Democrats need to have at least one person who can speak to economic issues to a mass audience at all times.
Biden could never do that, and we didn't have a Treasury Secretary who could do that. As good government Democrats, we always pick our Treasury Secretary from potential Nobel Prize winners and never ever for communication skills. What if Pete Buttigieg had been talking about economic policy instead of being charged with faffing about with trains?
(Elizabeth Warren could do this but this is not the path she has chosen, which I say without criticism. She is fighting to expand the social welfare safety net, god bless her, and she can't do that and also say, "you know, things are pretty good right now.")
Totally agree with you, Michael. Working class media consumption, if it's right wing and against their interest, must be responded to right away - and not just in campaign season.
If it hadn't been for that fucking piece of shit Manchin, who blocked every good thing Biden wanted to enact, we wouldn't be here. Biden had no problem speaking economic issues. Hd did, however, fail at showmanship: there should have been a Presidential Appearance at every infrastructure groundbreaking financed by the Inflation Reduction Act, ditto for every chips factor started under the Chips and Science Act, and none of the Republican congress critters who voted against both should have been invited to any of those. The thing didn't speak for itself and never does. People needed to be TOLD who was helping them.
In retrospect especially, Biden’s inherent limitations as a communicator and his complete failure to use his presidency to try to craft a true narrative about the economy for mass consumption look like fatal flaws.
Agree, she did probably as well as she could have with the hand she was dealt. Pretty amazing that we have the result we do not only because of the self-evident delusions of Trump voters, but also because of the delusions of the Dem gerontocracy, who appear to literally have been living in a media environment that has not existed for years, maybe decades.
We definitely need better storytelling/advance more storytellers. I love Pete and he is great at this; not sure if he comes across as too wonky/pedantic for the voter group Dems need to attract (not to mention the homophobia barriers.)
He's the person who came to mind. As a practical matter I can't think of any other member of the Biden cabinet who has been an effective public communicator on any topic. I couldn't tell you who most of them are.
You are concluding that the losses were all due to lack of good messaging to working class voters. You don't mention racism, fear of putting a woman in charge, vilifying LGBTQ people, white nationalism, white Christian nationalism.
Those were all definitely factors, but they mean we must ask: why have Democratic and left wing strategies for pushing back on those things been so ineffective? And what would a more persuasive anti-bigotry strategy look like? That too is a messaging question.
Either way, plenty of people who previously voted for Obama and Clinton either sat this one out, or went to Trump. We also saw the entire country swing red, with cities being the biggest shifters in the last four years (a shift of +9 for Trump!).
Are we really going to throw up our hands and accuse 75 million people of being sexists and racists, or are we going to do the actual work of looking inward to our own party and addressing where our own messaging has failed? And I might posit that a continued drumbeat of "look how awful these white people are" is part of that failed messaging.
Yes! Thank you for saying this. The Dems try to believe the best of people (which is a good thing!) but perhaps are not fully reckoning with the basic racism and misogyny of an awful lot of white people, particularly in the working class.
I think a big part of the problem you describe in mostly 2 (but also partly 3 and 4) is that uninformed voters *intentionally insulate* themselves from literally any political or informative media channel.
These are the people who say things like “I don’t do politics, everyone’s always so angry, and it’s all so complicated”. They don’t understand all the complexities because they refuse to educate themselves; they refuse to educate themselves because they’ve been checked out of their educational experience since the first time they struggled with math and spelling in elementary school. They’ve ignored politics since the first time some smug smart kid made them feel dumb about politics in history or social studies class later in middle or high school.
If they still vote, they vote on literal vibes. And on social proof. They themselves might studiously avoid Fox News or any of the right wing podcasters, but if the one supremely confident Dunning-Kruger Award candidate at their job or watering hole can come across as convincing about who to blame for this that and the other thing, that’s the social proof they get anchored with.
This is why it’s so tiresome whenever some Boomer says “we need more civics education”. It’s not the civics, people have always been this dumb. It’s just that the evolution of media changed which direction they were getting their social proof from.
The strongest counterargument to your thesis is that we could end up wasting billions on standing up all these alternative channels, and not see much of an effect. While it’s still worth doing, it can’t be the main thrust of our comeback campaign.
