Op-Ed: Overcomplicated or simple, the message must still deliver

January 10, 2025  |  By Elaine Haney

Since the November election, many Vermont Democrats have been reflecting on the results and lessons learned. To some, a significant problem was messaging. 

A funny thing about Democrats is that we often can’t stop explaining everything. “If only we could explain [insert idea/program/policy here] in a way that people could really understand, they would vote for it!” We anguish over this and develop all sorts of complicated messaging. My experience has been that if it’s too complicated to explain, people aren’t going to take the time to understand it.

Democrats also tend to have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees. When we hear voters’ concerns about an issue, we say “Yes, but have you considered…?” We want to show voters we care about their concerns, but we also want to show them that we are doing lots of other good things. Voters respond, “Yes, but none of those good things directly address my concerns. Also, they’re too expensive.” 

We saw this on the national level. Across the country, Democratic candidates would acknowledge that inflation was still a problem but then explain all the other ways the economy was strong. That may have been true, but it was not what voters wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that Democrats would deal with the thing they most cared about. They heard Democrats telling them they shouldn’t care about that so much.

Then there’s the issue of what we say versus what we do. Vermont Democrats acknowledged that the costs of flood recovery and inflation were crushing family budgets and small businesses. They agreed that the property tax situation was pushing family finances to a breaking point. But what Vermonters heard was lots of explaining that amounted to, “It’s complicated.” What they saw was a stop-gap, expensive fix for the immediate problem of property taxes and a continued focus on the Affordable Heat Act and other initiatives that Democrats know voters see as too expensive. 

Making the situation even more challenging is the fact that we’re dealing with complex problems we have little control over. For the most part, inflation is not something that can be controlled on a state level. Flood recovery is largely dependent on federal funding and states are at the mercy of FEMA and insurance companies. And Vermont’s property tax formula is so complicated that very few understand it and it will take years to design and implement a less complex and more fair system. 

But not all voters know these things. Many are too busy living their own lives, trying to pay their own bills, and not thinking deeply about the larger forces at play that make our lives difficult. Which brings me back to messaging.

Democratic losses in November were largely due to simple messaging targeted at Vermonters’ biggest concern: affordability. This led voters to blame Democrats for last year’s double-digit property tax increase. They saw legislative priorities like the Affordable Heat Act, the recently enacted child care contribution, and increased DMV fees as unaffordable, and voted out of office Democrats who supported them.

They voted in Republicans who shared Governor Scott’s simple message that Vermont just isn’t affordable anymore, and joined him in blaming the Democratic supermajority for it. The Republican message was so simple that even though they had no solutions to offer, voters bought into it because they desperately want change—so much so that Democrats lost more seats in our state legislature than anywhere else in the country.

The ball is in Governor Scott’s court now. The enormous pressures Vermont is facing in addition to unsustainable property tax increases—things like housing, addiction, healthcare, infrastructure—haven’t gotten better in the last eight years. Governing by just saying no to ideas proposed by Democrats clearly hasn’t made life in Vermont more affordable for anyone. 

That’s the flip side of simple messaging—it’s appealing on its surface, but often there’s no there there.

Where does that leave Democrats? There’s still a Democratic majority in both the House and Senate. But voters have sent a clear message of their own that affordability is their priority and they expect results. 

Democrats cannot ignore the effectiveness of a simple message. But while we tend to overcomplicate our own messaging, we must not take the Republican approach of using a simple message as a shield to hide a lack of solutions. We should not take advantage of voters’ fears to win races. 

Democrats have a great track record of delivering strong programs that help Vermonters. It’s our job to make that clear to voters.

Elaine Haney is one of Vermont’s Democratic National Committee members, an Essex Junction city councilor and the executive director of Emerge Vermont.