...even though the main stream media, always looking for a controversy, might be peddling one. If there is anyone we should be at “war” with, other than republicans, it is the “messaging wing”. They failed as spectacularly as I have ever seen in politics. What was the democratic message on the economy? You don't know? Neither do I, and if as democrats we don't know what it is, what are we communicating to voters? You cant just say we are the party that will bring jobs. How? Doing what?
The same people who crafted the messaging this campaign are the same people that have been doing it since the Clinton years...and some before that. Anita Dunn and the K Street crowd blew it for Hillary Clinton...so lets reward them with coming up with Biden’s! To be fair, there are more people to blame than Anita Dunn...but she is the poster child definition. When you let the lobbyists craft your message, they aren’t going to push much in the way of policy. They are the ones that pine for “the good ol days”
It was even worse than that. I can’t believe that democrats knew the socialist label was coming, yet did nothing to counter it. I don't know if the Biden campaign just thought they had South Florida wrapped up or what, but people on the ground were saying for months that there was a problem with messaging not getting through and we are now without 2 seats in South Florida because no one listened and even when they tried they still didn’t refute the messaging republicans had.
Democrats always seem content to let republicans and their media cohorts define the terms of debate. I cant tell you the number of TV pundits from MSNBC to FOX that just reflexively pan the Green New Deal as a no go. Most people have no idea what it is other than AOC wrote it (with help I am sure). Why weren’t democrats specifically pushing all the new good paying jobs that a Green New Deal would bring. There are a ton of examples, but no one was defending it. It’s like the ACA all over again. Good policy. Awful messaging, and a couple of years down the road if it passed people would be happy with it. The same with Medicare for All. I don't know a single democrat that doesn’t want universal affordable coverage, but the messaging was not coherent. Saying the republicans want to take it away is fine, but having half your caucus torpedo the other half’s isn’t winning elections. It is hard to motivate people about healthcare without seeing the threat (like a letter cancelling your coverage) or it will be the thing that happens to “other people”, and the people you are motivating are already there
I used to be against incrementalism, but I have come around to the fact that taking smaller concrete bites gets you there quicker than sweeping change. Sweeping change is easy to demonize because people don't know whats there. Pass a bill lowing the price of insulin. Everyone knows someone who is diabetic and lowering the price really helps people and puts points on the board that you can point to. It is also pretty hard to message against that. You will get the GND faster by passing the popular points first, and that will get more democrats elected so you can pass the harder stuff.
Good messaging focuses on the stuff you will do that is popular across the board. Democrats need to push popular stuff or present it in a concrete way so that people see and identify what you want to do. Green New Deal sounds nice to democrats, but who else is it convincing? You might not like that you have to convince other people but that’s how you win.
There is values messaging (what we just did), and policy messaging (what we didn’t do). Trump has whipped up his base by making them afraid of democrats. When you have values messaging, what you end up doing is talking down to those voters. That makes them feel like you are saying because they don't have the same values, you are better than them. Running on a return to “the good ‘ol days” doesn’t help when they don't identify those days as particularly good. Telling someone you can bring them the opportunity to get a better paying job, like installing solar panels, or a myriad of other good paying green jobs (that no one was talking about) isn’t talking down. It is talking to people. People want you to talk to them, not tell them where they are insufficient. Say what you want about Trump. He never talked down to his people...he lied constantly, but he made them feel he was “one of them”.
The thing that is most frustrating is that democrats all for the most part want the same things. The disagreements are how fast and the methods they use to get there. What the party shouldn’t do is go down the corporatist road. I think some people associate Moderate as equal to Corporatist. I am going to assume they are not, but following them is how we lost the working class to start with. The free market isn’t God and privatization is no panacea either. Some things should not be based on profit, especially government. In the same vein, the purists on the left need to wake up and smell that what they’ve been cooking isn’t winning either...so purists like Naomi Kline need to realize that winning has to happen before you can implement things in full and Bernie Sanders isn’t God. I like Bernie, but I am really sick of far left punditry saying...but but but Bernie. They seem to always find a way to turn any conversation back to him within seconds. Just listen to Matt Taibbi on any podcast he is on that deals with anything political. You wont get very far before the virtues of Bernie. THey even talk down to other democrats...again, that's not winning. It isn't doing anyone any favors just like it didn’t in 2016. We need to start learning from the mistakes we are making. Saying the other guy is bad (even when they are horrid) doesn’t cut it. If you haven’t noticed, when you play that game, republicans always win