Populism, Identity Work, and Progressive Organizing in Rural America

ABSTRACT

This article explores the strategy of a left-progressive congressional candidate in one of the most Republican areas in Pennsylvania during the 2018 election cycle. Using ethnographic and interview data, we discuss how campaign actors used left-populist discourse in their attempt to organize collective political identities, contest elections, and build long term grassroots power in a conservative rural district. The key tactic for organizers was the persuasion cycle, where canvassers would develop rich personal narratives and engage voters in deep conversations. Persuasion conversations coupled populist critiques of “the elite” and the valorization of “the people” with a left-progressive policy agenda and ideology. Using the ideational populism framework, we argue that the “thin centered” ideology of populism and the left-progressive discourse of the campaign were co-constructed in their practice.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ All unattributed quotes are from author fieldnotes.

² Marshall Ganz, “How to Organize to Win,” The Nation (March 2018), available online at: https://www.thenation.com/article/how-to-organize-to-win.

³ Jonathan Smucker, Hegemony: How-To (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2017), p. 143.

⁴ See the following for overviews of the history of populist theory: Kirk A. Hawkins and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser, “The Idealtional Approach,” in Kirk A Hawkins et al. (eds), The Ideational Approach to Populism: Concept, Theory, and Analysis (London, UK: Routledge, 2019), pp. 1–24; and Nadia Urbinati, “Political Theory of Populism,” Annual Review of Political Science 22:6 (2019), pp. 1–17.

⁵ Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).

⁶ Ronald F. Inglehart and Pippa Norris, “Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash,” Harvard Kennedy School Faculty Research Working Paper Series (2016).

⁷ Hawkins and Kaltwasser, “The Idealtional Approach,” p. 3.

⁸ Ernesto Laclau, Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory: Capitalism, Faciscm, Populism (London, UK: Verso Books, 2011); Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (London, UK: Verso Books, 2011); Chantal Mouffe, For a Left Populism. (London, UK: Verso Books, 2018).

⁹ Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2003); Cas Mudde, “The Populist Zeitgeist,” Government and Oppostition 39:4 (2004), pp. 542–563.

¹⁰ Hawkins and Kaltwasser “The Idealtional Approach,” p. 7.

¹¹ Ibid.

¹² Robert D. Benford and David A. Snow, “Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment,” Annual Review of Sociology 26:1 (2000), p. 614.

¹³ For example, see Benjamin Arditi, “Post-hegemony: Politics Outside the Usual Post-Marxist Paradigm,” Contemporary Politics 13:3 (2007), pp. 205–226. Many thanks to the Special Issue editors for this point.

¹⁴ Verta Taylor and Nancy E. Whittier, “Collective Identity in Social Movement,” in Jo Freeman and Victoria Johnson (eds), Waves of Protest (Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999), p. 110.

¹⁵ Ibid., 111.

¹⁶ Ibid., 114.

¹⁷ Ibid., 117.

¹⁸ Biko Koenig, “Trump’s Populism in Post-Industrial America,” (Paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting August, San Francisco, CA, 2017).

¹⁹ The relationship between the campaign and LSU was the subject of a federal complaint filed by the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, who alleged improper spending by LSU and an improper relationship with the Jess King Campaign. We found that staffers were highly sensitive to this issue and went to great lengths to keep the campaigns separate, even when it led to sub-optimal outcomes or planning issues. Sam Janesch, “GOP Files Campaign Finance Complaint Against Lancaster Stands Up,” Lancaster Online (September 11, 2018), available online at: https://lancasteronline.com/news/politics/gop-files-campaign-finance-complaint-against-lancaster-stands-up/.

²⁰ Nate Cohn, Matthew Bloch, and Kevin Quealy, “The New Pennsylvania Congressional Map, District by District” The New York Times (February 19, 2018), available online at: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/02/19/upshot/pennsylvania-new-house-districts-gerrymandering.

²¹ “First introduced in 1997, the Cook PVI measures how each district performs at the presidential level compared to the nation as a whole … A Partisan Voting Index score of D + 2, for example, means that in the 2012 and 2016 presidential elections, that district performed an average of two points more Democratic than the nation did as a whole, while an R + 4 means the district performed four points more Republican than the national average. If a district performed within half a point of the national average in either direction, we assign it a score of EVEN.” The Cook Political Report, “2018 House Race Ratings,” The Cook Political Report (November 5, 2018), available online at: https://cookpolitical.com/ratings/house-race-ratings/187562.

²² In 2018, Jess King received 89,167 votes (43%) in Lancaster county, compared with the 88,103 votes (38%) won in the county by the Democratic candidates in the two congressional districts that spanned the county in 2016. Compared with earlier mid-term elections in the county, Jess King’s performance is particularly surprising: in 2014 the Democratic candidates received on 52,990 votes (37%), and in 2010 the number drops to 46,324 (30%).

²³ At the time of the 2018 election the Green New Deal had yet to appear as a policy position, though several organizations who supported the campaign, including the Sunrise Movement and Lancaster Stands Up, have since endorsed the platform.

²⁴ Elaine Kamarck, Alexander R. Podkul, and Nicholas W. Zeppos, “Progressives Versus the Establishment: What’s the Score, and Does It Matter?” Brookings Institute (July 12, 2018), available online at: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2018/07/12/progressives-versus-the-establishment-whats-the-score-and-does-it-matter/.

²⁵ Jess King Campaign, Phone Persuasion Script, (ND). Emphasis in original.

²⁶ Ibid.

²⁷ David A. Snow, “Elaborating the Discursive Contexts of Framing: Discursive Fields and Spaces,” Studies in Symbolic Interaction 30 (2008), pp. 3–28 .

²⁸ David A. Snow, “Identity Dilemmas, Discursive Fields, Identity Work,” in Jacqueline von Stekelenburg, Conny Roggeband, and Bert Klandermans (eds), The Future of Social Movement Research (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), pp. 274–275.

²⁹ For an excellent discussion on the nuances of organizing, see: Hahrie Han, How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014).

³⁰ Ganz, “How to Organize to Win.”

³¹ This section is drawn from the ethnographic research and perspective of Biko Koenig.

³² Author canvassing fieldnotes.

³³ This data is collected by canvassers who assess how a voter has responded to the persuasion cycle at the end of a conversation. Causal data about voter choices cannot be drawn from this, given that there is no follow-up information about who a voter eventually selected on the ballot.

³⁴ This section is drawn from the ethnographic research and perspective of Lee Scaralia.

³⁵ Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han, Groundbreakers: How Obama’s 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014).

³⁶ Interview with campaign staffer (February 22, 2019).

³⁷ Hahrie Han, How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2014).

³⁸ Verta Taylor, “Social Movement Continuity: The Women’s Movement in Abeyance,” American Sociological Review 54:5 (1989) pp. 761–75.

³⁹ Christopher H. Achen,and Larry M. Bartles, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).

⁴⁰ Christopher Ellis and James A. Stimson, Ideology in America (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Additional information

Funding

Research for this project was supported by the Franklin & Marshall Committee on Grants and the Franklin & Marshall Summer Scholars program.

Notes on contributors

Biko Koenig

Biko Koenig is an Assistant Professor in the Government Department and Public Policy Program at Franklin & Marshall College. Their research focuses on ethnographic approaches to collective action.

Lee Scaralia

Lee Scaralia graduated Franklin & Marshall College in 2019 with a degree in Government and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Lee first began studying ethnographic methods in their junior year of college. They are deeply interested in studies of power, privilege, and identity, and hope to continue these studies in the future.