Rather, I think at this point the only social proof that will quickly break through is to simply radically remake our party. Compete in every single locality, even if we lose. Everyone who is currently in charge of the consultancies, the nonprofits, the party committees, the senior leadership, and The Groups, should step down, and their successors should sign on to a unified national campaign for abundance and a big tent. No more ostracizing people whose ideology is impure — except those holdouts who would continue doing the ostracizing. The point is to physically be there and show people that we are not evil. We can't just keep doing this thing where we descend on swing states every two years with big media blitzes. We need professional organizations on the ground who actually live there and do things.
I’ll close out with a thought experiment for you: Let’s say Trump abjures 22A and runs in 2028. And let’s say that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was magically the Dem nominee. Do you think he would go on Rogan? Do you think he would outperform Trump’s own Rogan appearance? Do you think he would win back the Rogan voters? Would the lefties and shouters grumble but still ultimately vote for him while he won over those Rogan voters?
I’m not saying he SHOULD be the nominee. But I think the answer to all those questions is “yes, duh”. And I think that points to the qualities we should be looking for in a new party leadership to break through to these intentionally-self-uninformed voters.
I remember when The Rock was being talked about as somebody the Dems might recruit (was that 2016?) and seeing some progressives grumble about his social views, and thinking, for f***'s sake, maybe he's not perfect, but you should at least want to keep him in the coalition, not push him to the other side.
We need a 50 state campaign that starts today. Every town in America - or at least every county - has a Democratic Party apparatus of some sort. We are obviously capable of organizing volunteers. So, we need to knock on every door in our districts between now and 2026 and figure out what people are actually thinking about shit. I’ve started working on a questionnaire type thing based on what I hear from my neighbors here in the exurbs. Polls reach no one, obviously, so the only way to gather info is to physically go out and do it. I am looking forward to my local Democratic Party meeting on Monday so I can raise some hell. Ffs, even on Election Day, the GOP had a huge table, TRUMP sign, snacks, etc. The Dems apparently couldn’t be bothered aside from the guy who was trying to unseat our Republican state house rep. The party apparatus is failing. Time for new blood.
I am in a very blue state and while we sent our entire Democratic House team back to DC this year, 2 of the 5 races here were still a slog (early on, they crushed at the end).
We need to start running candidates in EVERY RACE in this country and stop conceding in advance by not even putting up a candidate. This will also help us get the word out about what we stand for. The opportunity loss by conceding these races in advance has been huge.
And we need to fire the consultants. Focus tested messaging sucks and tbh, I feel that’s what cost us. Our turnout absolutely sucked.
I think Brian is profoundly correct. What liberals and Dems have always thought is that *the truth,* properly reported, would be enough to show voters where their interests lie. If it ever worked before, it doesn't work now. All those complaints about the WaPo and NY Times sanewashing Trump were merited, but in the end irrelevant, because the people who elected Trump don't read the Post or the Times. They probably don't read anything. They get their news and views from Fox News and right-wing radio--media for whom "the truth" is an amusing nicety, and who focus, instead, on emotion.
When we say "the left needs its Fox News and Joe Rogans," it's true, but what we must mean by that is not, "we need a less brainy MSNBC" or "we need Air America back." (And I loved Air America.) We must mean, "We need tv and radio media that seek, not to *inform,* but to enflame--to discuss the world and politics in terms of enemies, threats, and outrages. There will be no shortage of those in the next four years (and beyond).
When, in his 1936 address at Madison Square Garden, FDR said, of "the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," that they "are unanimous in their hate for me " he added "— and I welcome their hatred." It is impossible to imagine any Democratic candidate for president from the past 50 years saying such a thing. Its *emotional* truth is shocking to read today. But politics, especially in a splintered media environment in which most of the electorate doesn't read, is less and less about ideas and more and more about feelings. It's great that the Dems happen to have truth, science, economics, and history on their side. But it isn't enough.
Good piece, Brian. It’s always been true that politics are conducted in a reality constructed by the media of the day, but we seem to be in an era in which material conditions matter exponentially less than media interpretations of those material conditions. While it seems likely to me that when Republicans finally succeed in destroying social security, for example, they will for the most part be held responsible, I don’t think we can assume that this will definitely be the case any longer. The narrative needs to be established now, and the only way you do that is through a receptive media environment. Rogan and Fox News cannot be trusted to inform their audiences that Republicans are to blame.
