Just because most mainstream news consumers are already Biden voters, doesn't mean big problems with mainstream news coverage don't seep into the larger culture.
Brian, congratulations. You are consistently the most interesting analyst of our present dilemma that I have found. Once again, I’m going to disseminate this column as widely as I can and I urge everybody who agrees with me to do the same it’s such an important argument, it’s why his communication staff is letting him down badly starting with his abysmal press secretary, but not stopping there. They should hire you.
"This is why I don’t take much solace in data showing mainstream news consumers are Biden’s best cohort, broken down by media-consumption habits, or in the corollary idea, quickly becoming fashionable on the left and in liberal politics, that Democrats are wasting their time working mainstream refs and should ply that effort into reaching people (or competing for eyeballs) on non-traditional platforms."
Okay, so this represents your counter-argument to the arguments of the likes of a diverse cohort including Jeet Heer, Jon Favreau (not from Marvel), and Dan Pfeiffer.
Got it.
A pithy expression of your argument might be that: "mainstream media, not only right-wing media, provides the seed corn for nearly all social media discourse"
Now, once again, the Jeet Heer argument about working on tailored communications and targeted communications for low-information voters *is not wrong*.
Political pitches need to be made with the assumption in mind that persuadable voters, casual, lower turn-out/frequency voters, will generally be less informed voters, less civics and government mechanics aware, less macroeconomically aware (although possibly microeconomically aware about their employer and industry) and less aware of Party-policy correlations.
Disengaged or less engaged voters and voters who call themselves independent have an instinctive desire to not identify a priori with either Party establishment, whatever their personal ideologies or policy views are. I suspect that for the majority of them, they are not highly informed, just enough to know there are things about one or more major Parties, or the political process, they don't like, and want to stand apart from. While for a cross-section of self-declared independents, they may have relatively high policy and political awareness and elaborated viewpoints, but they are an eclectic enough mix they feel unwelcome in both parties, or, alternatively, they are strongly left or right but feel like the party coded that way in America, Democrats or Republics, is *too* compromising, and not ideological *enough* and too traitorous/soft to trust.
Bringing attention back to the people with lower engagement, less defined ideological convictions, and generally lower information - which I suspect tend to flock together:
1) Unfortunately, bad behavior and actions by one party, will probably just be *assumed automatically* to be matched by *equal and opposite* bad behavior by the opposing party, whether evidence is present for it, or not. Why? The human mind likes symmetry, and it is a nice and easy assumption to fill in without requiring any research or fact-checking. A person only has an incentive to score-keep and determine one party is nice guys and the other is douches if they have already emotionally committed to a Party and want to hunt for confirming evidence to provide their side is the "good guys" and the others are evil or wicked (or stupid or naive), an uncommitted person won't care to look or referee between the parties and exhaustively investigate, "who's been more of the jerk lately?" in anything like judicial or professorial detail.
2) Also, written and spoken language designed for their consumption, persuasion, and retention needs to be massively simplified and stripped of specialized jargon. It really need to be dumbed down to elementary school level, we are talking third-grade reading level. That is actually what a frighteningly high share of American high school graduates can perform at or are willing to perform at, at least without their job or personal finances or legal future on the line.
How to deal with all this:
a) There needs to be a Woke to English dictionary, to translate group special pleading into more universal kindergarten teacher-y values.
b) I know it is a problem with fragmented media, and I know it is a problem with our current President, and apparently (by omission) his Vice-President, but the progressive political side needs to revive the "fireside chat." As Matt Yglesias said, Biden is better at performing the job of President than the job of "playing the President on TV", which Clinton and Obama were better at, although one or both of them might not have been as effective at being President as legislator, President as Party leader or President as government investment manager or regulator-in-chief.
