The Death of Deliverism: Why Policy Alone Is Not Enough

President Joe Biden addresses UAW members walking a picket line at the GM Willow Run Distribution Center, Tuesday, September 26, 2023, in Belleville, Michigan.

Official White House photo by Adam Schultz

How could it be that the largest-ever recorded drop in childhood poverty had nearly no political resonance?

One of us became intrigued by this question when he walked into a graduate class one evening in 2021 and received unexpected lessons about the limits of progressive economic policy from his students. Deepak had long worked on various efforts to secure expanded income, including the child tax credit increase in 2001. His students were mostly working-class adults of color with full-time jobs, and many were parents; hence, the newly expanded credit would be helpful to them. More than half raised their hands when asked if they had received the check. But when asked whether they were happy about it, not one hand went up.

Upon being asked why, one student summed up the reason with a question: “What’s the catch?” As the class unfolded, students shared that they had not experienced government as a benevolent force. They assumed the money would be recaptured later with penalties. It was, surely, a trap. And of course, considering centuries of exploitation and deceit—in criminal justice, housing, and safety net systems—working-class people of color are not wrong to mistrust government bureaucracies and institutions. The real passion in the class that night and many others was about crime and what it was like to take the subway at night. These students were overwhelmingly progressive on economic and social issues, but many of their everyday concerns were spoken to by the right, not the left.

The American Rescue Plan’s temporary expansion of the child tax credit lifted more than 2 million children out of poverty, resulting in an astounding 46 percent reduction in child poverty. ¹ Yet, the policy’s lapse sparked almost no political response, either from its champions or its beneficiaries. Democrats hardly campaigned on the remarkable achievement they had just delivered, and the millions of parents impacted by the policy did not seem ² to feel it made much difference in their day-to-day lives. Even those who experienced the greatest benefit from the expansion appeared unmoved by the policy. In fact, during the same period in which monthly deposits landed in beneficiaries’ bank accounts, the percentage of Black voters—a group that especially benefited from the policy—who said their lives had improved under the Biden administration actually declined. ³

Explaining the Disconnect

More broadly, the suite of progressive economic policies Biden enacted has not made a dent in his approval ratings. Sixty-two percent of Americans said in a poll from early 2023 that Biden has accomplished “not very much” or “little or nothing” during his presidency. ⁴ “Build Back Better” efforts fell short, but taken together, the American Rescue Plan, the CHIPS and Science Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act constitute a sweeping effort to remake the U.S. economy, strengthen the social safety net, and expand pandemic-era protections. Many progressive groups are turning their attention to implementing these laws—worthy work, regardless of its political consequences. But it is quite remarkable to spend trillions to usher in an economic transformation and receive such an underwhelming response.

We use the term “deliverism” to describe the presumption of a linear and direct relationship between economic policy and people’s political allegiances.

It has long been an article of faith among liberals and leftists that if you “deliver” for people—specifically, if you deliver economic improvements in people’s lives through policy—these changes will solidify or shift people’s political allegiances. Ironically, this transactional vision of politics echoes a naive assumption commonly associated with economists, particularly neoliberals ⁵ : that humans are rational actors motivated primarily by immediate material interests. After the 2022 midterm election, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote an op-ed that exemplifies this worldview. ⁶ She contended that “voters rewarded Democrats for protecting the lives and livelihoods of struggling families,” citing things like allowing Medicare to lower drug prices, capping insulin costs, and increasing corporate taxes. A more accurate look ⁷ at the 2022 election results, however, shows that they were highly geographically uneven and that the unusually good results for Democrats came in places where reproductive rights were threatened and where people felt their votes mattered as a stand against MAGA (Make America Great Again) extremism. Biden’s economic record played little role in persuading voters—and in much of the country, authoritarian candidates prevailed.

We use the term “deliverism” to describe the presumption of a linear and direct relationship between economic policy and people’s political allegiances. Originally coined by Matt Stoller and expanded on by David Dayen, the word describes an approach to governing that focuses on enacting and implementing policies to improve people’s lives. ⁸ In exchange for enacting these policies, deliverism holds, voters will reward the governing party at the ballot box. Centrists, liberals, and progressives in politics and outside social movements disagree about many things, but deliverism is a worldview that unites most of them.