Agreed - Day after election I wrote: After canvassing and talking with folks outside of my own bubble my thoughts are (IMHO, YMMV): The racists gonna racist; sexists gonna sexist. At least in what was expressed to me it wasn't even the anti-Trans fear-mongering. The SWING vote Trump losing popular vote to Clinton and Biden but winning it against Harris) was mostly due to false media narrative on economy. It would have been nice if non-Fox mainstream media had gone with honest factual reporting of who and what Trump and Repuglicans actually are day-in-day-out instead predigested even-hand/ both-sadism and sane-washing. And also if there was truthful reporting, hammering on the actual economic improvement since 2022, every day for past 2 years. Over past 3 years actual jobs way up, actual crime way down; over past 2 years actual inflation down... talking to folks in small towns PA... SWING voters (my canvassing lists were folks who have voted Dem at least at some point in recent past; but mostly infrequent, intermittent, lower-information voters) thought the opposite and blamed Dems. At least in my conversations, LGBT did not come up. Immigration contextualized with jobs. On the single issue by single issue we win... Abortion protections won majority votes (remember Florida was actually 57% for protection), paid leave won. Same swing voters who voted for those, even down-ballot for House, then voted Trump on false narrative mostly on economy. Dems, especially the left-progressive wing, objectively better on economy in general. Dems getting blamed unilaterally for NAFTA is another example of media supporting false narrative. And the success of the immigrant fearmongering in expanding the xenophobic reaction is also tied to crap media narrative on actual economy, and silencing of progressive Dems better solutions."
"What I think would make a lot of these elites go bug-eyed would be to spend a day shadowing working-class or rural midwesterners purely to understand the kind of information they absorb, intentionally and passively, from their earliest moments to when they shut off their televisions, phones, or computers at night. I believe they’d be disturbed. I believe they’d be so alarmed that they’d convene the most powerful people in the party and declare an emergency."
Dead on perfect observation. They don't know what's going on here in South East Ohio. They've completely abandoned this state and it's getting even weirder than you can imagine.
Importantly, one reason you need to fight and win the information space is because sometimes the thing that voters really really want (eg grocery prices at 2019 levels) can not be delivered under any possible scenario and you have to instead convince them that you are doing the best that can possibly be done to address their concerns. That requires them to both trust you and understand that the other party is trying to sell them worthless magic beans.
I blew a local right-winger's mind yesterday by telling him that I thought his side had a definite advantage in the political communications war. Predictable braying about "LIBERALMEDIANEWYORKTIMES" followed. So I really appreciated this post.
Part of me worries that it's going to take another Iraq war/Great Recession style disaster to break through the noise, and I also worry about elevating grifters when we go in search of working class friendly media voices to elevate--like, for instance, that Richard Ojeda guy who became a darling on the left for a brief time during Trump 1.
But the diagnosis here is close to inarguable, in my mind.
I would add that the problem extends well beyond the working class. I've interacted twice in the last two weeks with wealthy, well-educated professionals who watch OANN.
One important thing neoliberal Democrats still don’t understand is that weak unions equals a weak Democrat party. The GOP clearly understood this. That is why with former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker leading the charge they systematically went about weakening unions starting with the public employee unions. They moved on from Wisconsin to Michigan and Florida and Iowa and other states. Good luck building worker cohesion and solidarity without a labor union. All these years later I’m still amazed by how many democrats don’t see this. I guarantee you the Heritage Foundation does!
And the current union leadership is doing a terrible job educating their membership. The Teamsters declined to endorse, because, they said, so many of their members liked Trump. Well did the leadership bother to explain to the members that Biden had been substantively the most pro-union president in a generation or two, saved their pensions, and passed a law to make it WAY easier for them to expand their organization? Or that Trump was in bed with anti-union oligarchs who want to cram down their wages and find ways to raid their pensions, and kill Social Security and Medicare for all working people?
"...willing to tell their peers, “fuck these lying dweebs who think you’re stupid…”"
Right now, Trump voters think Dems think they are stupid. They're right, because those voters support an obvious liar, grifter con-man who hasn't got a clue about how to "make America great again." Truth is, Republicans KNOW their voters are stupid, which is what they are counting on.
