It's actually a mystery why the Democrats *don't* do something as reasonable as this. My operating assumption in recent years—as I watched Pelosi et al. avoiding hardball with anyone to their right—was that these Silent-Generation politicos had vivid memories of "liberals" being smeared by an ascendant Rush Limbaugh & co. But they have messaging consultants who could have told them that was an obsolete trauma response. An alternative interpretation from folks on the progressive edge is that it's all kabuki and kayfabe, that the Democrats are simply foils for a more conservative capitalist ruling class that's actually running the show. But the GOP has so many advantages baked in through gerrymandering, the Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, etc., that a supine Democratic leadership has become arguably *too* ridiculous. This also extends to the state level! I look at what the Republican legislature in North Carolina has been up to, and of course at the almost comically evil shit going down in Wisconsin, and have no idea why folks with the bully pulpits don't just make prime time speech after prime time speech about how completely f@#!ed things are. If people ignored them things certainly wouldn't be *worse*. And it's clear that the GOP isn't holding itself back out of regard for Democrats' good graces... .
Yes, this is your key point: the right-wing machine bleats on 24 hours a day on radio, TV, and YouTube. Democrats don't have the right-wing media apparatus, so if they want to get their message out through the mainstream media, they better come out swinging. Biden's milquetoast messaging is not going to work in a reelection campaign.
I want the Democratic Party to succeed, aspects of my life depend on it, and yet this Party has no idea how to get their message out effectively. And often they don't know what the message should be. I swear to god these people still think "it's the economy, stupid" is some sort of talisman. "The American people want us to work together on the economy" is a loser message to take to CNN.
"This is a distraction" is always a dumb, weak message, no matter who is saying it. Biden is going to be in deep trouble next year if his response to impeachment and Hunter is just DISTRACTION.
I also disagree with Biden and the Dems refusing to comment on Trump's trials. "It's up to the legal system" is only one part of the message. The other part is that Trump is deeply corrupt and dangerous. Everything they said right after January 6 can and should be said all over again.
I’ll never understand why the Biden admin (or any Dems really) seems constantly worried about how Republican media will portray them, when they’ll call him a corrupt Marxist dictator no matter what he says. I agree that he should tell it like it is. That’s what the people like! (It’s me, I’m the people). I guess they maybe want to avoid the impression of”both sides” yelling Sham Impeachment, but like you said, it’s not exactly hard to articulate the differences
Brian is mixing together what Biden should do as opposed to what the DNC should be doing. There’s a plus with the politically insufficiently informed for the POTUS to be above the bullshit from the Republicans. Voters seem to tend to like it. And it seemed to work for Clinton and Obama.
And there’s a bigger problem than how Biden responds to the impeachment idiocy. That’s the need for and the DNC’s failure or refusal to have a “war room” with which to respond to all the Republican bullshit the mainstream media chooses to echo mindlessly and irresponsibly. (For one, query how many people would be alive or in significantly better health if TFG’s response to Covid was reported honestly instead of leaving the audiences to “suss” out the truth as Dean Baquet said.)
And related to that need, it has to be considered why the media repeat Republican propaganda with neither proper context or framing. Spoiler: it’s what they need to do to stay employed, maybe even make the big bucks from a book deal.
It’s complicated and the Democrats seem content with that status quo.
Of course it would be reported, and in that awful both sides way. But the important things are that there would be a message and no matter how it’s reported would be out there.
Whatever problems a Dem war room would have, it absolutely cannot be worse than the DNC’s frequent silence in the face of bullshit.
This is my belief, and I've watched it happen over and over again. No strategy is foolproof to mainstream media stupidity, but mainstream media outlets won't even consider amplifying X unless X is contentious and impassioned. The GOP uses this as a skeleton key for everything from tan suits, to hoodies, to the tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch (wherein they exchanged ordinary pleasantries in front of many witnesses).
To be clear, I have no faith in the media handling any statement from a Dem war room let’s say competently, but I think having such a statement out there poorly or incompetently handled by the media is better than no statement at all. That is, allowing the bullshit to be promoted without any response from the Dems.