c) And aside from the longer form fireside chat, the President, Vice-President and other senior Democratic leaders in Congress should do shorter, soundbite sized media appearances and statements, injecting assertions, arguments, and key questions into the discourse to attract. Maybe these would start to get ignored if used too often, but it would be novel at first, and gather attention that way. Depending on the rhetorical punch or salience of the issue, POTUS, VPOTUS or whomever could say it, and literally "drop the mike" afterwards. [well again, Joe shouldn't do that, because people could construe it as unintentional, rather than staged bravado for rhetorical effect]
c) Paid political media needs to stop being so stodgy and conventional, and start to display maybe just like 10 or 15% of the innovativeness and creativeness of commercial advertising. Hell, don't be that innovative, be fairly derivative of commercial advertising techniques and storytelling. Use quick vignettes or dialogues with unknown everyman/everywoman actors to bring up issue terrain favorable for the Democratic side in a real-sounding way [about things like contraception and abortion policies, insulin price control and who is for and against, relief from non-compete agreements or worker rights issues student loan forgiveness delivery--microtargeted, and who was against it, use scorecards on Congressional candidates (adversary incumbents) fiscal records of votes that "left federal money on the table" that could have helped constituents in the state or district, have a stack of big bills and a table in a dark room right in the ad for chrissake. Have a map of state (like a red state) that has lights representing rural hospitals or people in communities getting federally funded services, and then showing the incumbent Congress person's picture who voted against the funding federally or the Governor who refused the federal aid,and juxtapose it to a graphic of the lights going out as hospitals closed or services were cut.
Hell, be willing to do stuff that is showy and feels undignified and not *serious* but pulls in eyeballs and ears. Use animated characters as part of the dialogue even. What the hell.
Look, these ideas I've brainstomed may just ultimately be things that would entertain or engage an audience of one, me, in which case they're really of no help. But my point is from my limited sampling of paid political advertising, there's little attempt to keep raising the bar for entertaining, engaging and provoking the audience, and pretty much none to create Superbowl quality ads.
Well said. Maybe Scarborough’s hostile encounter, in contrast to Sanders’s, suffered fate of “Dog bites man” in contrast to “Dog bites man.” But if you’re huddled in the woods surrounded by a pack of dogs that's about to get the upper hand, it’s newsworthy when one of you is attacked. And if the man who let the dogs out is in your midst and ahead in the polls, it’s the headline story, especially since hardly any of you are biting back.
It's tempting to chalk the double standard up to the bigotry of soft expectations and leave it there. But to me it smacks of what Tim Snyder called obedience in advance. But I do believe President Biden is onto the problem. He might well have prefaced his closing remarks at Pointe du Hoc with “Media, if you’re listening…,” but the shoe fits:
"As we gather here today, it’s not just to honor those who showed such remarkable bravery that day June 6, 1944. It’s to listen to the echo of their voices. To hear them. Because they are summoning us. They’re asking us what will we do. They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs. They’re asking us to stay true to what America stands for. They’re not asking for us to risk our lives. They are asking us to care for others in our country more than ourselves. They’re not asking us to do their job. They’re asking us to do our job. To protect freedom in our time. To defend democracy. To stand up to aggression abroad and at home. To be part of something bigger than ourselves. "
Surely this message hit home in parts of the fourth estate. But the Biden campaign needs to sharpen that focus, put it on the agenda, and do so in a way that not only anticipates, but vitiates, the charge that it’s flouting first amendment principles by telling the press what its job is. A tough challenge perhaps, but small when compared to scaling those cliffs.
Saw your debate on YouTube show Breaking (Counter) Points. I think u did well even tho YouTube commenters didn’t like u :( I think you should go on these kind of shows more. Exactly the kind of disaffected audience you want to speak to. It’s a weird audience: extremely anti-system, anti-Israel, but pro-social welfare. Going on these shows & hughlighting Biden labor victories, not Trump persecutions, would be even better.
Additionally, I think it highlighted Yglesias’ point about left-liberals. Ryan Grim, the leftist there, wasn’t willing to back you up on anti-Trumpism by agreeing that Obama should be prosecuted for drone strikes, giving heft to MAGA guys arguments. It’s a toxic dynamic.
The debate rlly did crystallize Yglesias’s view: It’s just v hard to form anti-Trump coalition. At the end of the episode, Ryan says that the reason Dems didn’t persecute Trump for corruption charges on his hotel dealings, is bc it’s even tho it’s a difference in degree w Trump, it’s not a difference in kind since Dems engage in this kind of corruption all the time.
If you watch BP videos, it’s leftists mocking Biden pretending to hold democratic law legitimacy, while undermining international law legitimacy by sanctioning ICC. The cynicism is too deep.