Dems don't need to change their policies. They just need to do a much better job of communicating -and stop using the complicated phrasing and jargon. Biden didn't take enough credit for the infrastructure stuff he passed - or the jobs he created. He didn't say, "we inherited a mess from Trump and it is going to take a few years to get back on track."
Sigh. What happened to the millions of Biden votes that Harris DIDN'T get?
academic who is a part of a number of groups studying the right and media/network theories and platforms and....yea. this i would say has been our #1 topic of conversation for the last half decade give or take. huge issue. and i think the Dems can compete in some ways but almost none of that competition involves reversion to old liberal media norms and institutions.
I think you're avoiding dealing with the thing most people said was driving them to Trump: inflation. I know the rest of the economy is good, I know inflation has cooled. But people saw prices go up and not go back down, and they and wanted to punish the person they held responsible. I don't see a flaw in that logic (IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW INFLATION WORKS), and don't think it's constructive to just ignore it when looking at why a working class coalition swung to Trump.
Prcies DO NOT GO DOWN ever. Deflation is the worst possible thing for the economy imaginable. If you think Brian is wrong here put your cards on the table and explain what policies exactly could even have been enacted to reduce the price of groceries and satisfy people.
You and I both know that policy can't stop inflation, and prices won't go down. That doesn't mean people didn't vote on the opposite idea. When huge numbers of people are saying "I voted for X reason," I think ignoring X is a mistake. And saying that people are factually wrong about their own reasons for voting is questionable at best, deeply condescending at worst.
As to what could have "satisfied" people: maybe nothing, maybe a massive and intense communications strategy to address the issue head-on. Biden mostly ignored it, Harris skirted around it, and Trump half-ran on it. Maybe radical economic reforms (no I don't mean green energy incentives that improve things over time, I mean "I'm going put a minimum wage vote through Congress every damn month" or "I'm going to tax the hell out of billionaires and send the money to you" type stuff) would have helped. It's an intellectual argument now.
The core of it is: people felt angry about prices, and they voted based on that. Rational or irrational, it's what happened. Any attempt to win back working class voters should take that into account.
The “massive and intense communications strategy” is the EXACT thing Brian is asking for here!!
When you concede that there are not available solutions to produce an outcome that would satisfy voters I dont know what it could possibly mean to address peoples concerns about prices. If voters are saying “I want to eat candy and not gain weight” the solution cant be to give them more candy that wont make them gain weight because thats factually impossible.
A strategy to address *inflation* head-on is what I meant might have helped. Trying to address people's concerns about prices means talking about those concerns ad nauseum, not ignoring them. Years of doing the politics pivot away from those concerns failed utterly. Saying "this behavior is irrational so I'll ignore it at worst, minimize it at best" creates an opening for bad actors to say "you're damn right and totally rational!"
Again though you’re speaking at an insanely high level of generality. Doing stuff in the world requires actual mechanistic processes that turn into results. And if the issue is NOT about actually delivering the results then it IS an issue about messaging (eg showing through media channels that you care that prices are high and are doing what you can to combat it).
Interesting--I think we're talking past each other a little here, thanks for laying it out. In general, I think Dems should do better at both delivering results AND messaging. Specifically, I'd say inflation's messaging-problem tilt means it should have been addressed MORE in an article about messaging problems, not less.
This second comment nails it. Speak directly to issue people say is their issue and come up with an argument that points to blame to where it belongs. The corporations raising prices. Prices aren’t coming down so raise wages and tax the corporations to pay for cost saving measures for working people - like free daycare or lower health costs
This is easily the best summation I’ve seen. I became a paid subscriber because of it. We’ll see if my comments are accepted or if this is just another echo chamber incapable of reflection.
Thank you—I’m sharing this far and wide. From my observations out in the world, until we break through the upside down world information miasma, we’re f***ed.
Democrats need to have at least one person who can speak to economic issues to a mass audience at all times.
Biden could never do that, and we didn't have a Treasury Secretary who could do that. As good government Democrats, we always pick our Treasury Secretary from potential Nobel Prize winners and never ever for communication skills. What if Pete Buttigieg had been talking about economic policy instead of being charged with faffing about with trains?
