I can’t believe a pollster would encourage the Dems to run on “bipartisanship” with Republicans, whose elected leaders are liars, bigots, racists, sex pests, misogynists, and felons—people who in some cases literally want to kill anyone who disagrees with them and install a fascist theocracy. Where exactly does the “bipartisanship” fit in? It’s like there’s a whole upper echelon of pollsters and consultants living in some kind of cloying Aaron Sorkin fantasy world.
As Brian said, run on the things that resonate and are easy to communicate: Trump, Jordan, and the Republicans are corrupt, and they want to hurt you and wreck the country! This isn’t a hard case to make; I mean, they still try to gut Social Security every chance they get, just for starters!
YES. My god, you have a walking lie machine, a bipedal, projectile meme-vomiter in Trump, and Galaxy brain strategists want to talk about bipartisanship. They need to remind people how evil this guy is, and it’s easy! People are sick of hearing about Trump? Good! They should get so sick of him that they do everything possible to keep him from holding office ever again.
Even in blue Hawaii, Linda Lingle won the gubernatorial election partly by painting the state Democratic party as corrupt in the wake of Ben Cayetano's governorship
Emphasizing Trump's corruption is absolutely necessary. However, I worry that it might not be enough if the Democrats aren't proactive enough against members such as Menendez. It's so unfortunate that the Senate majority is so razor thin right now
Agree, unanimity would be good. But I do think it's worth noting that Dems don't have a mechanism to expel him without support from Republicans (who hilariously came out in support of Menendez, because they're honor bound to support corruption now) and so instead they basically made him a dead man walking. He's toast, because Dems cut his legs out from under him. Not perfect, but quite good and good enough to draw a contrast.
The GOP and their voters DESPISE Democrats. The Democrats, loudly and often, spout on about the need for a STRONG REPUBLICAN PARTY (strong in this context meaning “able to control their right flank”).
The Republican Party needs to be BURIED, not rehabilitated and brought back into the fold under the auspices of bipartisan comity and congeniality.
The Democrats and their attendant pollsters, consultants, strategists, and sympathetic media figures so desperately want the latter because I imagine it feels so icky to have only one party capable of governing and accurately convey that as such to the public.
For more on this, see the new YouTube series Decoding the News.
What I think is that all talking points will fail.
People want to hear the truth...things aren't great. Inflation, income inequality, corporate greed, geopolitical strife, loss of confidence in democracies/rising fascism are all realities of our current moment.
Point to the fact that the GOP doesn't address any of these problems when they are given power. They engage in culture wars, ban abortion, ban books, suppress voting, align with dictators, etc. They make life worse...and they're coming after contraception, gay marriage, public education, etc.
Be honest that Democrats can't fix all these issues overnight, but they can stave off the worst of the culture wars and they make progress when they have a trifecta.
I keep raising the alarms about the recent Louisiana gubernatorial race. After 8 years of moderate progress under a Democratic governor, a Trumpist Republican won. Democrats stayed home. Maybe they weren't 'inspired', maybe they think both sides are the same. In 4 years, Louisiana will be unrecognizable. Another Florida.
Yes 👊 Dems can’t fix everything but will focus on making life better:
‘People want to hear the truth...things aren't great. Inflation, income inequality, corporate greed, geopolitical strife, loss of confidence in democracies/rising fascism are all realities of our current moment.
Point to the fact that the GOP doesn't address any of these problems when they are given power. They engage in CULTURE wars, ban abortion, ban books, suppress voting, align with dictators, etc. They make life worse...’
In my humble opinion the message that Dems need to take (which admittedly I think would be a big pill to swallow) is to say to voters, “your values are right, it’s ok to feel how you do, we are not asking you to change your good, old-fashioned American ideals - we just want you to understand that Trump himself is a con man. He says the right things but sells you out behind your back. We however will really fight for you. Maybe we have not always agreed on things but we will fight for the American class along with freedom worldwide”.
Endlessly infuriating that Republicans (mostly falsely) cry corruption by Democrats to gin up their members, and Dems for some reason don’t think it will work even when they have mountains of real corruption they can point to. They should recognize that there’s a reason they aren’t blowing out elections when they have far more popular policy positions.