Brian, congratulations. You are consistently the most interesting analyst of our present dilemma that I have found. Once again, I’m going to disseminate this column as widely as I can and I urge everybody who agrees with me to do the same it’s such an important argument, it’s why his communication staff is letting him down badly starting with his abysmal press secretary, but not stopping there. They should hire you.
🙌
"This is why I don’t take much solace in data showing mainstream news consumers are Biden’s best cohort, broken down by media-consumption habits, or in the corollary idea, quickly becoming fashionable on the left and in liberal politics, that Democrats are wasting their time working mainstream refs and should ply that effort into reaching people (or competing for eyeballs) on non-traditional platforms."
Okay, so this represents your counter-argument to the arguments of the likes of a diverse cohort including Jeet Heer, Jon Favreau (not from Marvel), and Dan Pfeiffer.
Got it.
A pithy expression of your argument might be that: "mainstream media, not only right-wing media, provides the seed corn for nearly all social media discourse"
Now, once again, the Jeet Heer argument about working on tailored communications and targeted communications for low-information voters *is not wrong*.
Political pitches need to be made with the assumption in mind that persuadable voters, casual, lower turn-out/frequency voters, will generally be less informed voters, less civics and government mechanics aware, less macroeconomically aware (although possibly microeconomically aware about their employer and industry) and less aware of Party-policy correlations.
Disengaged or less engaged voters and voters who call themselves independent have an instinctive desire to not identify a priori with either Party establishment, whatever their personal ideologies or policy views are. I suspect that for the majority of them, they are not highly informed, just enough to know there are things about one or more major Parties, or the political process, they don't like, and want to stand apart from. While for a cross-section of self-declared independents, they may have relatively high policy and political awareness and elaborated viewpoints, but they are an eclectic enough mix they feel unwelcome in both parties, or, alternatively, they are strongly left or right but feel like the party coded that way in America, Democrats or Republics, is *too* compromising, and not ideological *enough* and too traitorous/soft to trust.
Bringing attention back to the people with lower engagement, less defined ideological convictions, and generally lower information - which I suspect tend to flock together:
1) Unfortunately, bad behavior and actions by one party, will probably just be *assumed automatically* to be matched by *equal and opposite* bad behavior by the opposing party, whether evidence is present for it, or not. Why? The human mind likes symmetry, and it is a nice and easy assumption to fill in without requiring any research or fact-checking. A person only has an incentive to score-keep and determine one party is nice guys and the other is douches if they have already emotionally committed to a Party and want to hunt for confirming evidence to provide their side is the "good guys" and the others are evil or wicked (or stupid or naive), an uncommitted person won't care to look or referee between the parties and exhaustively investigate, "who's been more of the jerk lately?" in anything like judicial or professorial detail.
2) Also, written and spoken language designed for their consumption, persuasion, and retention needs to be massively simplified and stripped of specialized jargon. It really need to be dumbed down to elementary school level, we are talking third-grade reading level. That is actually what a frighteningly high share of American high school graduates can perform at or are willing to perform at, at least without their job or personal finances or legal future on the line.
How to deal with all this:
a) There needs to be a Woke to English dictionary, to translate group special pleading into more universal kindergarten teacher-y values.
b) I know it is a problem with fragmented media, and I know it is a problem with our current President, and apparently (by omission) his Vice-President, but the progressive political side needs to revive the "fireside chat." As Matt Yglesias said, Biden is better at performing the job of President than the job of "playing the President on TV", which Clinton and Obama were better at, although one or both of them might not have been as effective at being President as legislator, President as Party leader or President as government investment manager or regulator-in-chief.