(Elizabeth Warren could do this but this is not the path she has chosen, which I say without criticism. She is fighting to expand the social welfare safety net, god bless her, and she can't do that and also say, "you know, things are pretty good right now.")
I think you need non-politician validators out there constantly contesting the information space.
Totally agree with you, Michael. Working class media consumption, if it's right wing and against their interest, must be responded to right away - and not just in campaign season.
If it hadn't been for that fucking piece of shit Manchin, who blocked every good thing Biden wanted to enact, we wouldn't be here. Biden had no problem speaking economic issues. Hd did, however, fail at showmanship: there should have been a Presidential Appearance at every infrastructure groundbreaking financed by the Inflation Reduction Act, ditto for every chips factor started under the Chips and Science Act, and none of the Republican congress critters who voted against both should have been invited to any of those. The thing didn't speak for itself and never does. People needed to be TOLD who was helping them.
In retrospect especially, Biden’s inherent limitations as a communicator and his complete failure to use his presidency to try to craft a true narrative about the economy for mass consumption look like fatal flaws.
And the Democratic Party not realizing this until a month out from their convention was a lot to overcome.
For the record, Kamala responded magnificently and ran a great campaign.
Agree, she did probably as well as she could have with the hand she was dealt. Pretty amazing that we have the result we do not only because of the self-evident delusions of Trump voters, but also because of the delusions of the Dem gerontocracy, who appear to literally have been living in a media environment that has not existed for years, maybe decades.
We definitely need better storytelling/advance more storytellers. I love Pete and he is great at this; not sure if he comes across as too wonky/pedantic for the voter group Dems need to attract (not to mention the homophobia barriers.)
He's the person who came to mind. As a practical matter I can't think of any other member of the Biden cabinet who has been an effective public communicator on any topic. I couldn't tell you who most of them are.
Love EDubs, and Pete is good on the attack. But they’re not local validators; they’re polished and managerial.
There’s also an infrastructure piece that needs to be addressed.
You are concluding that the losses were all due to lack of good messaging to working class voters. You don't mention racism, fear of putting a woman in charge, vilifying LGBTQ people, white nationalism, white Christian nationalism.
Those were all definitely factors, but they mean we must ask: why have Democratic and left wing strategies for pushing back on those things been so ineffective? And what would a more persuasive anti-bigotry strategy look like? That too is a messaging question.
All narratives supported by right-wing funded propaganda.
Either way, plenty of people who previously voted for Obama and Clinton either sat this one out, or went to Trump. We also saw the entire country swing red, with cities being the biggest shifters in the last four years (a shift of +9 for Trump!).
Are we really going to throw up our hands and accuse 75 million people of being sexists and racists, or are we going to do the actual work of looking inward to our own party and addressing where our own messaging has failed? And I might posit that a continued drumbeat of "look how awful these white people are" is part of that failed messaging.
Yes! Thank you for saying this. The Dems try to believe the best of people (which is a good thing!) but perhaps are not fully reckoning with the basic racism and misogyny of an awful lot of white people, particularly in the working class.
I think a big part of the problem you describe in mostly 2 (but also partly 3 and 4) is that uninformed voters *intentionally insulate* themselves from literally any political or informative media channel.
These are the people who say things like “I don’t do politics, everyone’s always so angry, and it’s all so complicated”. They don’t understand all the complexities because they refuse to educate themselves; they refuse to educate themselves because they’ve been checked out of their educational experience since the first time they struggled with math and spelling in elementary school. They’ve ignored politics since the first time some smug smart kid made them feel dumb about politics in history or social studies class later in middle or high school.
If they still vote, they vote on literal vibes. And on social proof. They themselves might studiously avoid Fox News or any of the right wing podcasters, but if the one supremely confident Dunning-Kruger Award candidate at their job or watering hole can come across as convincing about who to blame for this that and the other thing, that’s the social proof they get anchored with.
This is why it’s so tiresome whenever some Boomer says “we need more civics education”. It’s not the civics, people have always been this dumb. It’s just that the evolution of media changed which direction they were getting their social proof from.