Another brilliant piece. You note that "Democrats have done pretty well in recent elections [allowing] party leaders to stand in place and reject calls for rethinking their political methods—their approach is working, after all!" You put your finger precisely on the long con that the poli-data-sci consulting class is running on Dems: "We win 51% the time! Our fees are absolutely worth it!" (Setting aside that winning every other election or so isn't much of a feat in a two-party system, their professional investment in myths about "thermostatic public opinion" couldn't be more apparent here.) More importantly, the bar for the consultants is never set at "preserving Roe," or "strengthening higher ed and other cultural institutions essential to the party's longterm strength," or "removing corrupt judges from SCOTUS," or "crafting enduring social narratives about who Republicans are." The bar is always set embarrassingly low—occasional electoral success—much to the poli-data-scientists' delight.
Yes! Lean into the corruption. Corruption is hated by everyone, no matter what their politics are. It's the most "bipartisan" message there is, and one that the Right is always going on about, despite being so bogged down by it that they should sink. But we don't tell that story, or at least not nearly enough.
I particularly appreciate your point that all the usual, cerebral Democratic responses to this Republican messaging attack still leave one feeling emotionally uneasy about Democrats. EXACTLY. To state it simply, Democrats and their consultants SUCK at communication strategy. They miss the most basic point of advertising that people are more driven by emotions than facts. Democrats seem like a bunch of tired old college professors who are angry their students aren’t satisfied to calmly listen to 2 hours of dry recitations of facts every period. How dare they want context, passion, storytelling, relevance?!? Your example of the meaninglessness of words like “bipartisan” could not be more on point. Why is this so hard? At some future point, I’d love your insights into why Democrats and their party/strategists are so consistently out of touch with what actually moves voters. What inherent mental bias keeps them vernacularly illiterate?
I think this is no more evident than in the way Dems keep telling themselves they're going to keep mopping up on abortion.
I've been telling people for months now: most of the states have more or less aligned their abortion policy with median public opinion in their state. It's no longer a live issue in all but 2-3 states. Some have pushed back by speculating that the GOP might abolish the filibuster to pass a national ban; this is nothing but a comforting lie they're telling themselves. If the GOP did that, it'd spell the end for their favorite tool of obstruction; it'd be a generational game-changer on the level of LBJ losing the South by passing the Civil Rights Act.
[Ed: That doesn't mean they *won't* do it, nor that they won't *threaten* to do it, NOR that it's not a valuable turnout line for Dems to use; it just means that it's not something to base our entire national strategy on, and we shouldn't use overheated/extreme rhetoric to fend off what's essentially an empty threat.]
So the reality is, abortion backlash probably won't win 2024 for Dems the same way it did 2022. But the campaign strategist class is too high on their own pet issues to notice.
I need to chew on this one. Intuitively it feels correct, but Dems keep cleaning up in special elections and referenda seemingly driven by anti-Dobbs backlash. My hunch is that voters in free states remain staggered by the insult to women's rights and basic equality, and public opinion even in red states has become less favorable to anti-abortion politics, even if not enough to go blue. Add it all up and that's still a recipe for big electoral repercussions, and augurs for Dems to say "elect us and we'll bring Roe back."
Democrats have had a best friend for 50 years they’ve milked beautifully: How do we never solve abortion while making it look like we’re doing something about it?
What has been a better cash cow, better GOTV?
But now it’s put up or shut up time, and they’re absent.
I think that’s a recipe for waning - but not flatlined! - electoral relevance of Dobbs. Even in the states where abortion policy remains somewhat to the right of the electorate, that means that people aren’t going to turn out in major waves like 2022. It just means that it fades into the background noise of all the other issues people care about.
If these mythical Democratic consultants were paying attention, they’d noticed that letting up on Trump as a campaign tool HAS ALREADY diminished returns. Just b/c the conventional wisdom is that the first mid-term election switches from the party of the president, they expected the House to flip—except THIS time, democracy was at stake (AGAIN) and we were waiting for Trump accountability (STILL) and with the tiniest push, we could’ve kept the House, but the brain trust had given that up 2 years earlier.
Secondly, why does anybody still listen to these people?! They are wrong about everything. All you have to do is look at Twitter, even in its broken state, to see where people are on this. Even people who aren’t informed or educated enough to understand why, *feel* that our democracy is corrupt and broken. Biden was supposed to come in and do major things so we wouldn’t be so vulnerable. He had a majority for 2 years when he could have built something, but he squandered it on bipartisanship with fascists who won’t sign those checks when they cheat their way into the Oval and a congressional majority b/c of a stolen Court and bad state laws in TX, FL, MO…
I am glad you wrote this because, as a “deep canvasser,” I’ve been grappling with it. I have been pretty strongly in favor of NOT just focusing on Trump: not because of some Dem party directive but because it’s not really an effective message at the doors. Another Democrat telling you trump is a threat? Doesn’t engage.
