287 Some Thoughts on the Democrats Alleged Failure of Messaging
New student-led PAC revitalizes Democratic Party, rivals Turning Point USA – The Arizona State Press
The whole media narrative about the alleged toxicity of the Democratic brand couldn’t be more frustrating. Which is par for the course in terms of media narratives. Generally speaking media narratives are at best dubious and question begging as is the whole “the Democrats are toxic” narrative. In our Orwellian age of American politics-ie the Trumpian era-more than ever these kinds of narratives are at best misleading very often based on a completely false premise.
Like the zombie idea that Biden was weak on the border. As we discussed in Chapter Mitch McConnell and Adam Jentleson-this idea has the inconvenience of being false. Yet even many elected Democrats apparently believe this false premise. Which is problematic to say the least-if you start from a false premise you’re never going to get the a solution as the diagnosis is wrong.
In anything in retrospect it’s clearer than ever to me that much as I hate to agree with Hasan he has been proven exactly right on immigration, the real problem is that the Democrats visibly moved to the Right on immigration the last four years. What’s so frustrating about this is that while OTOH I pretty much hate Ygelsias’ “popularism”-as it’s entirely reactive and passive and falsely presumes that there’s something called PUBLIC OPINOIN that is timeless, changeless, and entirely static as if you can never seek to CHANGE public opinion-as we discussed in Chapter McConnell vs Yglesias precisely because the GOP agenda is unpopular and they know this they better understand that public opinion can be moved not to say manipulated brazenly-the further frustrating irony is that the Democrats position that supports immigration reform which includes doing something for the dreamers as well as a path to citizenship-which was clearly the position of Hillary Clinton circa 2016-is actually very popular but for some reason the Democrats decided during the Biden years that public opinion is virulently opposed to anything that smacks of humane treatment of this issue
So this is like a compound problem of the Democratic consultant class who poll test and focus group when it’s best time to go to the bathroom-OTOH popularism is a very passive and reactive theory of political engagement aka prevent defense but yet OTOH most Democratic positions are actually popular but the Dem consultant class a la Adam Jentleson cum Ezra Klein have convinced themselves of the opposite.
In fairness to Klein at the very minimum I always find his presentation engaging and I am curious to read about his “politics of abundance” even though I approach it with some significant skepticism. I do think there actually COULD BE something in his discussion of the idea of making government more EFFECTIVE-to paraphrase the cultural conservatives from the 1970s when I hear the word “efficient” I get my gun as by definition the government is SUPPOSED to have “inefficiencies”-redundancies, etc so it IS efficient in the sense of functioning. Like right now the problem is Trump-Musk have fired all these government workers making it LESS efficient-like I do think there might be something there on the issue of “NIMBYISM” etc. Certainly Klein is right that as the party of government the Democrats have to make sure government is effective-though major reason not to say the main reason is that the GOP for 59 years has done everything it can to make sure it’s not effective-aka their agenda has been to shrink the government to the point it can be drowned in the bathtub.
But I have heard him say things along the lines of 2024 was a cultural victory for the Republican party and that allegedly there are no issues that favor the Democrats right now except healthcare.
Again this is a completely flawed premise so what hope do you have of getting to an effective strategy down this road? To be sure I think this was based on some poll-again this is the problem with poll testing: you can make a poll say anything if you frame it the right way. What polls have long showed is that Americans favor the Democratic position on most issues-abortion, gun control, immigration… Yet over time the party consultants have decided gun control and immigration in particular are fraught issues for the DEMOCRATS. Yet the reality is polls have consistently shown 90% of Americans support sensible gun control, immigration reform, and 90% oppose denying abortion for a woman who was raped or in cases the life of the mother is threatened.
Yet the Democrats keep conceding ground on these issues-indeed, it’s been notable how silent the Democratic party has been about abortion post election. This stems from their tendency to assume because they lost the popular vote the country has repudiated them on every issue and everything they’ve ever said or done. Which is amazing-they lost it by 1.5% and have decided they need a lobotomy of their entire worldview yet before 2024 they had won the popular vote seven out of eight years and the GOP responded every time ultimately by DOUBLING DOWN.
FN: I should also say that on immigratoin the party’s abdication is particularly appalling now that Trump is literally kidnapping anyone he wants and transferring them out to El Salavdor-but remember they empowered him by voting for Laken-Riley.
Again what makes this so frustrating is that the Democratic agenda remains very popular-as it has done since FDR. But the party consultants believe the opposite always believe the opposite. Is it because of donors? This question of the “Bernie Bros” can no longer be dismissed out of hand as the opinions of these consultants are so wrongheaded. Ken Martin as we saw in Chapter Sometimes had vowed a reckoning for the consultant class-but have heard nothing about this happening since his election.
Indeed, as noted above the page in a screenshot of a discussion I had on Bluesky early April 4 after Trump’s destructive tariffs basically every good thing that’s happened in America both domestically and in foreign policy has been thanks to the Democratic party. There’s your “messaging.” We discussed this in Chapter McConnell and did the math.
Every time since FDR the Democrats fix the economy then the next GOP President destroys it again. Speaking of which:
It’s almost like there’s a trend.
FN
El Howieson: “OH THE WINNING 🏆🤬🤬🤬” — Bluesky
Again if you’re looking for “good messaging” how about just saying this? As Keith Olbermann would put it: you’re welcome.
Speaking of which regarding-the admittedly very premature-discussion of 2028-I mean how do we survive 45 more months of THIS?- it seems to me right now there are two kinds of Democrats: those who get it and those who don’t. And going back to Ezra Klein for the moment it’s notable to me that it’s the Democrats who don’t get it who seem to be the ones interested in “the politics of abundance”-again I’m not saying his book isn’t worth a read and I do intend to read it but then I like to read…
UPDATE: However… I was just watching CNBC and saw: Derek Thompson and was actually pretty impressed with his performance here-on a day the market is down 2000 two days after Trump begun his pointless trade war-reinforcing my suspicion that wether you agree or not this is likely a very engaging and thought provoking book.
Let’s start by looking at two Democrats who conceivably could be on a 2028 ticket: Gavin Newsom and Tim Walz. Clearly Newsom DOESN’T get it and Walz clearly does. Indeed, Newsom actually invited Walz on his podcast a few weeks ago.
(544) And, This is Governor Tim Walz | This is Gavin Newsom – YouTube
UPDATE: Other Democrats who get it
Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) / X
Just can’t get enough of it-she’s so great. What this country lost is incalculable