However, progressive economic policies do not necessarily lead to the political outcomes that deliverism predicts they should, and deliverism is proving ineffectual as a response to authoritarianism. People are fully capable of supporting or ignoring progressive economic policies while voting for authoritarians. In 2020 in Florida, for example, more than 60 percent of voters supported a ballot initiative to raise the state minimum wage to $15 per hour ⁹ —the same state where a majority voted for Trump. Last year, Nebraska passed a similar measure ¹⁰ despite overwhelming support for Trump in the past two presidential elections. And we have seen this movie before: Political scientist Dan Hopkins shows that Obama’s signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, did virtually nothing to shift political allegiances and had a minimal impact on the political behavior of even its direct beneficiaries. ¹¹

[D]eliverism is proving ineffectual as a response to authoritarianism.

Although we have long been sympathetic to deliverism, we now believe that it is mostly wrong. Delivering for people on economic issues is an important goal, but it is not an anti-venom for authoritarianism.

There are many reasons why economic policy and political behavior might be disconnected. People might not know about a policy, why it happened, or who brought it about. A policy may not be large enough or not get implemented soon or well enough for people to see a direct impact in their lives. Sometimes, a policy simply may not feel particularly salient to some people. The media frequently fail to explain the relationship between policies and people’s everyday lives. Often the right has done such a good job of inoculating people against the idea of government as a benevolent force that many fail to see it working to improve their lives. And both parties have created programs that are demeaning, confusing, and demoralizing to their beneficiaries, leading to deep and grounded skepticism of government. ¹²

But there is another factor we want to highlight to help explain this disconnect—a dramatic cultural turn that has been weaponized by the authoritarian right and neglected by the technocratic, policy-obsessed left.

The Rising Wave of Unhappiness

Happiness has been declining for decades in the United States, and this phenomenon is crucial to understanding the cultural sources of the authoritarian turn. The meaning of “happiness” is contested, slippery, and culturally specific. ¹³ We are using the term here deliberately because it is a frame through which people understand their everyday lives. We are not using the word to describe ephemeral, moment-to-moment feeling states, but to refer both to objective indicators of well-being and to subjective characterizations of people’s satisfaction with their lives.

[T]here is [a] factor we want to highlight to help explain [the] disconnect—a dramatic cultural turn . . . weaponized by the . . . right and neglected by the . . . left.

Since 1990, the number of Americans reporting they feel “not too happy” has been trending upward, particularly among those without a college education. ¹⁴ The onset of the pandemic only exacerbated this trend: By 2021, just 19 percent of Americans reported feeling “very happy”—the lowest level on record since the General Social Survey began asking the question in 1972. ¹⁵ The intensifying unhappiness is also reflected in data showing greater drug overdoses ¹⁶ and a 30 percent increase in suicide rates over the past couple of decades. ¹⁷ Our culture and politics are increasingly driven by this rising wave of unhappiness.

And it is a worldwide phenomenon. Gallup data reveal a global surge in unhappiness that predates the pandemic and has worsened since. ¹⁸ The percentage of people reporting a negative overall experience of life increased nearly by half around the world between 2011 and 2021—from 24 percent to 33 percent. ¹⁹ This trend coincides with a steady decline in the global poverty rate over at least the last two decades. ²⁰

Although U.S. happiness has fallen on average, there are profound differences across demographic groups. One of those divides is class. Since 1990, a growing gap in life expectancy has emerged between the one-third of the country with college degrees and the two-thirds without, driven in part by “deaths of despair” from drug overdoses, suicide, and alcohol-related liver disease. ²¹ Class-based discrepancies in happiness have long been present in the United States, but researchers have found that the “happiness gap”—the divide between those with the lowest socioeconomic status and the highest—has steadily grown between the 1970s and the 2010s. ²² And this dynamic, too, is not the same for all groups, as a look at the Black-white happiness gap illustrates. White Americans appear to be losing ground in terms of happiness compared to their Black counterparts, despite persistent racial inequities. College-educated whites with high incomes experienced stable happiness levels or slight declines, but whites without a college degree saw a 28 percent drop in happiness from the 1970s to the mid-2010s. By contrast, working-class Black Americans without college degrees experienced relatively stable happiness levels throughout the four decades, and higher-income, college-educated Black Americans experienced large gains, with 63 percent more Black adults with a college degree reporting they were “very happy” in the mid-2010s compared to the 1970s.