Should also add that by a war room, I mean one capable of statements with some strength, obviously.
Yes, generally speaking, it’s the GOP and supporting, enabling media on one side and nothing too vigorous from the Democrats to act as any sort of balance.
That said, maybe 24/7/365 coverage of Trump trials will do the same good as a war room, but still. You know, project a perception of strength and responsibility from the Dems.
I think you’re right, but one of Brian’s points is that no one--Biden OR the DNC--will remind our media superstars about their propensity to shrug off Trump’s latest tantrum. And more importantly, his previous ones.
Republicans brought up Chappaquiddick for 50 years. Trump in the past month admitted that his plan to “end the war in Ukraine” was to stop aiding Ukraine and give Putin whatever he wants. He also at least twice said “I am the president,” said he wants to imprison his enemies and said he’ll institute a universal 10 percent tariff, proving that he still has no idea whatsoever how tariffs work. And our media stars have become completely bored with all of that. It’s worth pointing out.
Yeah, I just mean when someone asks a Democrat on TV about Trump, a parenthetical about “by the way this is a guy who thinks he’s 6’3” and 215 and told Tucker Carlson last month ‘I am the president’ twice and that Biden will start World War 2” would go a long way.
No, the idea is to avoid that crap with formal statements from the party, not some politician at hand. At worse, there’d be an official party statement.
An official party statement is at the mercy of reporters, pundits and editors of possibly being thrown away. In other words, it will be thrown away. It’s worth doing, sure, but talking live is critical.
No. A statement is a statement and better than some posturing from a politician.
How it’s handled or not by the press is a lesser concern than the party letting all this crap to be reported without making any reasonable effort to respond properly.
Biden seems to have a pretty talented communications team, judging by the ads they swiftly turn out that exploit stupid GOP talking points. Why are they not doing this already?
I think they're good but they've been reluctant to shift into campaign mode this early. We all dread 14 months of election stuff, but people already believe, because the media says so, that Hunter does bribery and so does Biden and hey, now Menendez, blah blah blah. Biden can't wait until February to come out with a coherent message on it
Would it be too much to ask our media to observe that government shutdown and dysfunction do actually benefit one group: the donor class. Remember the yahoos were put into power by groups who would like nothing more than for America to decide that all politics are a sham. Chaos is a strategy.
Both Biden and Harris speak in generalities and are not compelling. They need to find spokes people who are savage funny and who will shame the media. The press secretary is an utter failure bring Jen Psaki back put the Democratic governors out there, compensate for the weakness of Biden and Harris, as speakers by using others like the Obamas, just do it!
It is a natural reaction to being accused of something to try to demonstrate one's innocence. Republicans have been crying for decades about how the media is unfair to them and the media seems to have responded by taking a "just the facts" approach so they can't be accused of bias. That leads to the "Republicans say..." problem where Republicans say the earth is flat and Dems say it isn't and both sides appear to have a reasonable dispute over an uncertain question.
Dems seem to think voters/citizens will understand that all of this is nuts, i.e. they go low, we go high. But that doesn't work. People look to the media for some kind of guidance about what is a big deal, what is bizarre, and what is flat out dangerous. They assume we still live in a world where a politician misspelling "potato" is career defining. Now politicians threaten to murder their opponents and suspend the fourth estate in writing and all that gets covered is the latest poll and whether it shows voter concern about indictments.
The article is spot on that Dems have to force the issue. Every time Peter Doocy asks a question at a press conference he should be asked if he's equally concerned about the latest Trump nightmare tweet and whether his network will cover the same. How is a presidential candidate's threats to upend democracy and destroy his political opponents not the top story every night? Make the media defend itself in the same way Republicans make them defend themselves. Only one side has the Jewish space laser nutjob, the alleged child trafficker, the molestation cover up guy, the theater diddler, etc, etc, etc. This is not a debate between two equally polarized sides as it is being consistently framed. Assuming it will get reported differently unless they force the issue is insane. It never happens. How about "When they go low, we point it out and expect accountability for that nonsense?"
