For non-tweeters:
Dow is over 36,000, unemployment has dropped from 6.3 in Jan. to 4.8. Over 5 million jobs added, a record. 220m vaccines in 10 months. And only 30% of country think US is on right track. The Democratic Party has a huge messaging problem.
(emphasis added). Also:
Feb. 2021: Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects we will get to 4.6% unemployment by the end of 2023
Mar. 2021: Democrats pass the American Rescue Plan
Oct. 2021: Economy reaches 4.6% unemployment two years ahead of schedule
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Messaging, messaging, messaging, messaging…..
Since this appears to be the prevailing narrative of the past week, let’s talk about this word “messaging” that everyone seems to be throwing around, and give some serious thought to what it means, in practical terms.
I’m reminded again of a diary I wrote last year about Democratic “messaging” and the Party’s purported, debilitating, intractable “messaging problem”:
When I read the Democratic Party Platform, I … [read] a lot of in-depth discussion about expanding health care coverage, mitigating climate change, regulating industry, protecting consumers and workers, investing in education, taxing high incomes and corporate profits, respecting LGBT and women’s rights, and using science to inform public policy.
When I watched the Democratic National Convention this past summer, I … [saw] and hear[d] plenty of speakers talk about expanding health-care coverage, mitigating climate change, regulating industry to protect workers and consumers, respecting LGBT and women’s rights, investing in education, taxing high incomes and corporate profits, and governing based on facts, science, and pragmatic considerations.
When I watched the Presidential and Vice-Presidential debates, I [heard] Joe Biden [and] Kamala Harris ... give plenty of answers and explanations about expanding health care coverage, addressing climate change, protecting workers and consumers, LGBT and women’s rights, investing in education, taxing high incomes and corporate profits, and science-based pragmatic policymaking.
See a pattern here?
This is the “message” that I get when I hear Democrats — actual Democratic Party politicians, candidates, and officials — speak, whether at the Convention, on the campaign trail, in debates, or in interviews. The “message” that I get from Democrats is one of solidarity, compassion, pragmatism, altruism and competence. The “message” I get from Republicans is one of selfishness, cruelty, dogmatism, ignorance, self-admiration, paranoia and resentment. To me, the choice is clear.
But again, if I’m hearing the “message” that Democrats are sending (indeed, the “message” that both parties are sending) and that “message” as I’ve described it is what convinces me to vote for Democrats instead of Republicans, what exactly is the “messaging” “problem” the Democrats have[?]
But first, what exactly is “messaging”? Broadly, and putting it in the simplest possible terms, it seems to mean something like, “saying things that will make people think that you are good.” Hold that thought for a moment.
Republicans are, supposedly, really good at “messaging,” because they say things that make people think that they are good. Or, perhaps more accurately, they say things that make people think that Democrats are very very bad, making Republicans the only good option.
Way back around 1990 or so, Newt Gingrich, Frank Luntz and others produced and circulated a memo from GOPAC, a Republican political action committee, that essentially taught Republicans to talk about Democrats the way the Nazis talked about the Jews. That may be a hyperbolic exaggeration, sure, but not by much. And for 30 years they’ve stuck to the same script: Everything Democrats do or propose – everything – regardless of its actual subject matter or its merits, is radical left-wing job-killing reckless-spending big-government socialism that will wreck the economy, tax you to death, bankrupt the country, take away your freedom, and turn your kids gay. That’s “messaging.”
The obvious problem with Republican “messaging” is that (1) it’s bullshit, (2) it’s toxic, and (3) no one seems to care much about (1) or (2) because it’s so incredibly effective. Republicans have been running for office and winning elections on toxic bullshit for as long as I can remember, culminating in the election and deification of, and the Party’s embodiment by, a man who is himself a veritable firehose of toxic bullshit. We’re at the point now, in 2021 heading into the 2022 midterms, that practically everything Republican politicians say is toxic bullshit, the general reaction to which has been electoral success and praise for their “messaging” prowess. And when they lose, it never seems to be the result of a “messaging problem” — and certainly not the result of successful, or more-successful, Democratic “messaging.”
So, let’s get back to our basic definition of “messaging,” viz., “saying things that will make people think that you are good.” If we accept this definition, there are actually two separate elements to “messaging” that need to be explored: the “saying things” element, and the “make people think” element.
We’ve covered the “saying things” element of Republican “messaging,” viz., the vocabulary and syntax of toxic bullshit that that Party uses to win elections. Democrats don’t have their own glossary of toxic bullshit to rival the GOPAC Memo and the last 30 years of Republican campaigns. Nor do they have effective boilerplate slogans like “radical big-government job-killing socialism” to deploy as a description of literally every Republican legislative proposal (notwithstanding that Republicans are no longer interested in proposing or enacting legislation, except to grease the skids for their wealthy donors which everyone knows but, again, no one cares).
As tempting as it is to say that Democrats have too much integrity to resort to the use of toxic bullshit to win elections, it’s hard to deny that they haven’t done that, and there’s certainly an argument to be made that Democratic voters or constituencies would not stand for that.* We’ve seen how, and understand why, Republican voters are willing to swallow toxic bullshit whole, even when they know it’s toxic bullshit; would Democratic voters do that in order to, say, “own the cons”? I’ve postulated in the past that where Republican politics are grounded in selfishness and cruelty – which means their “messaging” is geared toward appealing to those attributes – Democratic politics are grounded in solidarity and compassion, so their “messaging” follows suit. Could a political party use toxic bullshit, the kind found in Republican “messaging,” to appeal to solidarity and compassion? I doubt it.