Our culture and politics are increasingly driven by [a] rising wave of unhappiness.

These differences present a paradox: Those in relatively privileged positions, such as white men, are experiencing greater declines in happiness than groups facing objectively worse social conditions. One explanation for this is that white Americans, particularly white men, feel that their dominant social position is diminishing, and studies have shown that status threat is associated with greater white mortality. ²³

The causes of rising unhappiness are complex, but they surely have roots in the failures of a neoliberal economic regime that has fostered insecurity, isolation, anxiety, and fear—and was brought about by politicians in both political parties. Neoliberalism privatized risk, catalyzed alienation, and cultivated feelings of inadequacy and low self-worth for the 99 percent. But although neoliberalism is a primary cause of unhappiness, that does not mean the implementation of progressive, redistributive economic policies alone will lead to rising happiness. Bad economic policy has produced knock-on effects of increasing drug use, homelessness, and mental illness—realities that have come to dominate the mental landscape of voters who nonetheless may not see economic policy as a source of solutions.

There are many other related causes contributing to the unhappiness wave, including corporate social media, the impending sense of doom wrought by climate change, and the dramatic decline of people’s attachment to institutions like work, unions, and churches. Loneliness and social isolation are major drivers of unhappiness. We are experiencing a crisis of what French sociologist Émile Durkheim in the 1800s called “anomie”—the loss of shared social norms and values arising from the dizzying pace of social, economic, political, and technological change and the weakening of institutions that foster social cohesion.

How Authoritarians Surf the Unhappiness Wave

Whatever be the causes, it turns out that unhappiness is a very strong predictor of voting behavior. Being extremely unhappy more than doubled a person’s likelihood of voting for Trump in 2016, and the unhappiest counties were the Trumpiest. As social scientist Johannes Eichstaedt and colleagues show, “Unhappiness predicted the Trump vote better than race, income levels, or unemployment, how many immigrants had moved into the county, or how old or religious the citizens were. Unhappiness also predicted the Trump election better than other subjective variables, like how people thought the economy was going or would be going in the future.” ²⁴

Being extremely unhappy more than doubled a person’s likelihood of voting for Trump in 2016, and the unhappiest counties were the Trumpiest.

Others have shown that counties that went to Trump—like Luzerne County in Pennsylvania or Trumball County in Ohio—were often “landscapes of despair,” characterized by more economic distress, poor health, low educational attainment, high alcohol and suicide mortality rates, and high divorce rates. ²⁵ States with the lowest life expectancies and education levels used to vote strongly for Democrats, but the past four decades have witnessed what Nobel laureate Angus Deaton called an “extraordinary realignment,” with those states now heavily voting red. ²⁶

MAGA extremists have made the most of the cultural turn, capitalizing on the unhappiness wave for political gain. Trumpist politicians invoke righteous indignation not only about material economic conditions but also perceived disrespect by cultural elites, rising crime, and disintegration of traditional family structures. The power of this story derives partly from its clarity about the enemies—despised “others”—and from the sense of community and shared purpose that participation in the authoritarian project provides. There is considerable evidence that authoritarianism is driven by racial animus. ²⁷ Whether supporters view it this way or not, the MAGA movement is fundamentally a white supremacist movement that activates and weaponizes racist beliefs. Despite the common narrative that Trump’s 2016 win could be explained by the economic distress of Americans who felt left behind, candidate preference was influenced more by issues that threatened many white Americans’ sense of dominant group status, like immigration, trade, and the country’s relationship with China—issues that captured the perceived threat of being replaced by racialized others and the United States losing its position of global dominance. ²⁸

[A]uthoritarianism does not depend on solving people’s problems to succeed . . . its genius is to harness and feast on unhappiness without reducing it.

