In the endless commentary about this year’s inflation- and affordability-fueled midterm elections, it’s not unusual to hear about Bill Clinton 1992 campaign manager James Carville’s famous dictum, “It’s the economy, stupid!” But now’s a good time to recall that wasn’t the only thing he posted on the wall of the Little Rock “War Room” in 1992. The unabridged version of the essential message discipline guiding campaign strategy actually included two more points:
“Change versus more of the same.”
“And don’t forget about health care.”
Three-and-a-half decades later, it’s remarkable just how timely that political guidance remains, right? You can certainly hear the succinct echoes of that three-part message frame in the closer than expected victory by Dr. Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan’s U.S. Senate primary over the far better funded Representative Haley Stevens, campaigning relentlessly on the theme of, “Money out of politics. Money in your pocket. Medicare for all.” (El-Sayed is a self-avowed “capitalist” who, although a representation of the new guard, is not a member of the DSA.)
We see its echoes in other recent Democratic primary results, not only from here in Philadelphia’s Chris Rabb, but around the country where both highly progressive and several self-identified Democratic Socialists seemed to be on a roll. True, there was the surprising loss by Wisconsin’s Francesca Hong to more mainstream liberal Democrat David Crowley, but the even more surprising recent U.S. Senate primary win in Trump’s increasingly red home state of Florida by formerly little-known progressive state legislator Angie Nixon, while a former Republican Congressman won the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Go figure. We’ve learned that public opinion sometimes swings faster than yesterday’s poll can keep up with.
But despite the widespread focus on the latest rounds of a long-running ideological battle among Democrats — or how it might echo the far-right Tea Party and then MAGA takeover of the establishment GOP — the most salient point isn’t that several young Democratic Socialists, or those sharing some similar views, won Democratic primaries and even general elections in a few cities and states. That happened a century ago, too.
What’s notable is so many well known officials of both parties have lost to energized new voices committed to fundamental change — which has also been happening to incumbent governments both in the U.S. and almost every other functioning democracy in recent years (thankfully, even in Hungary this past spring, despite its long slide into illiberal authoritarian crony capitalism).
Older Pennsylvanians might especially recall how that health care point became an essential part of the Clinton message 35 years ago. It came from another iconic campaign Carville and his longtime partner Paul Begala managed here a year earlier that proved to be one of the most surprising “change versus status quo” elections in our modern political history. It’s a campaign worth remembering anytime you read how shocking or unprecedented some election result turns out in this tumultuous political cycle.
65 year-old Harris Wofford, change agent
Back in May 1991, Democrat Harris Wofford began what many assumed would be a futile special election campaign for the U.S. Senate after the tragic death of popular, moderate PA Republican John Heinz in a plane crash over Lower Merion. Wofford was serving as the state’s Secretary of Labor and Industry under Governor Robert Casey, when Casey appointed him to fill Heinz’s seat.
Yet despite wide news coverage around those developments and a resume of public service that included working with Dr. Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy, Wofford was mostly unknown in PA. What’s more, after a few months, one of the state’s most formidable political figures — former PA Governor Dick Thornburgh, then prominently serving in Washington as President George H.W. Bush’s U.S. Attorney General — declared he’d run on the Republican ticket in the fast-approaching November special election.
In an era when the ideological differences between the two major parties, especially in PA, seem miniscule compared to today’s polarized online politics, Thornburgh was among the Republicans like Heinz and Senator Arlen Specter who succeeded at the ballot box despite the Democrats’ then-huge registration advantage in the state. Thornburgh had also won national renown for his leadership during the Three Mile Island crisis early in his first term as governor. It was widely assumed that Wofford didn’t stand a chance.
In fact, in August of 1991, polling showed Thornburgh with a 44-point lead. Then around Labor Day the Wofford campaign dropped its first two commercials where he, presaging the influencer era, introduced himself to voters by speaking straight to the camera about the economic challenges facing families and communities in a time of deindustrialization and recession. The most famous spot was built on Wofford’s compelling idea, first suggested to him by a physician in Philadelphia, that if the U.S. Constitution provided those accused of a crime with a right to a lawyer when they’re accused of a crime, then every American should have a right to a doctor when they’re sick.
We shouldn’t be surprised with a massive voter swing to an appealing voice calling for change over more of the same.
