McDonald’s has become a powerful symbol for Democrats

Analysis by Allison Morrow, CNN

New York (CNN) — If elected this fall, Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff will usher in many “firsts” in American history. Among them: The first White House couple to have worked at McDonald’s.

With that line on their resumes, Harris and Emhoff share a link to 1 in 8 Americans who have worked at McDonald’s – 13% of the country – according to the company.

Broadcasting that shared history, as they have this week at the Democratic National Convention, has become a powerful way for Democrats to burnish their working-class credentials and, without even mentioning their rivals’ names, aim to make former President Donald Trump and the Republican ticket appear elitist and out of touch.

In several speeches and campaign ads, Democrats have been eager to remind voters that Harris, raised by a single mom in a middle class neighborhood, had a summer job slinging fries to help her pay for college.

Former President Bill Clinton, whose own legendary McD’s habit became memorable fodder for “Saturday Night Live” in the 1990s, joked in his convention speech Wednesday night that he’ll be happy to see Harris elected because “at last, she’ll break my record as the president who has spent the most time at McDonald’s.”

Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett was more direct in distinguishing Harris’s background from Trump’s, who got his start in real estate with what he has called a “small” $1 million loan from his father.

“One candidate worked at McDonald’s … The other was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and helped his daddy in the family business: Housing discrimination,” Crockett said in her convention speech Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, Emhoff, the second gentleman, highlighted his own working-class roots, telling the DNC that when he was in high school “money was tight, so I worked at McDonald’s,” where he was named employee of the month. “I still have the framed picture … and there was a ring, golden arches and all.”

McDonald’s declined to comment for this story.

The McDonald’s rhetoric is, of course, a carefully calculated strategy to make both Harris and Emhoff more relatable to voters, many of who are just getting to know the second couple. The “McDonald’s” nod is a rhetorical shorthand for having worked in food service — a notoriously low-paying, physically exhausting job that is nonetheless a point of pride for those who’ve done it. (Hi, former waitress and barista here, what can I get you?)

And Democrats hope the millions of voters who worked in food service will be unable to imagine Trump, the real estate mogul and reality TV star, picking soggy scraps out of the slop sink drain, or being yelled at by customers whose order wasn’t right.

That’s exactly what Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, was tapping into in a campaign speech earlier this month.

“Can you simply picture Donald Trump working at a McDonald’s? … He couldn’t run that damn McFlurry machine if it cost him anything,” Walz said.

Working in food service, like joining the military and becoming a public school teacher (in Walz’s case), fits into a broader populist, pro-worker narrative that Democrats have embraced, particularly under President Joe Biden, who has backed unions and last year joined a picket line during the massive autoworkers strike. Democrats appear to be betting on the strength of a growing labor movement in America.

Shifting demographics and a changing global economy have led working-class White voters – once the backbone of support for Democrats – to form a voting bloc for the Republican Party. So it would have been hard to imagine, even a few years ago, that one of the stars of the 2024 DNC would be the head of the United Auto Workers union, clad in a “Trump is a scab” T-shirt on stage. And yet here we are.

Perhaps no other major Democrat embraces that populist brand better than New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who just six years ago was working as a waitress in Manhattan.

“Ever since I got elected, Republicans have attacked me by saying that I should go back to bartending,” she told the DNC on Monday. “But let me tell you, I’m happy to — any day of the week — because there is nothing wrong with working for a living. Imagine having leaders in the White House who understand that.”

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