The emotional alchemy of the authoritarian approach is so strong that it can override facts and material reality. Trump duped millions with his false claim ²⁹ to have brought back manufacturing jobs. By contrast, Biden’s success in reducing unemployment to the lowest level in 54 years ³⁰ goes virtually uncredited, with his approval rating hitting an all-time low of 36 percent ³¹ this past May. In the same poll, an astounding 54 percent of Americans said that Trump handled the economy better than Biden has, compared to just 36 percent of Americans who felt the opposite was true. The MAGA extremist response succeeds because it speaks to a visceral sense of dissatisfaction and promises security, belonging, and recognition. It works because it offers a kind of psychic release, an outlet for powerful emotions to find expression. There is an angry ecstasy in authoritarian rallies and online culture. MAGA extremism takes seriously some aspects of people’s actual, lived experience (like a sense of bewildering change and threatened life prospects), and it invents other threats (like trans people, immigrants, refugees, and racial justice protestors). If anomie or normlessness is the problem, authoritarianism supplies certainty and a compass to navigate a changing world.

Importantly, authoritarianism does not depend on solving people’s problems to succeed politically; indeed, its genius is to harness and feast on unhappiness without reducing it. In his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in March 2023, Trump spoke openly to this pain and offered the satisfaction of revenge: “In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice.’ Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.” ³²

This challenge cannot be solved, as the Biden administration seems to be realizing, ³³ by industrial policy or progressive economic policy alone. Although the unhappiness wave is partly because of neoliberalism, the cultural response has acquired its own force and exercises powerful influence on social identities and modes of living, thought, and feeling. People who do not conceive of their unhappiness as a product of economic forces and seek solutions in other spheres of life are unlikely to be moved by an economistic response, despite its worthiness and even if they agree with specific policies.

Implications for the Fight Against Authoritarianism

What does the death of deliverism mean for progressive strategy?

First, progressive policymaking must take identity, emotion, and story much more seriously. We should care about the details of the policies we pass and how we fight for them. Policies that deliver economic benefit without speaking to, reinforcing, and constructing a social identity are likely to have little political impact. Progressives won a victory for working people in passing the expanded child tax credit, but they largely failed to tell a story that answered urgent questions: Why was this happening? Who were the beneficiaries? And why did they deserve to get the check? An exception was Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, who defended the fact that people without earnings got the child credit by saying, “raising kids is work.” ³⁴ That is a compelling moral argument that draws on and amplifies the powerful identity of parenthood. But most who promoted the policy failed to make that case. So although the economic, material benefit of the expanded child tax credit was enormous, the political benefit was limited.

[P]rogressive policymaking must take identity, emotion, and story much more seriously.

Contrast this with “Build the Wall,” Trump’s only partly ³⁵ realized signature policy proposal that had zero economic benefit but activated intense (if not broad) support by tapping into a social identity—whiteness—and telling a story, complete with villains and heroes, of being under siege. As historian Greg Grandin has written, “The point isn’t to actually build ‘the wall’ but to constantly announce the building of the wall.” ³⁶

Second, progressives must offer ideas about issues they have too long neglected. Economic changes may be at the root of what ails us, but they are refracted through people’s lived experience with things like violence, addiction, mental health problems, social isolation, loneliness, and a sense of social disintegration. Progressive policymaking and political rhetoric have been extraordinarily thin on these topics, usually treating them as secondary issues. The visceral experience of class, race, and gender is often felt through these non-economic aspects of life.

Organizing works in part because it breathes life into latent social identities.

People’s fears of crime may be exaggerated, for example, but their feelings of disorder and danger are real and demand a response. This is not just about reaching Trump voters—it is about reaching working- and middle-class people across racial lines. Taking fears of crime seriously is not an inherently conservative position; what is important is how policymakers address these concerns. Do we turn to outdated, cruel, and ineffective answers, like punishment and fear-mongering? Or do we tackle crime at the root, offering all people nourishment, care, and community? It is time we realize that people are not foolishly “voting against their interests,” as many on the left have long argued and struggled to explain. ³⁷ People hold multiple, sometimes contradictory identities and interests. It is not inevitable which identities or interests will come to the fore and determine their political allegiances. We must take seriously people’s preoccupations as they define them, not as some distraction from what they should care about.

We must also take social connection, isolation, and community much more seriously as policy priorities. Even before Covid-19 changed how we interact with our social worlds, three in five Americans were classified as lonely. ³⁸ Americans’ number of close friendships has shrunk over the past few decades, ³⁹ especially for men: In 1990, just 3 percent of men reported having no close friends at all, but by 2021, that number had jumped to 15 percent. ⁴⁰ Policy cannot solve a crisis of friendship directly—but it can support the rebuilding of social institutions, like community organizations and unions, that create opportunities for connection. (There is considerable evidence ⁴¹ showing that unions are a bulwark against authoritarianism.)