[* — I, personally, don’t think I would, because I find the GOP’s toxic bullshit so off-putting if not downright depressing and utterly horrifying, but I can’t speak for anyone else.]
So the “saying things” element of the Democratic Party’s “messaging problem” begs a series of questions: Do Democrats need their own glossary of toxic bullshit, like the GOPAC Memo et seq., to deploy at every opportunity when the topic of their political opponents comes up? Do they need a new glossary of boilerplate slogans that are not toxic bullshit, to tout their own achievements and appeal to voters’ sense of solidarity and compassion? Do they need to start appealing to selfishness and cruelty instead, and develop language to frame their own agenda that way? And once we decide what does or does not need to be done, then what?
Notice I haven’t even mentioned the “news” media yet.
Obviously, the “saying things” element dovetails with the “make people think” element in numerous ways, not the least of which being that “saying things” is useless if no one is listening, if no one is able to hear it, or if there’s no way to disseminate it. I wrote in the previous diary about the “messaging” that I got in 2020 from reading the Democratic Platform and watching the DNC and the debates, and I’ve written separately about how Republican “messaging,” straight from the proverbial horses’ mouths, convinces me of nothing so much as these people should never hold power at the national level.
That having been said, the matter of “saying things” that will convince people of your goodness, and the matter of having those “things” heard by the people you need to convince, are separate and distinct. Everyone knows that the Democrats don’t have the kind of dedicated propaganda apparatus that the Republicans have, from Fox News on down, but it’s important to remember that as much as the right-wing mediaverse has turned the tide on the GOP, in that that tail has been wagging that dog for quite some time now, that mediaverse was not created by the Republican Party itself. Rush Limbaugh, for example, was not a Republican, in that he was not an elected official, candidate for office, or Party member; neither is Rupert Murdoch. The Republican propaganda machine on radio, cable TV and the Internet was created not by actual Republicans but by self-interested entrepreneurs with their own agendas, i.e., their own reasons for wanting Republicans instead of Democrats running the government and the country.
There’s no question that the GOP has benefited and continues to benefit enormously from these in-kind contributions, but the fact remains that the Party itself did not create it and does not control it. Which brings up the questions of (a.) why there are no self-interested entrepreneurs like Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch creating a comparable propaganda machine for the Democratic Party; (b.) why any such efforts that have been made, have failed; and (c.) why, in the absence of self-interested entrepreneurs like Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch creating one for them, the Democratic Party has not created one of its own.
That last question raises the issue of how Democrats can get their “messaging” out to the public without the sort of vast symbiotic 24-hour propaganda apparatus that the GOP enjoys. Of course, anyone who is interested in what Democrats have to say can easily find it, on the Internet or on social media; I get two or three Facebook notifications a day from Joe Biden saying, “Tune in as President Biden delivers remarks….” It takes mere seconds to find out what’s in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan or Build Back Better. And anyone who wants to can sign up for newsletters and notifications from House members, Senators, the Democratic National Committee, or anyone else. The “messaging” is out there, for anyone who wants to receive it.
Before we complain that seeking out information on one’s own requires too much effort that most people are not willing to expend, we need to take into consideration that the Democratic Party and Democratic politicians have control over their newsletters, websites, and social-media feeds, but they don’t have control over TV networks, radio stations, newspapers, &c., i.e., ways of getting “messaging” to people’s eyes and ears whether they seek it out or not. The Democratic Party’s ability to commandeer the public airwaves is limited. They have no say over who Chuck Todd invites on Meet the Press.
They also can’t control how the so-called “news” media operates. Simply and over-generally stated, half of the so-called “news” media (the Republican Cinematic Universe discussed above) is devoted to making Democrats look bad, while the other half (the so-called “mainstream” media), with exceptions, is just as devoted to making Both Sides® look bad. I’ve written enough about Both Siderism and won’t re-hash that topic today, except to note that one of its distinguishing features is that it only ever seems to be deployed in defense of Republicans. What we’re seeing now is that Republicans have become so self-evidently awful, their perfidy, malevolence and bad faith so ubiquitous that it’s not even news anymore, so the only thing the “news” media can do is try to make the Biden presidency out to be Just As Bad™ as the Trump presidency; to make AOC out to be Just As Bad™ as MTG.
I bring this up not so much to complain about the disadvantage that this imposes on Democrats as to point out that, like the annoying “woke” campus liberals that a certain late-night comedian/pundit who shall henceforth remain nameless wants to hang around the neck of every Democrat in office or running for office, this is not something Democrats have any control over. It’s something they just have to live with, and find ways to overcome. But they should still be aware of it.
In conclusion, I think the ultimate point is that the Democrats’ purported “messaging problem” is only partly of their own making; even if they nailed the “saying things” element the “make people think” element is dependent on a great many things that are beyond the Party’s and individual politicians’ control. I think what has to happen if this “messaging problem” is to be solved, is that Democratic politicians and message-makers first need to (1) acknowledge and understand these disadvantages, and find ways to work around them; (2) decide whether they want to go the toxic-bullshit route of the GOP, or develop their own new, non-toxic, non-bullshit “messaging”; and (3) whichever one they choose, get busy. I also think that for the rest of us, moving past broad, vague complaints about a “messaging problem” and focusing instead on a specific, realistic, practical, workable solution thereto, would go a long way.