The strongest counterargument to your thesis is that we could end up wasting billions on standing up all these alternative channels, and not see much of an effect. While it’s still worth doing, it can’t be the main thrust of our comeback campaign.
Rather, I think at this point the only social proof that will quickly break through is to simply radically remake our party. Compete in every single locality, even if we lose. Everyone who is currently in charge of the consultancies, the nonprofits, the party committees, the senior leadership, and The Groups, should step down, and their successors should sign on to a unified national campaign for abundance and a big tent. No more ostracizing people whose ideology is impure — except those holdouts who would continue doing the ostracizing. The point is to physically be there and show people that we are not evil. We can't just keep doing this thing where we descend on swing states every two years with big media blitzes. We need professional organizations on the ground who actually live there and do things.
I’ll close out with a thought experiment for you: Let’s say Trump abjures 22A and runs in 2028. And let’s say that Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was magically the Dem nominee. Do you think he would go on Rogan? Do you think he would outperform Trump’s own Rogan appearance? Do you think he would win back the Rogan voters? Would the lefties and shouters grumble but still ultimately vote for him while he won over those Rogan voters?
I’m not saying he SHOULD be the nominee. But I think the answer to all those questions is “yes, duh”. And I think that points to the qualities we should be looking for in a new party leadership to break through to these intentionally-self-uninformed voters.
I remember when The Rock was being talked about as somebody the Dems might recruit (was that 2016?) and seeing some progressives grumble about his social views, and thinking, for f***'s sake, maybe he's not perfect, but you should at least want to keep him in the coalition, not push him to the other side.
We need a 50 state campaign that starts today. Every town in America - or at least every county - has a Democratic Party apparatus of some sort. We are obviously capable of organizing volunteers. So, we need to knock on every door in our districts between now and 2026 and figure out what people are actually thinking about shit. I’ve started working on a questionnaire type thing based on what I hear from my neighbors here in the exurbs. Polls reach no one, obviously, so the only way to gather info is to physically go out and do it. I am looking forward to my local Democratic Party meeting on Monday so I can raise some hell. Ffs, even on Election Day, the GOP had a huge table, TRUMP sign, snacks, etc. The Dems apparently couldn’t be bothered aside from the guy who was trying to unseat our Republican state house rep. The party apparatus is failing. Time for new blood.
I am in a very blue state and while we sent our entire Democratic House team back to DC this year, 2 of the 5 races here were still a slog (early on, they crushed at the end).
We need to start running candidates in EVERY RACE in this country and stop conceding in advance by not even putting up a candidate. This will also help us get the word out about what we stand for. The opportunity loss by conceding these races in advance has been huge.
And we need to fire the consultants. Focus tested messaging sucks and tbh, I feel that’s what cost us. Our turnout absolutely sucked.
I think Brian is profoundly correct. What liberals and Dems have always thought is that *the truth,* properly reported, would be enough to show voters where their interests lie. If it ever worked before, it doesn't work now. All those complaints about the WaPo and NY Times sanewashing Trump were merited, but in the end irrelevant, because the people who elected Trump don't read the Post or the Times. They probably don't read anything. They get their news and views from Fox News and right-wing radio--media for whom "the truth" is an amusing nicety, and who focus, instead, on emotion.
When we say "the left needs its Fox News and Joe Rogans," it's true, but what we must mean by that is not, "we need a less brainy MSNBC" or "we need Air America back." (And I loved Air America.) We must mean, "We need tv and radio media that seek, not to *inform,* but to enflame--to discuss the world and politics in terms of enemies, threats, and outrages. There will be no shortage of those in the next four years (and beyond).
When, in his 1936 address at Madison Square Garden, FDR said, of "the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering," that they "are unanimous in their hate for me " he added "— and I welcome their hatred." It is impossible to imagine any Democratic candidate for president from the past 50 years saying such a thing. Its *emotional* truth is shocking to read today. But politics, especially in a splintered media environment in which most of the electorate doesn't read, is less and less about ideas and more and more about feelings. It's great that the Dems happen to have truth, science, economics, and history on their side. But it isn't enough.
