We now have a neo-KKK sexual predator as president-elect.
Progressives must take advantage and control the narrative in media and social networks going forward.
To do so, we need to expand the progressive playbook by designing a few new plays while lifting other successful ones from the right-wing playbook.
Here are some quick thoughts on how:
- Broken Campaign Promises. Incessantly highlight moves by Trump that break ridiculous campaign promises to working-class whites, such as building a wall and having Mexico pay for it.
- Harming Working-Class White People. Frame every move by Trump and Republicans as harming rural working-class whites (highly relevant to rollbacks to social programs and environmental regulations).
- Top 1%. Frame every move by Trump and Republicans as protecting the top 1% and his own financial interests to the detriment of working-class whites.
- Bankruptcies. Connect Trump’s six historical bankruptcies with his bankrupting of the American government (e.g. in the upcoming Ryan budget).
- Putin. Frame Trump’s foreign policy moves as cowering to Putin.
- Republican Insiders. Frame Trump’s appointments as cowering to traditional Republication insiders (Trump no political outsider).
- Memes. Dominate the meme game by creating images, videos and concepts that take a life of their own, frame the debate and penetrate social and traditional media (think the alt-right).
- Regional Messaging. Target messaging to be regional so that it is easier to relate to by relevant constituencies.
- Clandestine Online Activity. Foster frustration among conservatives in their forums (higher from of trolling).
- Buyer’s Remorse. Immediately and consistently underscore working-class white people’s “buyer’s remorse” with Trump.
- Blocking Minority within Majority. Empower Republicans that stand against Trump and work to create a blocking minority within the GOP majority, especially senators that have just won election or are not facing one for 4 years when the next presidential election comes around.
- New Progressive Leaders. Position new, younger progressive Democrats as our standard-bearers, building up their national profile (we need new and inspiring leadership, with apologies to Bernie and Hillary supporters).
- Progressive Ideas for Working-Class Whites. Repackage progressive ideas and policies for working-class whites.
- Vibrant Progressive Online Ecosystem. Create new online websites and forums for progressives where organizing and messaging can take place without censorship (sorry but DailyKos is just not that, in addition to being to saturated with content for its own good) in order to create a more vibrant progressive online ecosystem.
Bottom line: We need to foster distrust, dissatisfaction and dissent among his main supporters, i.e. working-class whites. This is not to say we cease communicating to progressives, women, communities, the LGBT community, etc., but that we need a parallel strategy.
So these are just a few ideas that came to mind.
Now, DailyKos may be useful in advancing some of these, if it can move away from its constant front-page obsession with snark and unfocused randomness.
But we need to take more ownership ourselves, we being this online community, and direct our online activities with reckless abandon and purpose.
We got this!