POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

There has been a lot of hand-wringing about the lack of both unified and resonant messaging by candidates on the Progressive side of the ideological spectrum.

I personally think that the lack of resonant messaging is much more important, especially in these off-year elections.

But here are three examples of very effective messaging that I have come across in just the last three days.

1. “You Can’t Eat GDP”

This is the headline to an article published by the website Common Dreams. When Trump was running against Obama’s economic record, he asserted continuously that the numbers were misleading—and even deliberately so: that the unemployment numbers did not include those who had stopped job hunting, those who were working several jobs to earn what they had previously been paid at one job, those who were working part-time instead of full-time, and those who were under-employed in terms of their credentials. Well, the rise in the stock markets and the drop in unemployment have not led to any corresponding increase in average wages; so, one has to assume that all of the things that Trump criticized in the economic numbers under Obama continue to underlie the current economic numbers. Indeed, since most of the economic growth has been concentrated in urban areas and the economic conditions in rural areas have continued to erode, it is very unlikely that a large portion of Trump voters have seen any improvement in their prospects. And that assertion does not even take into account the impact of the tariffs resulting from the trade wars.

2. “Taxing the Ultrarich to Fund Affordable Housing”

This is a headline promoting an article in Yes magazine. For forty years, the Right has engaged in endless hand-wringing over “class warfare”–which boils down to the belief that poor people can be criticized in every conceivable way for being poor but wealthy people cannot be criticized for how they accumulate or use their wealth. But wealth inequality seems now to have reached the point at which we can distinguish the ultra-wealthy from the merely wealthy. Most people have been conditioned by the deep cultural emphasis on the “American Dream” to believe (or at least to fantasize) that they, too, might become wealthy. And if they do somehow manage to become wealthy, they don’t want anyone taking away any significant portion of what they’ve somehow just gotten their hands on. But being ultra-wealthy is something else entirely. The wealth of someone like Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg (even with the historic hit on the value of Facebook stock) is simply beyond imagining. (See my fairly popular post to this blog on visualizing a million, a billion, and a trillion dollars.) So, especially if you connect taxing the ultra-wealthy with a specific social benefit—such as health insurance or adequate food for all U.S. children, safe and well-equipped schools, safe roads and bridges, the elimination of student debt, the reduction of mass incarceration for non-violent offenses or, in effect, mental illness—it becomes hard to argue against it. It becomes hard to say that Bezos or Gates needs an extra billion more than a child needs immunizations or three meals a day. And in the examples that I have just given, the benefits clearly extend beyond the individuals receiving them to the communities in which they live.

3. “Nope”

This poster appears as a graphic with an article published on the progressive blog Truthdig:

What I like about it is its colloquial simplicity. No well-reasoned arguments. No emotional appeals. No name-calling. Just the simple rejection of Trump and what he stands for—basically asserting that there is so much to object to that you’d have to be a complete dope not to say “Nope.”