Both Democrats and Republicans are a**wholes, they worship the party not the people. Both see the end game as winning the Oval Office with “whatever it takes” approach. The Democrats did ratchet up the price by going after Trump his entire presidency, there is no argument for that statement.
Let me repeat... I dislike Republicans and Democrats, so I am in no-mans land with no friends.
There may be a revenge factor in pursuing an impeachment against Biden. Behavior of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team was outrageous... destroying an unauthorized Server, knowingly using fabricated documents (Steele dossier), and trying to find an association of Trump and a Russian bank. The Democrats openly changed the political landscape and all of us are living with it. I don’t see the Republicans acting any differently, if given the opportunity...
What is discouraging is the constant battle between Republicans and Democrat citizens trying to show who is worse by ignoring their own flaws, lies, one-sided rhetoric with total disregard for democracy.
Bernie Sanders would had been a better candidate than Hillary or President Biden but the Democrats destroyed Bernie both in 2016 and 2020. Never forget the California Super Primaries...
Just saying because to lie by omissions is worse than misstatements and plain forgetfulness because it is purposeful, deceitful and treating the readership as blissfully ignorant peons.
I have now read a lot of your articles and I like your work and it would be refreshing to read an article that covers all aspects of our current political conundrum but I doubt that will ever come about.
Strong first outing Brian - I'm glad I subscribed. But as they say in Hollywood, I do have some notes. :-)
I think all of this is true as far as it goes. I'm also willing to entertain a media-criticism angle that it's important to not just ignore false narratives but to actively counter them, so again, no concerns or disagreements with what you proposed. But while I agree that "working the refs" in this circumstance is justified and maybe necessary, I can't shake the nagging suspicion that this is a bit like keeping the decks of your ship clean during a naval battle. Probably good and beneficial, but not the highest priority.
I used to believe that I lived in a country where a significant majority of the entire country would reject a man as manifestly unqualified to be president as Donald Trump. The fact that happened - and he was very nearly re-elected despite causing four years of nearly endless chaos and significantly mismanaging a once-in-a-century pandemic has utterly disabused me of the notion that any significant voting block really cares about whether or not an impeachment is justified. I wish they did! Biden's current popularity numbers make me very nervous for 2024 and I think we need a strong focus on figuring out how we can peel some folks off the other side and/or getting some non-voters off the sidelines. And I really don't think that working the refs - however justified - is going to do much for that.
Having said that- love your work and eager to read more of it!
Thank you for your comment! I guess what I'd say is that "working the refs" more generally should encompass broader strategic efforts to shape mainstream news narratives to make them more favorable to Biden. Making mainstream news more outwardly skeptical of impeachment is part of that, but there's many more storylines Democrats could do more to help shape.
I wonder if Biden and his team simply don't believe they have the political capital to take a risk like this right now. Maybe they're biding their time on other strategies that poll better instead of splitting focus on waging a minor war on the media that have a lot of levers to pull to punch back if they wanted and may be baiting Biden to do exactly some of that.
Thanks for writing! (I recognize you generally have way better judgememt on these matters than I do)
Thanks Matt! Obviously "throw caution to the wind at all times" would get Dems in trouble, but some risk taking is worth it, and honestly I see almost no risk to this idea.
If Biden were to start talking about this stuff, how would he avoid the media framing it as no different than Trump's protestations in 2019? I mean I get that he's be saying different stuff, but there is nothing he could possibly say that the press would not flatten into "Biden and Trump disagree about the propriety of the POTUS making death threats" or whatever.
He can't have perfect control, but he can embed the differences between his good-faith critique and Republican manipulation in his critique. I alluded to one way in the penultimate paragraph, but there are a lot of ways to skin that cat.
