Maslow’s Hierarchy of Electoral Needs

There’s been no shortage of post-mortem analyses on the 2024 election, but how about one more?

We’ve all heard the leading theories by now. Kamala was too tied to an unpopular Biden presidency. The campaign was too “woke”. Democrats abandoned the working class.

There’s truth to all of these, but what better explains their disastrous failure is this:

The Democrats neglected our hierarchy of needs.

Abraham Maslow proposed the hierarchy of needs in 1943, organizing human needs into a pyramid, with basic needs at the bottom and more advanced needs at the top. Physiological needs like food, water, and shelter form the foundation of the pyramid, followed closely by Safety needs such as employment, personal security, protection of property, etc. Without these, the pyramid collapses. As you climb the pyramid towards its peak – self-actualization – you’ll discover a sense of connection, and build self-esteem through recognition, freedom, respect, and strength.

This hierarchy was particularly apparent during my time living and working in low-income countries and low-income neighborhoods in the U.S. The appeal of democratic principles is just as strong there, if not stronger, than in wealthy white suburbs. People in these communities are just as likely to be queer as they are anywhere else. Just like everyone else, they want to be able to safely present their gender identities. Yes, many communities across the world fear advocating for self-actualization due to oppressive authoritarian regimes or religious cultures. But even within the safe spaces that I’ve been fortunate enough to enter within those regimes and those cultures, these issues don’t come up that much.

Why? Because they were too worried about where their next meal would come from.

The conversations revolved around how to afford enough school to compete for one of the ever-dwindling good-paying jobs, how to get reliably clean water and stable electricity, and how to stay safe from crooked police.

The democrats have forsaken the foundation of our pyramid of needs in their race to the top. I am as “woke” as anyone you’ll ever meet. I want the world depicted in Republican attack ads. One where people can openly love who they love, play any sport they want, and get any and all healthcare they need. But I know that on the nights I’ve gone to bed hungry, critical race theory didn’t cross my mind. In my dream world, policies are enforced that protect the highest levels of Maslow’s pyramid, allowing everyone to freely and safely express themselves to their fullest. But in order to get those policies into place, we first need to get into power.

The Democrat’s pundits were right. By election day, we had come closer than any country in the world to nailing a “soft landing” from the economic upheaval of an unprecedented global pandemic. The unemployment rate was 4.1% in October, the lowest in the month before a presidential election since 2000. GDP was rising at a steady clip, the stock market was hitting record highs, and the inflation rate was pretty much right where economists want it (2.4% in September).

As Biden said, our economy truly was “the envy of the world”, but that doesn’t mean much when pretty much all economies are failing to meet people’s needs. In the past 60 years, home prices have grown more than twice as fast as wages. 72% of US adults think children today will be worse off financially than their parents. While inflation has improved significantly, an item purchased in 2019 would’ve cost 23% more in 2024. Meanwhile, inflation-adjusted weekly earnings are only up 3.3% for the median worker.

And what was Kamala’s response to this? Blaming corporations for price gouging. True, but not really inspiring. Allowing the government to negotiate over some more (but not all) drug prices. I’ll take it, I guess. Down-payment assistance to first-gen homebuyers. Even if sellers don’t just up their prices proportionally, how does this help the single mother whose credit score is too low to qualify for a mortgage? That’s what I was asked while door-knocking for Kamala, and I didn’t have a convincing answer that didn’t involve an econ lecture on supply & demand.

Would her policies have helped Americans struggling to meet their foundational needs? I firmly believe so. Were they as catchy and easy to understand as Trump’s bullshit? No. “Tax cuts” “Build a Wall” “Make America Great Again”. If you can’t fit your plan on a bumper sticker, it’s not going to land for the average American who, let’s not forget, reads at a 7th or 8th grade level. Yes, I understand that our poor educational outcomes are the result of Republican tax cuts and institutional racism and they’ll take a lot of work to fix. But we need to work with what we’ve got, where we are. Let’s stop the bleeding, then we’ll wash out the stains.

Because there was no clear message on how we’d make it easier for Americans to get food, water, and shelter, the narrative got dominated by Trump’s bullshit. How many times did you see that ad about Kamala supporting sex changes for illegal aliens in prisons? My neighbors in Philly could probably recite it by heart. The thing is, I want universal healthcare that provides life-saving trans care. (Even Trump provided gender-affirming care to inmates during his first term…fucking hypocrite!) But wanting something, and charting a course to gaining the power necessary to make it a reality are two different things.

Take the example of my septuagenarian relative who was a Vietnam War protestor, student rights activist, and life long labor organizer. He’s as progressive as they come, but being 75+ years old, he sometimes gets tripped up by the linguistics of today’s twitter-activists. He never began any of his speeches with land-acknowledgements, but he did rally for state funding for environmental remediation on tribal lands. He never introduced himself with his pronouns, but he organized his union to fight for anti-discrimination policies. In today’s Democratic Party, those heroic achievements don’t mean shit compared to the words that you need to throw out into the void.

We’re losing substance for form. By forcing linguistic purity tests, we’re alienating well-meaning potential allies. Let’s put a hold on the performative virtual signaling, and get hyper-focused and disciplined to capture the narrative. That narrative should be dominated by the left’s plans to make housing affordable for all Americans, spur the creation of good-paying jobs while cleaning up the water we drink, and providing healthcare for all. All I see on the news and on my feeds is Trump’s latest bullshit. To take the latest news cycle as an example. We all know that only truly unpatriotic scum would blame the tragic deaths of Americans over the Potomac on DEI. But instead of complaining about his brutishness, I should be hearing our plan to make transportation safer for all.

Besides, it’s not politicians who are going to convince middle-ground voters to support “woke” issues. Obama didn’t make me an ally – my friends and family did. The “culture wars” will be won or lost by…the culture. Politicians play a much smaller role in that than they think. It’s community, movies, TV shows, music, and – most of all – our personal connections that influence our culture. So let’s live out our values in our everyday lives, but let’s use our platforms to highlight our objectively better policies to provide for the needs of all Americans. Let them build their walls, while we welcome more onboard our cause.