Third, progressives must articulate not just a string of worthy policies but a vision of the good life grounded in what cultural theorist Stuart Hall called “root ideas” about how we should live, who we should care about, and what makes life meaningful. Neoliberal striver culture promises wealth, security, and pleasurable consumption through individual effort. This conception of the good life has proved persuasive to people across demographics. An ethno-nationalist, patriarchal vision promises community, belonging, and status dominance through the support of authoritarian leaders. That vision has gained adherents as fewer people find the promise of striver culture to be convincing. A compelling progressive vision will start from premises about identity, purpose, and the grounds for flourishing and will make practical sense to people grappling with everyday challenges by providing clear stories with heroes and villains.

Fourth and most importantly, reinvigorated organizing and recruitment of new people, especially working-class people, into worker and community organizations is essential. But the craft of organizing has been in deep decline. As long-time community organizer Kirk Noden puts it, “Never have there been so many people with the job title ‘organizer,’ never have so many foundations funded organizing, and never has there been so little real organizing happening in America.” People are often mobilized on issues but are too rarely invited to be part of a democratic community built on relationships that forge collective power.

There is important innovation underway. A new generation of organizing efforts pairs work on issues with a strong emphasis on building community and connection, including sometimes through direct services and mutual aid. Make the Road New York, a grassroots organization rooted in immigrant communities, uses services to recruit working-class immigrants and constructs a culture of belonging that forges strong ties. While the organization delivers concrete benefits to community members, people who seek services first experience an “agitational intake”—a conversation that situates a personal problem in a collective context and asks individuals to join with their neighbors to fight for structural solutions. People may come for the service, but they stay for the community. Political scientist Deva Woodly shows how the Movement for Black Lives has developed a politics of care and specific practices, like healing justice, that connect personal pain and trauma to collective struggle. ⁴²

Defanging authoritarianism requires shifting organizing methods to widen the on-ramps that welcome in people who are not already progressive and to work at the levels of survival needs, meaning, and identity—not just policy. One group, Hoosier Action in Indiana, says its model is to create an organization that is a “Church, Shelter, and Vanguard,” meaning it provides a combination of belonging, mutual aid, and intensive training and meaning-making. The organization also works directly on issues at the heart of the despair crisis, like the opioid epidemic. Hoosier Action is building community-owned centers that can provide an institutional home to foster solidarity among working-class people. Some organizing on the right—for example, in evangelical churches—is thick in this same way, forging deep social ties rather than relating to people transactionally on issues of the moment.

Organizing works in part because it breathes life into latent social identities. For example, someone may be a worker, but that may not become their primary identity until they are engaged in a concrete struggle over wages and benefits with other workers. The students receiving the child tax credit experienced having something done to them, rather than being protagonists in the story. And the latent and powerful identity of being parents, with the deep love that lies at the core of their purpose, was untapped by the policy debate. Progressive efforts to implement the Inflation Reduction Act are far more likely to increase civic engagement if they proceed from an organizing, rather than a technocratic, mindset.

Moving Forward

Deliverism is not the solution to our democracy crisis because, as Staci K. Haines—author of The Politics of Trauma: Somatics, Healing, and Social Justice—has argued, our needs for safety, belonging, and dignity are fundamental to our humanity. ⁴³ Delivery of even dramatically more progressive economic policies than are on offer in the United States today will not prevent the rise of authoritarianism. The rise of far-right parties in the Scandinavian social democracies is a cautionary tale about the limits of an economistic approach. The best strategy, therefore, will combine the material with the emotional.

Solving the authoritarianism challenge requires a progressive program and organizing strategy that speak directly to the unhappiness wave and are rooted in the texture of everyday life—what people actually talk, care, and worry about. Such an approach will continue to foreground economic security and rights, but it must also affirm other aspects of human flourishing that have long been emphasized by diverse social movements, including the importance of collective care, community, belonging, and solidarity. The task for progressives at this historical juncture is not to find the magic message or to deliver more popular policies. Rather, it is to offer a compelling, energizing, persuasive vision of the good life and to organize mass-based organizations through which people shape and live out those values in the here and now.