It's actually a mystery why the Democrats *don't* do something as reasonable as this. My operating assumption in recent years—as I watched Pelosi et al. avoiding hardball with anyone to their right—was that these Silent-Generation politicos had vivid memories of "liberals" being smeared by an ascendant Rush Limbaugh & co. But they have messaging consultants who could have told them that was an obsolete trauma response. An alternative interpretation from folks on the progressive edge is that it's all kabuki and kayfabe, that the Democrats are simply foils for a more conservative capitalist ruling class that's actually running the show. But the GOP has so many advantages baked in through gerrymandering, the Senate, the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, etc., that a supine Democratic leadership has become arguably *too* ridiculous. This also extends to the state level! I look at what the Republican legislature in North Carolina has been up to, and of course at the almost comically evil shit going down in Wisconsin, and have no idea why folks with the bully pulpits don't just make prime time speech after prime time speech about how completely f@#!ed things are. If people ignored them things certainly wouldn't be *worse*. And it's clear that the GOP isn't holding itself back out of regard for Democrats' good graces... .
Yes, this is your key point: the right-wing machine bleats on 24 hours a day on radio, TV, and YouTube. Democrats don't have the right-wing media apparatus, so if they want to get their message out through the mainstream media, they better come out swinging. Biden's milquetoast messaging is not going to work in a reelection campaign.
I want the Democratic Party to succeed, aspects of my life depend on it, and yet this Party has no idea how to get their message out effectively. And often they don't know what the message should be. I swear to god these people still think "it's the economy, stupid" is some sort of talisman. "The American people want us to work together on the economy" is a loser message to take to CNN.
"This is a distraction" is always a dumb, weak message, no matter who is saying it. Biden is going to be in deep trouble next year if his response to impeachment and Hunter is just DISTRACTION.
I also disagree with Biden and the Dems refusing to comment on Trump's trials. "It's up to the legal system" is only one part of the message. The other part is that Trump is deeply corrupt and dangerous. Everything they said right after January 6 can and should be said all over again.
I’ll never understand why the Biden admin (or any Dems really) seems constantly worried about how Republican media will portray them, when they’ll call him a corrupt Marxist dictator no matter what he says. I agree that he should tell it like it is. That’s what the people like! (It’s me, I’m the people). I guess they maybe want to avoid the impression of”both sides” yelling Sham Impeachment, but like you said, it’s not exactly hard to articulate the differences
A few complaints, sorry.
Brian is mixing together what Biden should do as opposed to what the DNC should be doing. There’s a plus with the politically insufficiently informed for the POTUS to be above the bullshit from the Republicans. Voters seem to tend to like it. And it seemed to work for Clinton and Obama.
And there’s a bigger problem than how Biden responds to the impeachment idiocy. That’s the need for and the DNC’s failure or refusal to have a “war room” with which to respond to all the Republican bullshit the mainstream media chooses to echo mindlessly and irresponsibly. (For one, query how many people would be alive or in significantly better health if TFG’s response to Covid was reported honestly instead of leaving the audiences to “suss” out the truth as Dean Baquet said.)
And related to that need, it has to be considered why the media repeat Republican propaganda with neither proper context or framing. Spoiler: it’s what they need to do to stay employed, maybe even make the big bucks from a book deal.
It’s complicated and the Democrats seem content with that status quo.
Would the MSM pay attention to a Democratic War Room?
Of course it would be reported, and in that awful both sides way. But the important things are that there would be a message and no matter how it’s reported would be out there.
Whatever problems a Dem war room would have, it absolutely cannot be worse than the DNC’s frequent silence in the face of bullshit.
This is my belief, and I've watched it happen over and over again. No strategy is foolproof to mainstream media stupidity, but mainstream media outlets won't even consider amplifying X unless X is contentious and impassioned. The GOP uses this as a skeleton key for everything from tan suits, to hoodies, to the tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch (wherein they exchanged ordinary pleasantries in front of many witnesses).
To be clear, I have no faith in the media handling any statement from a Dem war room let’s say competently, but I think having such a statement out there poorly or incompetently handled by the media is better than no statement at all. That is, allowing the bullshit to be promoted without any response from the Dems.
Should also add that by a war room, I mean one capable of statements with some strength, obviously.
Yes, generally speaking, it’s the GOP and supporting, enabling media on one side and nothing too vigorous from the Democrats to act as any sort of balance.