c) And aside from the longer form fireside chat, the President, Vice-President and other senior Democratic leaders in Congress should do shorter, soundbite sized media appearances and statements, injecting assertions, arguments, and key questions into the discourse to attract. Maybe these would start to get ignored if used too often, but it would be novel at first, and gather attention that way. Depending on the rhetorical punch or salience of the issue, POTUS, VPOTUS or whomever could say it, and literally "drop the mike" afterwards. [well again, Joe shouldn't do that, because people could construe it as unintentional, rather than staged bravado for rhetorical effect]
c) Paid political media needs to stop being so stodgy and conventional, and start to display maybe just like 10 or 15% of the innovativeness and creativeness of commercial advertising. Hell, don't be that innovative, be fairly derivative of commercial advertising techniques and storytelling. Use quick vignettes or dialogues with unknown everyman/everywoman actors to bring up issue terrain favorable for the Democratic side in a real-sounding way [about things like contraception and abortion policies, insulin price control and who is for and against, relief from non-compete agreements or worker rights issues student loan forgiveness delivery--microtargeted, and who was against it, use scorecards on Congressional candidates (adversary incumbents) fiscal records of votes that "left federal money on the table" that could have helped constituents in the state or district, have a stack of big bills and a table in a dark room right in the ad for chrissake. Have a map of state (like a red state) that has lights representing rural hospitals or people in communities getting federally funded services, and then showing the incumbent Congress person's picture who voted against the funding federally or the Governor who refused the federal aid,and juxtapose it to a graphic of the lights going out as hospitals closed or services were cut.
Hell, be willing to do stuff that is showy and feels undignified and not *serious* but pulls in eyeballs and ears. Use animated characters as part of the dialogue even. What the hell.
Look, these ideas I've brainstomed may just ultimately be things that would entertain or engage an audience of one, me, in which case they're really of no help. But my point is from my limited sampling of paid political advertising, there's little attempt to keep raising the bar for entertaining, engaging and provoking the audience, and pretty much none to create Superbowl quality ads.
Well said. Maybe Scarborough’s hostile encounter, in contrast to Sanders’s, suffered fate of “Dog bites man” in contrast to “Dog bites man.” But if you’re huddled in the woods surrounded by a pack of dogs that's about to get the upper hand, it’s newsworthy when one of you is attacked. And if the man who let the dogs out is in your midst and ahead in the polls, it’s the headline story, especially since hardly any of you are biting back.
It's tempting to chalk the double standard up to the bigotry of soft expectations and leave it there. But to me it smacks of what Tim Snyder called obedience in advance. But I do believe President Biden is onto the problem. He might well have prefaced his closing remarks at Pointe du Hoc with “Media, if you’re listening…,” but the shoe fits:
"As we gather here today, it’s not just to honor those who showed such remarkable bravery that day June 6, 1944. It’s to listen to the echo of their voices. To hear them. Because they are summoning us. They’re asking us what will we do. They’re not asking us to scale these cliffs. They’re asking us to stay true to what America stands for. They’re not asking for us to risk our lives. They are asking us to care for others in our country more than ourselves. They’re not asking us to do their job. They’re asking us to do our job. To protect freedom in our time. To defend democracy. To stand up to aggression abroad and at home. To be part of something bigger than ourselves. "
Surely this message hit home in parts of the fourth estate. But the Biden campaign needs to sharpen that focus, put it on the agenda, and do so in a way that not only anticipates, but vitiates, the charge that it’s flouting first amendment principles by telling the press what its job is. A tough challenge perhaps, but small when compared to scaling those cliffs.
Saw your debate on YouTube show Breaking (Counter) Points. I think u did well even tho YouTube commenters didn’t like u :( I think you should go on these kind of shows more. Exactly the kind of disaffected audience you want to speak to. It’s a weird audience: extremely anti-system, anti-Israel, but pro-social welfare. Going on these shows & hughlighting Biden labor victories, not Trump persecutions, would be even better.
Additionally, I think it highlighted Yglesias’ point about left-liberals. Ryan Grim, the leftist there, wasn’t willing to back you up on anti-Trumpism by agreeing that Obama should be prosecuted for drone strikes, giving heft to MAGA guys arguments. It’s a toxic dynamic.
The debate rlly did crystallize Yglesias’s view: It’s just v hard to form anti-Trump coalition. At the end of the episode, Ryan says that the reason Dems didn’t persecute Trump for corruption charges on his hotel dealings, is bc it’s even tho it’s a difference in degree w Trump, it’s not a difference in kind since Dems engage in this kind of corruption all the time.
If you watch BP videos, it’s leftists mocking Biden pretending to hold democratic law legitimacy, while undermining international law legitimacy by sanctioning ICC. The cynicism is too deep.