*Content warning: this post refers to anti-Black racism and sexual assault. Please take care when reading.
Many people have been interested and energized by the recent twists and turns in the American election. There has never been a presidential candidate like Kamala Harris in the past and it begs the question of how should she and her team talk about her and her story. Should she sound like everyone who came before her? Should she take a different tact?
Below, we break down some elements of her campaign messaging so you can get a glimpse into what she’s doing with different aspects of her speech.
We are using her speech at the Democratic National Convention as the template for her messaging, but we’ve included a few other aspects of how the Democrats are talking about her and the campaign too.
Check out the speech here.
The overall framework
The Public Narrative framework is commonly used by politicians and issued-based campaigns to pivot from discussing the person’s personal connection to the issue to talking about why it matters now. It’s meant to create a personal connection as well as a sense of timeliness.
This framework was created by Marshall Ganz and it’s a great one for creating a stump speech for political campaigns. It can also be used for things like fundraising campaigns or membership drives.
Story of self
In the video, Harris starts with her story of self. How did she become who she is? What and who influenced her? (in the video, story of self is from around 4:40-12:00)
She talks about her mother and her upbringing, situating herself as coming from a scrappy family with a social justice bent. Notably, she tells the story of what drove her to become a prosecutor. This is a really notable part of her story because it highlights her work to date, but also suggests other characteristics about herself: that she’s smart, hardworking, principled, and selfless. You can dispute whether being a prosecutor actually means she holds these characteristics, but this is what they’re trying to suggest to the general population. It might also be bolstering against unconscious biases that people hold about Black people, aka racism.
In the story of self, we don’t want to brag about ourselves. We want to suggest aspects of our personality that we want to highlight. We want to seem relatable and likable.
The story of self also commonly highlights the BIG MOMENT. This is a turn in the story. This thing happened and it prompted me to take this path. It’s highlighting a decisive or formative moment. In Harris’s story, it’s her friend disclosing sexual abuse.
Story of us
The story of us may be less clear, but it’s really crucial. It’s what draws the audience into the journey with the speaker. Harris pivots very seamlessly to her story of us around 12:00. The story of us invites people to be part of the fight, part of the campaign, and part of the story together.
She pivots by talking about standing up for the people and linking herself to different types of people, accepting her nomination with the quote:
“on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth”.
While she moves through the story of us quite quickly, she does return to it throughout the speech.
Story of now
The story of now is critical because it gives a sense of urgency of the moment. This isn’t’ something we can put off for another week, year, or decade. We need to take action together now. Harris moves into this section of the speech around 14:23 when she talks about “a chance to chart a new way forward”. She’s highlighting this election as a pivotal moment for the United States.
Other ways to message
The other way that political campaigns message is by using this framework:
Us on us
Us on them
Them on us
Them on them
Sometimes the “us on them” shows up explicitly when Harris names her opponent. At other times it is suggested when she is talking about herself (“us on us”). Often, campaigns want to resist going negative and/or talking about their opponents. This absolutely makes sense and may be values-aligned. However only talking positively about ourselves without considering differentiation is not effective.
Differentiation is about pointing out the difference between us and our opponents. We may be fortunate enough to be running in an election where everyone would be fabulous if elected. It’s also likely that some of the candidates may harm members of our community, the environment, or climate if they are elected.
Particularly in local elections, it can be super hard to tell the difference between candidates. Who isn’t for a vibrant local economy? Who doesn’t love the city/town/regional district?
We can figure out how to differentiate without going negative by using the us on us/us on them framework.
For Harris, some of the contrast messaging we spotted includes:
- Optimism and faith
- Supporting the fair transfer of power
- A president who listens, is realistic, practical, and has common sense
- Fights for the American people, puts country above party and self
- I stood up for women and children against predators
- “I stood up” – repetition
- An America where we look out for each other
- None of us has to fail for others to succeed
None of this necessarily mentions her opponent. But it does suggest that some teams aren’t realistic and don’t have common sense. Who could she possibly be referring to?
Good differentiation messaging does that. It makes the voter reflect negatively in your opponent without you ever saying anything about them.
Their us on them messaging includes:
- “weird”
- Chaos
- Donald Trump is an unserious man
- The threats of another Trump presidency
- The only client he’s ever had – himself
- He fights for himself and his billionaire friends
- They are out of their minds
One of their big campaign messages is “We are not going back”. Why do you think they’ve chosen that? What is it meant to convey?
Want to learn how to create messaging like this for your campaign? Sign up for campaign school!