That said, maybe 24/7/365 coverage of Trump trials will do the same good as a war room, but still. You know, project a perception of strength and responsibility from the Dems.
I think you’re right, but one of Brian’s points is that no one--Biden OR the DNC--will remind our media superstars about their propensity to shrug off Trump’s latest tantrum. And more importantly, his previous ones.
Republicans brought up Chappaquiddick for 50 years. Trump in the past month admitted that his plan to “end the war in Ukraine” was to stop aiding Ukraine and give Putin whatever he wants. He also at least twice said “I am the president,” said he wants to imprison his enemies and said he’ll institute a universal 10 percent tariff, proving that he still has no idea whatsoever how tariffs work. And our media stars have become completely bored with all of that. It’s worth pointing out.
The idea is to get a message to the voters, not to get any pundits on board.
A statement would (🤞🏻) be reported and such audience there is would hear it. Which, again, is better than no massage at all.
Too: given the literally dying elderly audiences, dunno that there’s much of an audience for getting insight from pundits.
Again, all I hope for is a coherent response from the party to GOP BS. You know, not letting the lies go without a proper response.
Yeah, I just mean when someone asks a Democrat on TV about Trump, a parenthetical about “by the way this is a guy who thinks he’s 6’3” and 215 and told Tucker Carlson last month ‘I am the president’ twice and that Biden will start World War 2” would go a long way.
No, the idea is to avoid that crap with formal statements from the party, not some politician at hand. At worse, there’d be an official party statement.
An official party statement is at the mercy of reporters, pundits and editors of possibly being thrown away. In other words, it will be thrown away. It’s worth doing, sure, but talking live is critical.
No. A statement is a statement and better than some posturing from a politician.
How it’s handled or not by the press is a lesser concern than the party letting all this crap to be reported without making any reasonable effort to respond properly.
Biden seems to have a pretty talented communications team, judging by the ads they swiftly turn out that exploit stupid GOP talking points. Why are they not doing this already?
I think they're good but they've been reluctant to shift into campaign mode this early. We all dread 14 months of election stuff, but people already believe, because the media says so, that Hunter does bribery and so does Biden and hey, now Menendez, blah blah blah. Biden can't wait until February to come out with a coherent message on it
Would it be too much to ask our media to observe that government shutdown and dysfunction do actually benefit one group: the donor class. Remember the yahoos were put into power by groups who would like nothing more than for America to decide that all politics are a sham. Chaos is a strategy.
Both Biden and Harris speak in generalities and are not compelling. They need to find spokes people who are savage funny and who will shame the media. The press secretary is an utter failure bring Jen Psaki back put the Democratic governors out there, compensate for the weakness of Biden and Harris, as speakers by using others like the Obamas, just do it!
It is a natural reaction to being accused of something to try to demonstrate one's innocence. Republicans have been crying for decades about how the media is unfair to them and the media seems to have responded by taking a "just the facts" approach so they can't be accused of bias. That leads to the "Republicans say..." problem where Republicans say the earth is flat and Dems say it isn't and both sides appear to have a reasonable dispute over an uncertain question.
Dems seem to think voters/citizens will understand that all of this is nuts, i.e. they go low, we go high. But that doesn't work. People look to the media for some kind of guidance about what is a big deal, what is bizarre, and what is flat out dangerous. They assume we still live in a world where a politician misspelling "potato" is career defining. Now politicians threaten to murder their opponents and suspend the fourth estate in writing and all that gets covered is the latest poll and whether it shows voter concern about indictments.
The article is spot on that Dems have to force the issue. Every time Peter Doocy asks a question at a press conference he should be asked if he's equally concerned about the latest Trump nightmare tweet and whether his network will cover the same. How is a presidential candidate's threats to upend democracy and destroy his political opponents not the top story every night? Make the media defend itself in the same way Republicans make them defend themselves. Only one side has the Jewish space laser nutjob, the alleged child trafficker, the molestation cover up guy, the theater diddler, etc, etc, etc. This is not a debate between two equally polarized sides as it is being consistently framed. Assuming it will get reported differently unless they force the issue is insane. It never happens. How about "When they go low, we point it out and expect accountability for that nonsense?"
