Hey team – Nick Hanauer here, Civic Action’s founder. With the midterm elections behind us, it’s clearer than ever that Americans overwhelmingly approve of President Biden’s middle-out economic agenda. We’ve been talking about middle-out economics for a long time, and because you're one of our top supporters, I wanted to share my thoughts with you, which I also recently published in Democracy Journal. At the end of this email, I’d like your help sharing this message with Congress.

From the U.S. Senate to state legislatures across the country, there was no “red wave” in sight last week. Actually, it was an unprecedented win for the incumbent president’s party. To find a parallel in recent history, we have to dig all the way back to 1982, when even amid high inflation and choppy economic conditions, Ronald Reagan managed to defend his party and hold the opposition party’s midterm gains to a few modest wins.

Back in 1982, voters were captured by Ronald Reagan’s embrace of a relatively new theory of economics: the false claim that tax cuts for the super-wealthy and corporations will cause wealth to “trickle down” to the rest of us. And, for the most part, both parties have stuck to these trickle-down lies about how our economy works for the past 40 years – until President Biden. From the day he was elected, Biden has vowed to build the economy “from the middle out and bottom up,” ushering in a new era of economic policy.

Taking office in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic devastation it wrought, Biden signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, then the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS and Science Act. And on top of that, he took action to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt and called on Congress to pass federal legislation legalizing abortion. By working to advance each of these policies – and many more – that materially benefit the lives of millions of Americans, Biden has laid the groundwork for a foundational shift away from neoliberal trickle-down policies that enrich the wealthy few and toward a middle-out economic approach that understands how investments in the broad majority of Americans result in shared prosperity and a stronger economy for all.

As I’ve always said, good narrative is as important as good policy, and most importantly Biden hasn’t just done popular things – he’s talked about them in a popular way.

Democrats won big last week because they ran on all of those middle-out economic issues. This year’s Democrats did a better job of consistently and clearly talking about economics than any slate of candidates I’ve ever seen: An analysis by the Winning Jobs Narrative Project of congressional candidates’ ads found that “Democrats aired 200,000 more spots (defined as one airing of one ad) than Republicans” on nine pocketbook issues, including health care, jobs, Social Security, trade, and manufacturing – while Republicans clung to unpopular policies like abortion bans and denying the results of the 2020 election.

Now, Democrats have to double-down on this popular middle-out agenda to continue winning over voters. If Democrats push for popular policies like student debt forgiveness, a $15 federal minimum wage, stronger overtime protections, and reproductive rights – whether they can pass them in a nearly evenly divided Congress or not – the party can turn the 2024 election into a referendum between popular middle-out policies that benefit the majority of Americans and the imposition of exclusionary, extractive policies that penalize the many for the profit of the few.

As Democrats celebrate their wins, I want to make sure they understand why they won, and how they can keep winning in 2024 and beyond. Will you help me do that by sharing my piece in Democracy Journal with your members of Congress? Follow this link to tell your representatives that you support President Biden’s middle-out economic agenda and let them know Democrats need to double-down on these popular policies.

Thank you for your advocacy.

Nick Hanauer
Team Civic Action