While the Bush administration seemed to be coasting on the celebrated success of Desert Storm, many Americans were suffering from economic hardships, including skyrocketing healthcare costs. It was a period described by a widely praised multi-part Inquirer feature series that Fall by Donald Bartlett and James Steele headlined “America: What Went Wrong.”
In our own era of even deeper income inequality, job losses, and wages that have failed to keep up with the soaring cost of living (including costs of health care, child care, higher ed, cars, gas, groceries), it’s worth remembering Wofford’s other prescient opening message opposing any proposed NAFTA treaty that didn’t protect American workers and American jobs from unfair competition.
Like the first President Bush in whose cabinet he served, Thornburgh had adopted some of his party’s Reaganesque “government is the problem” rhetoric that seemed unresponsive to the economic challenges Pennsylvanians were facing. He made the case that he would be an effective Senator because he “knew the corridors of power” in Washington, thereby providing an ideal foil for Wofford, who called his opponent an “insider who seems satisfied with things as they are. I believe we can do better.” Then as now, sometimes, hope for change is enough.
Also then as now, the GOP turned to the predictable scare tactics about Democrats, raising the specter of socialism and “socialized medicine,” along with the more familiar claims of liberal coddling some dangerous “other” that have taken many forms over the years. And, then as now, poll and focus-group-tested attack lines often prove less effective among voters living with day-to-day challenges. Back in October 1991 Wofford kept surging to a stunning 10-point landslide over the far more familiar Thornburgh. (To his enduring credit, in his own last years Thornburgh repeatedly spoke out against Trump during his first term, defending both the independence of the Justice Department and the honor of Robert Mueller. And he would doubtless be even more outraged today.)
In the end, Wofford’s upset swing of some 54 points in barely more than two months was rightly interpreted as a warning signal that the first President Bush was far more vulnerable in 1992 to the same dynamic. Indeed, a year later he ended up with only about 37 percent of the national popular vote against Clinton’s winning 43 percent and iconoclastic third-party candidate Ross Perot’s 19 percent of the nearly 2-1 anti-incumbent vote.
By 1994, however, after President Clinton had failed to deliver on his (and Wofford’s) promise of healthcare reform, the change vs. status quo tide surged the other direction. Wofford narrowly lost his seat to ultra conservative GOP Congressman Rick Santorum, who was part of a rising movement embodied by Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” that flipped Congress, including the first GOP House majority in four decades.
Here we are decades later, and many of the same economic challenges of the early 1990s have only gotten worse, this time with a disastrously failed war of choice in the Persian Gulf. Today, we have deeper income inequality, a huge shift of American wealth from labor to capital and stagnant real wages for the vast majority of working Americans.
Of course, certain long experienced, but dynamic Democratic officeholders, from our own Governor Josh Shapiro to Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff, North Carolina’s former Governor Roy Cooper and Ohio’s former longtime Senator Sherrod Brown are faring well in the polls despite the appeal of fresh voices we see in so many contested primaries in both parties. Clearly, there are a range of candidates who can effectively tap into voter disgust with today’s status quo. The essential point remains. In some places being a Democratic Socialist may signal to some voters a welcome commitment to fight for change. But as even the media-savvy Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has recognized, it’s not the key, nor even helpful, in much of our country. What matters is the ability to authentically embrace and speak to voter frustration with an entrenched political and economic system they know hasn’t served them for far too long.
To be sure, that’s been an unwelcome surprise for some established Democrats in primary races, as well many Republicans around the country, including central and Western Pennsylvania who have been upset or barely survived recent special elections in districts Trump won in 2024 by double digits. No wonder he’s doing all he can to undermine November’s coming midterm vote while he focuses on fellow billionaires and ballrooms instead of most Americans’ pocketbooks
We’ll soon learn whether being associated with DSA’s most extreme positions on a range of hot-button issues prove damaging to its own candidates — or to other Democrats — in general elections outside the handful of safe blue seats where they’ve been most successful during the primaries. But one thing PA voters proved 35 years ago: We shouldn’t be surprised with a massive voter swing to an appealing voice calling for change over more of the same. After all, it’s still the economy, stupid. And don’t forget about health care.
Communications strategist David M. Stone is a former Executive Vice President for Communications at Columbia University who previously served as communications director for U.S. Senator Harris Wofford and deputy chief of staff for Governor Bob Casey.
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