Both Democrats and Republicans are a**wholes, they worship the party not the people. Both see the end game as winning the Oval Office with “whatever it takes” approach. The Democrats did ratchet up the price by going after Trump his entire presidency, there is no argument for that statement.
Let me repeat... I dislike Republicans and Democrats, so I am in no-mans land with no friends.
There may be a revenge factor in pursuing an impeachment against Biden. Behavior of Hillary Clinton’s campaign team was outrageous... destroying an unauthorized Server, knowingly using fabricated documents (Steele dossier), and trying to find an association of Trump and a Russian bank. The Democrats openly changed the political landscape and all of us are living with it. I don’t see the Republicans acting any differently, if given the opportunity...
What is discouraging is the constant battle between Republicans and Democrat citizens trying to show who is worse by ignoring their own flaws, lies, one-sided rhetoric with total disregard for democracy.
Bernie Sanders would had been a better candidate than Hillary or President Biden but the Democrats destroyed Bernie both in 2016 and 2020. Never forget the California Super Primaries...
Just saying because to lie by omissions is worse than misstatements and plain forgetfulness because it is purposeful, deceitful and treating the readership as blissfully ignorant peons.
I have now read a lot of your articles and I like your work and it would be refreshing to read an article that covers all aspects of our current political conundrum but I doubt that will ever come about.
Just a happy birthday wish from a fellow September 25er. Everything is terrible but what the heck.
Strong first outing Brian - I'm glad I subscribed. But as they say in Hollywood, I do have some notes. :-)
I think all of this is true as far as it goes. I'm also willing to entertain a media-criticism angle that it's important to not just ignore false narratives but to actively counter them, so again, no concerns or disagreements with what you proposed. But while I agree that "working the refs" in this circumstance is justified and maybe necessary, I can't shake the nagging suspicion that this is a bit like keeping the decks of your ship clean during a naval battle. Probably good and beneficial, but not the highest priority.
I used to believe that I lived in a country where a significant majority of the entire country would reject a man as manifestly unqualified to be president as Donald Trump. The fact that happened - and he was very nearly re-elected despite causing four years of nearly endless chaos and significantly mismanaging a once-in-a-century pandemic has utterly disabused me of the notion that any significant voting block really cares about whether or not an impeachment is justified. I wish they did! Biden's current popularity numbers make me very nervous for 2024 and I think we need a strong focus on figuring out how we can peel some folks off the other side and/or getting some non-voters off the sidelines. And I really don't think that working the refs - however justified - is going to do much for that.
Having said that- love your work and eager to read more of it!
Thank you for your comment! I guess what I'd say is that "working the refs" more generally should encompass broader strategic efforts to shape mainstream news narratives to make them more favorable to Biden. Making mainstream news more outwardly skeptical of impeachment is part of that, but there's many more storylines Democrats could do more to help shape.
I wonder if Biden and his team simply don't believe they have the political capital to take a risk like this right now. Maybe they're biding their time on other strategies that poll better instead of splitting focus on waging a minor war on the media that have a lot of levers to pull to punch back if they wanted and may be baiting Biden to do exactly some of that.
Thanks for writing! (I recognize you generally have way better judgememt on these matters than I do)
Thanks Matt! Obviously "throw caution to the wind at all times" would get Dems in trouble, but some risk taking is worth it, and honestly I see almost no risk to this idea.
But that would upset the comity apple cart! We can’t have that!
If Biden were to start talking about this stuff, how would he avoid the media framing it as no different than Trump's protestations in 2019? I mean I get that he's be saying different stuff, but there is nothing he could possibly say that the press would not flatten into "Biden and Trump disagree about the propriety of the POTUS making death threats" or whatever.
He can't have perfect control, but he can embed the differences between his good-faith critique and Republican manipulation in his critique. I alluded to one way in the penultimate paragraph, but there are a lot of ways to skin that cat.