One problem is that many swing voters already feel abandoned by the Dems, too--it’s the machine entirely. They are just absolutely fed up with it. They are struggling to keep their houses.
I personally think that it’s not wonky qualitative policy, but rather direct links between the parties and voters’ lived experience, that will keep Dems from hemorrhaging votes. Which is really the goal. We are not, sadly, living in an inspirational moment.
Every message has to come to life within the voter’s sense of self. “Trump is bad” is just so familiar, it almost slides off the wall. Most people aren’t as alarmed as we are about the disintegration of democracy; they’re alarmed about gas, food, and housing.
Swing voters do seem to hate Trump; I feel like it doesn’t have to be ignored entirely, but could be more like an amplifying spice rather than the core motivating message. Once Trump is no longer with us in the biological sense, then what? Just continuing to invoke the infection he unleashed on the Republicans?
The fact is, the middle class DOES seem to feel pretty abandoned. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve had very substantive conversations with voters who do sense a zero-sum connection between the choices we’re making. Enabling them to feel heard is the way we ensure they don’t leave.
I obviously agree that what works for party-messaging strategy (e.g. what to put in ads and in bids for earned media) isn't necessarily what works one-on-one with voters. I think Dems, volunteers, canvassers should aim to be humane people who know how to relate to strangers, and empathize with them. I never, ever want Dems to be a party of policy nihilists who coast on antipathy to their opposition. But I want them to start thinking of governing well as the table-stakes: the thing that will keep them from losing in a rout, that will force them to remain in touch with the country's needs, and turn those needs into policy. Do all that stuff well and you STILL have to win the us vs. them fight over which party's values foster better leaders. That's where anti-Trump politics are so valuable.
You make an interesting point. My problem with Biden isn’t his age. It’s that he hasn’t done anything to shore up our democracy. So how do you call out the fascists if you can’t point to what Democrats are doing to stop the fascists?
Last night Biden gave a full throated appeal for democracy. And he’s given at least three other major speeches focused on democracy. His legislative accomplishments are all directed to reordering the economy to make our productivity more equitably shared. Frankly, hearing someone say he hadn’t tried to shore up democracy just boggles the mind. Where does your negativity originate?
I’m gonna guess that you don’t live in a red state, Gary. I’m a lifelong Texan, and I gratefully escaped with my family a year ago to New England after watching my state devolve into the Wild West of fascism where women are dying of fully preventable pregnancy complications and people are shooting others over tricky freeway merges. Our fully corrupt AG admitted--ON CAMERA--that if he hadn’t intervened in a Democratic county to stop ballots from being counted, Biden would’ve won Texas, where 5.2 million Biden votes WERE counted, yet nobody from the federal government comes to Texans’ aid. They are hostages. And you think you’re immune, but all this laissez-faire Trump attitude, letting the seditionists sit comfortably in Congress--where do you think it all ends up?
Now, YOU may think that the occasional Biden speech saying America is the awesomest and will defend democracy in a “full-throated” manner makes for a rousing defense of American democracy, but you’ll forgive me, Gary, if those of us fresh from the trenches where actual fascists have taken over 2 of the 3 most populous American states would disagree. This is a problem, and ignoring it has only made it worse. I’m making space for the daughters of my friends so they can go to college out of state b/c my beloved state is the scariest place I know these days.
Expecting the media to referee a fair fight with the GOP is the stupidest thing DC Democrats do.
Why would employees of media organizations owned by American Oligarchs risk their own positions, promotions and visibility by providing a fair analysis of elections where their Bosses have their thumbs firmly placed on the GOP side of the scale? It defies common sense.
Treat the media's Owners as the opponent of Democrats they've proven themselves to be, while providing sympathy to their employees who must toe the line. But do the work, Dems!
While I agree about the Oligarchs owning MSM, it’s the dem voters who subscribe & pay for newspapers. Maybe focusing on media unions would work. How to prevent MSM headlines running Hamas propaganda as truth w/o fact checking?
It's like a stage where Biden's reading from "The Congressional Record" while Trump, Jordan, etc., dressed in full clown regalia, ride unicycles around him honking 'oogah!' horns.
I can’t believe a pollster would encourage the Dems to run on “bipartisanship” with Republicans, whose elected leaders are liars, bigots, racists, sex pests, misogynists, and felons—people who in some cases literally want to kill anyone who disagrees with them and install a fascist theocracy. Where exactly does the “bipartisanship” fit in? It’s like there’s a whole upper echelon of pollsters and consultants living in some kind of cloying Aaron Sorkin fantasy world.
