project’s organisers have said that they will spend the summer preparing for the event. This autumn, they will put some of their honed message to the test in turnout efforts in the Kentucky gubernatorial race, where Democrat Andy Beshear is seeking reelection in a state that Joe Biden lost by nearly 26 points three years ago.
By the end of the year, the committee hopes to have compiled a report outlining ideas for winning with a multicultural coalition.