Good piece, Brian. It’s always been true that politics are conducted in a reality constructed by the media of the day, but we seem to be in an era in which material conditions matter exponentially less than media interpretations of those material conditions. While it seems likely to me that when Republicans finally succeed in destroying social security, for example, they will for the most part be held responsible, I don’t think we can assume that this will definitely be the case any longer. The narrative needs to be established now, and the only way you do that is through a receptive media environment. Rogan and Fox News cannot be trusted to inform their audiences that Republicans are to blame.
Agreed - Day after election I wrote: After canvassing and talking with folks outside of my own bubble my thoughts are (IMHO, YMMV): The racists gonna racist; sexists gonna sexist. At least in what was expressed to me it wasn't even the anti-Trans fear-mongering. The SWING vote Trump losing popular vote to Clinton and Biden but winning it against Harris) was mostly due to false media narrative on economy. It would have been nice if non-Fox mainstream media had gone with honest factual reporting of who and what Trump and Repuglicans actually are day-in-day-out instead predigested even-hand/ both-sadism and sane-washing. And also if there was truthful reporting, hammering on the actual economic improvement since 2022, every day for past 2 years. Over past 3 years actual jobs way up, actual crime way down; over past 2 years actual inflation down... talking to folks in small towns PA... SWING voters (my canvassing lists were folks who have voted Dem at least at some point in recent past; but mostly infrequent, intermittent, lower-information voters) thought the opposite and blamed Dems. At least in my conversations, LGBT did not come up. Immigration contextualized with jobs. On the single issue by single issue we win... Abortion protections won majority votes (remember Florida was actually 57% for protection), paid leave won. Same swing voters who voted for those, even down-ballot for House, then voted Trump on false narrative mostly on economy. Dems, especially the left-progressive wing, objectively better on economy in general. Dems getting blamed unilaterally for NAFTA is another example of media supporting false narrative. And the success of the immigrant fearmongering in expanding the xenophobic reaction is also tied to crap media narrative on actual economy, and silencing of progressive Dems better solutions."
"What I think would make a lot of these elites go bug-eyed would be to spend a day shadowing working-class or rural midwesterners purely to understand the kind of information they absorb, intentionally and passively, from their earliest moments to when they shut off their televisions, phones, or computers at night. I believe they’d be disturbed. I believe they’d be so alarmed that they’d convene the most powerful people in the party and declare an emergency."
Dead on perfect observation. They don't know what's going on here in South East Ohio. They've completely abandoned this state and it's getting even weirder than you can imagine.
Importantly, one reason you need to fight and win the information space is because sometimes the thing that voters really really want (eg grocery prices at 2019 levels) can not be delivered under any possible scenario and you have to instead convince them that you are doing the best that can possibly be done to address their concerns. That requires them to both trust you and understand that the other party is trying to sell them worthless magic beans.
I blew a local right-winger's mind yesterday by telling him that I thought his side had a definite advantage in the political communications war. Predictable braying about "LIBERALMEDIANEWYORKTIMES" followed. So I really appreciated this post.
Part of me worries that it's going to take another Iraq war/Great Recession style disaster to break through the noise, and I also worry about elevating grifters when we go in search of working class friendly media voices to elevate--like, for instance, that Richard Ojeda guy who became a darling on the left for a brief time during Trump 1.
But the diagnosis here is close to inarguable, in my mind.
I would add that the problem extends well beyond the working class. I've interacted twice in the last two weeks with wealthy, well-educated professionals who watch OANN.
One important thing neoliberal Democrats still don’t understand is that weak unions equals a weak Democrat party. The GOP clearly understood this. That is why with former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker leading the charge they systematically went about weakening unions starting with the public employee unions. They moved on from Wisconsin to Michigan and Florida and Iowa and other states. Good luck building worker cohesion and solidarity without a labor union. All these years later I’m still amazed by how many democrats don’t see this. I guarantee you the Heritage Foundation does!
And the current union leadership is doing a terrible job educating their membership. The Teamsters declined to endorse, because, they said, so many of their members liked Trump. Well did the leadership bother to explain to the members that Biden had been substantively the most pro-union president in a generation or two, saved their pensions, and passed a law to make it WAY easier for them to expand their organization? Or that Trump was in bed with anti-union oligarchs who want to cram down their wages and find ways to raid their pensions, and kill Social Security and Medicare for all working people?