As Brian said, run on the things that resonate and are easy to communicate: Trump, Jordan, and the Republicans are corrupt, and they want to hurt you and wreck the country! This isn’t a hard case to make; I mean, they still try to gut Social Security every chance they get, just for starters!
Fire Benenson today and hire some top notch Madison Avenue marketers.
Sometimes I wonder how many of these clueless pundits are actually double agents
YES. My god, you have a walking lie machine, a bipedal, projectile meme-vomiter in Trump, and Galaxy brain strategists want to talk about bipartisanship. They need to remind people how evil this guy is, and it’s easy! People are sick of hearing about Trump? Good! They should get so sick of him that they do everything possible to keep him from holding office ever again.
This is why Democrat electeds should have been unanimous and swift in tossing Menendez overboard.
Totally true!
Even in blue Hawaii, Linda Lingle won the gubernatorial election partly by painting the state Democratic party as corrupt in the wake of Ben Cayetano's governorship
Emphasizing Trump's corruption is absolutely necessary. However, I worry that it might not be enough if the Democrats aren't proactive enough against members such as Menendez. It's so unfortunate that the Senate majority is so razor thin right now
Agree, unanimity would be good. But I do think it's worth noting that Dems don't have a mechanism to expel him without support from Republicans (who hilariously came out in support of Menendez, because they're honor bound to support corruption now) and so instead they basically made him a dead man walking. He's toast, because Dems cut his legs out from under him. Not perfect, but quite good and good enough to draw a contrast.
The GOP and their voters DESPISE Democrats. The Democrats, loudly and often, spout on about the need for a STRONG REPUBLICAN PARTY (strong in this context meaning “able to control their right flank”).
The Republican Party needs to be BURIED, not rehabilitated and brought back into the fold under the auspices of bipartisan comity and congeniality.
The Democrats and their attendant pollsters, consultants, strategists, and sympathetic media figures so desperately want the latter because I imagine it feels so icky to have only one party capable of governing and accurately convey that as such to the public.
For more on this, see the new YouTube series Decoding the News.
Agree with every word, particularly the last sentence.
What I think is that all talking points will fail.
People want to hear the truth...things aren't great. Inflation, income inequality, corporate greed, geopolitical strife, loss of confidence in democracies/rising fascism are all realities of our current moment.
Point to the fact that the GOP doesn't address any of these problems when they are given power. They engage in culture wars, ban abortion, ban books, suppress voting, align with dictators, etc. They make life worse...and they're coming after contraception, gay marriage, public education, etc.
Be honest that Democrats can't fix all these issues overnight, but they can stave off the worst of the culture wars and they make progress when they have a trifecta.
I keep raising the alarms about the recent Louisiana gubernatorial race. After 8 years of moderate progress under a Democratic governor, a Trumpist Republican won. Democrats stayed home. Maybe they weren't 'inspired', maybe they think both sides are the same. In 4 years, Louisiana will be unrecognizable. Another Florida.
Yes 👊 Dems can’t fix everything but will focus on making life better:
‘People want to hear the truth...things aren't great. Inflation, income inequality, corporate greed, geopolitical strife, loss of confidence in democracies/rising fascism are all realities of our current moment.
Point to the fact that the GOP doesn't address any of these problems when they are given power. They engage in CULTURE wars, ban abortion, ban books, suppress voting, align with dictators, etc. They make life worse...’
In my humble opinion the message that Dems need to take (which admittedly I think would be a big pill to swallow) is to say to voters, “your values are right, it’s ok to feel how you do, we are not asking you to change your good, old-fashioned American ideals - we just want you to understand that Trump himself is a con man. He says the right things but sells you out behind your back. We however will really fight for you. Maybe we have not always agreed on things but we will fight for the American class along with freedom worldwide”.
Endlessly infuriating that Republicans (mostly falsely) cry corruption by Democrats to gin up their members, and Dems for some reason don’t think it will work even when they have mountains of real corruption they can point to. They should recognize that there’s a reason they aren’t blowing out elections when they have far more popular policy positions.
Another brilliant piece. You note that "Democrats have done pretty well in recent elections [allowing] party leaders to stand in place and reject calls for rethinking their political methods—their approach is working, after all!" You put your finger precisely on the long con that the poli-data-sci consulting class is running on Dems: "We win 51% the time! Our fees are absolutely worth it!" (Setting aside that winning every other election or so isn't much of a feat in a two-party system, their professional investment in myths about "thermostatic public opinion" couldn't be more apparent here.) More importantly, the bar for the consultants is never set at "preserving Roe," or "strengthening higher ed and other cultural institutions essential to the party's longterm strength," or "removing corrupt judges from SCOTUS," or "crafting enduring social narratives about who Republicans are." The bar is always set embarrassingly low—occasional electoral success—much to the poli-data-scientists' delight.
Yes! Lean into the corruption. Corruption is hated by everyone, no matter what their politics are. It's the most "bipartisan" message there is, and one that the Right is always going on about, despite being so bogged down by it that they should sink. But we don't tell that story, or at least not nearly enough.
I particularly appreciate your point that all the usual, cerebral Democratic responses to this Republican messaging attack still leave one feeling emotionally uneasy about Democrats. EXACTLY. To state it simply, Democrats and their consultants SUCK at communication strategy. They miss the most basic point of advertising that people are more driven by emotions than facts. Democrats seem like a bunch of tired old college professors who are angry their students aren’t satisfied to calmly listen to 2 hours of dry recitations of facts every period. How dare they want context, passion, storytelling, relevance?!? Your example of the meaninglessness of words like “bipartisan” could not be more on point. Why is this so hard? At some future point, I’d love your insights into why Democrats and their party/strategists are so consistently out of touch with what actually moves voters. What inherent mental bias keeps them vernacularly illiterate?
Consider it assigned.
I think this is no more evident than in the way Dems keep telling themselves they're going to keep mopping up on abortion.
I've been telling people for months now: most of the states have more or less aligned their abortion policy with median public opinion in their state. It's no longer a live issue in all but 2-3 states. Some have pushed back by speculating that the GOP might abolish the filibuster to pass a national ban; this is nothing but a comforting lie they're telling themselves. If the GOP did that, it'd spell the end for their favorite tool of obstruction; it'd be a generational game-changer on the level of LBJ losing the South by passing the Civil Rights Act.
[Ed: That doesn't mean they *won't* do it, nor that they won't *threaten* to do it, NOR that it's not a valuable turnout line for Dems to use; it just means that it's not something to base our entire national strategy on, and we shouldn't use overheated/extreme rhetoric to fend off what's essentially an empty threat.]
So the reality is, abortion backlash probably won't win 2024 for Dems the same way it did 2022. But the campaign strategist class is too high on their own pet issues to notice.
I need to chew on this one. Intuitively it feels correct, but Dems keep cleaning up in special elections and referenda seemingly driven by anti-Dobbs backlash. My hunch is that voters in free states remain staggered by the insult to women's rights and basic equality, and public opinion even in red states has become less favorable to anti-abortion politics, even if not enough to go blue. Add it all up and that's still a recipe for big electoral repercussions, and augurs for Dems to say "elect us and we'll bring Roe back."
Democrats have had a best friend for 50 years they’ve milked beautifully: How do we never solve abortion while making it look like we’re doing something about it?
What has been a better cash cow, better GOTV?
But now it’s put up or shut up time, and they’re absent.
I think that’s a recipe for waning - but not flatlined! - electoral relevance of Dobbs. Even in the states where abortion policy remains somewhat to the right of the electorate, that means that people aren’t going to turn out in major waves like 2022. It just means that it fades into the background noise of all the other issues people care about.
Democrats desperately need to fire hard the likes of Benenson and hire the best Mad Men money can buy. Can't anybody here play this game?
If these mythical Democratic consultants were paying attention, they’d noticed that letting up on Trump as a campaign tool HAS ALREADY diminished returns. Just b/c the conventional wisdom is that the first mid-term election switches from the party of the president, they expected the House to flip—except THIS time, democracy was at stake (AGAIN) and we were waiting for Trump accountability (STILL) and with the tiniest push, we could’ve kept the House, but the brain trust had given that up 2 years earlier.
Secondly, why does anybody still listen to these people?! They are wrong about everything. All you have to do is look at Twitter, even in its broken state, to see where people are on this. Even people who aren’t informed or educated enough to understand why, *feel* that our democracy is corrupt and broken. Biden was supposed to come in and do major things so we wouldn’t be so vulnerable. He had a majority for 2 years when he could have built something, but he squandered it on bipartisanship with fascists who won’t sign those checks when they cheat their way into the Oval and a congressional majority b/c of a stolen Court and bad state laws in TX, FL, MO…
Problem is that all of your readers plus you are smarter than the current democratic consultants. How the heck do we get them replaced?