True. Some current officers don’t deserve to be called leaders!
"...willing to tell their peers, “fuck these lying dweebs who think you’re stupid…”"
Right now, Trump voters think Dems think they are stupid. They're right, because those voters support an obvious liar, grifter con-man who hasn't got a clue about how to "make America great again." Truth is, Republicans KNOW their voters are stupid, which is what they are counting on.
Dems don't need to change their policies. They just need to do a much better job of communicating -and stop using the complicated phrasing and jargon. Biden didn't take enough credit for the infrastructure stuff he passed - or the jobs he created. He didn't say, "we inherited a mess from Trump and it is going to take a few years to get back on track."
Sigh. What happened to the millions of Biden votes that Harris DIDN'T get?
academic who is a part of a number of groups studying the right and media/network theories and platforms and....yea. this i would say has been our #1 topic of conversation for the last half decade give or take. huge issue. and i think the Dems can compete in some ways but almost none of that competition involves reversion to old liberal media norms and institutions.
I think you're avoiding dealing with the thing most people said was driving them to Trump: inflation. I know the rest of the economy is good, I know inflation has cooled. But people saw prices go up and not go back down, and they and wanted to punish the person they held responsible. I don't see a flaw in that logic (IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW INFLATION WORKS), and don't think it's constructive to just ignore it when looking at why a working class coalition swung to Trump.
Prcies DO NOT GO DOWN ever. Deflation is the worst possible thing for the economy imaginable. If you think Brian is wrong here put your cards on the table and explain what policies exactly could even have been enacted to reduce the price of groceries and satisfy people.
You and I both know that policy can't stop inflation, and prices won't go down. That doesn't mean people didn't vote on the opposite idea. When huge numbers of people are saying "I voted for X reason," I think ignoring X is a mistake. And saying that people are factually wrong about their own reasons for voting is questionable at best, deeply condescending at worst.
As to what could have "satisfied" people: maybe nothing, maybe a massive and intense communications strategy to address the issue head-on. Biden mostly ignored it, Harris skirted around it, and Trump half-ran on it. Maybe radical economic reforms (no I don't mean green energy incentives that improve things over time, I mean "I'm going put a minimum wage vote through Congress every damn month" or "I'm going to tax the hell out of billionaires and send the money to you" type stuff) would have helped. It's an intellectual argument now.
The core of it is: people felt angry about prices, and they voted based on that. Rational or irrational, it's what happened. Any attempt to win back working class voters should take that into account.
The “massive and intense communications strategy” is the EXACT thing Brian is asking for here!!
When you concede that there are not available solutions to produce an outcome that would satisfy voters I dont know what it could possibly mean to address peoples concerns about prices. If voters are saying “I want to eat candy and not gain weight” the solution cant be to give them more candy that wont make them gain weight because thats factually impossible.
A strategy to address *inflation* head-on is what I meant might have helped. Trying to address people's concerns about prices means talking about those concerns ad nauseum, not ignoring them. Years of doing the politics pivot away from those concerns failed utterly. Saying "this behavior is irrational so I'll ignore it at worst, minimize it at best" creates an opening for bad actors to say "you're damn right and totally rational!"
Again though you’re speaking at an insanely high level of generality. Doing stuff in the world requires actual mechanistic processes that turn into results. And if the issue is NOT about actually delivering the results then it IS an issue about messaging (eg showing through media channels that you care that prices are high and are doing what you can to combat it).
Interesting--I think we're talking past each other a little here, thanks for laying it out. In general, I think Dems should do better at both delivering results AND messaging. Specifically, I'd say inflation's messaging-problem tilt means it should have been addressed MORE in an article about messaging problems, not less.
This second comment nails it. Speak directly to issue people say is their issue and come up with an argument that points to blame to where it belongs. The corporations raising prices. Prices aren’t coming down so raise wages and tax the corporations to pay for cost saving measures for working people - like free daycare or lower health costs
This is easily the best summation I’ve seen. I became a paid subscriber because of it. We’ll see if my comments are accepted or if this is just another echo chamber incapable of reflection.
Regardless, I like your writing, Dean.
Thank you—I’m sharing this far and wide. From my observations out in the world, until we break through the upside down world information miasma, we’re f***ed.