I am glad you wrote this because, as a “deep canvasser,” I’ve been grappling with it. I have been pretty strongly in favor of NOT just focusing on Trump: not because of some Dem party directive but because it’s not really an effective message at the doors. Another Democrat telling you trump is a threat? Doesn’t engage.
One problem is that many swing voters already feel abandoned by the Dems, too--it’s the machine entirely. They are just absolutely fed up with it. They are struggling to keep their houses.
I personally think that it’s not wonky qualitative policy, but rather direct links between the parties and voters’ lived experience, that will keep Dems from hemorrhaging votes. Which is really the goal. We are not, sadly, living in an inspirational moment.
Every message has to come to life within the voter’s sense of self. “Trump is bad” is just so familiar, it almost slides off the wall. Most people aren’t as alarmed as we are about the disintegration of democracy; they’re alarmed about gas, food, and housing.
Swing voters do seem to hate Trump; I feel like it doesn’t have to be ignored entirely, but could be more like an amplifying spice rather than the core motivating message. Once Trump is no longer with us in the biological sense, then what? Just continuing to invoke the infection he unleashed on the Republicans?
The fact is, the middle class DOES seem to feel pretty abandoned. Rightly or wrongly, I’ve had very substantive conversations with voters who do sense a zero-sum connection between the choices we’re making. Enabling them to feel heard is the way we ensure they don’t leave.
I obviously agree that what works for party-messaging strategy (e.g. what to put in ads and in bids for earned media) isn't necessarily what works one-on-one with voters. I think Dems, volunteers, canvassers should aim to be humane people who know how to relate to strangers, and empathize with them. I never, ever want Dems to be a party of policy nihilists who coast on antipathy to their opposition. But I want them to start thinking of governing well as the table-stakes: the thing that will keep them from losing in a rout, that will force them to remain in touch with the country's needs, and turn those needs into policy. Do all that stuff well and you STILL have to win the us vs. them fight over which party's values foster better leaders. That's where anti-Trump politics are so valuable.
You make an interesting point. My problem with Biden isn’t his age. It’s that he hasn’t done anything to shore up our democracy. So how do you call out the fascists if you can’t point to what Democrats are doing to stop the fascists?
Last night Biden gave a full throated appeal for democracy. And he’s given at least three other major speeches focused on democracy. His legislative accomplishments are all directed to reordering the economy to make our productivity more equitably shared. Frankly, hearing someone say he hadn’t tried to shore up democracy just boggles the mind. Where does your negativity originate?
I’m gonna guess that you don’t live in a red state, Gary. I’m a lifelong Texan, and I gratefully escaped with my family a year ago to New England after watching my state devolve into the Wild West of fascism where women are dying of fully preventable pregnancy complications and people are shooting others over tricky freeway merges. Our fully corrupt AG admitted--ON CAMERA--that if he hadn’t intervened in a Democratic county to stop ballots from being counted, Biden would’ve won Texas, where 5.2 million Biden votes WERE counted, yet nobody from the federal government comes to Texans’ aid. They are hostages. And you think you’re immune, but all this laissez-faire Trump attitude, letting the seditionists sit comfortably in Congress--where do you think it all ends up?
Now, YOU may think that the occasional Biden speech saying America is the awesomest and will defend democracy in a “full-throated” manner makes for a rousing defense of American democracy, but you’ll forgive me, Gary, if those of us fresh from the trenches where actual fascists have taken over 2 of the 3 most populous American states would disagree. This is a problem, and ignoring it has only made it worse. I’m making space for the daughters of my friends so they can go to college out of state b/c my beloved state is the scariest place I know these days.
Expecting the media to referee a fair fight with the GOP is the stupidest thing DC Democrats do.
Why would employees of media organizations owned by American Oligarchs risk their own positions, promotions and visibility by providing a fair analysis of elections where their Bosses have their thumbs firmly placed on the GOP side of the scale? It defies common sense.
Treat the media's Owners as the opponent of Democrats they've proven themselves to be, while providing sympathy to their employees who must toe the line. But do the work, Dems!
While I agree about the Oligarchs owning MSM, it’s the dem voters who subscribe & pay for newspapers. Maybe focusing on media unions would work. How to prevent MSM headlines running Hamas propaganda as truth w/o fact checking?
It's like a stage where Biden's reading from "The Congressional Record" while Trump, Jordan, etc., dressed in full clown regalia, ride unicycles around him honking 'oogah!' horns.