Much of the post-mortem analysis I’m seeing seems to come down to two issues: messaging and the economy (i.e. inflation). And we’re seeing some of the usual suspects repeating the same old canard about how Democrats “abandoned the working class.” Somehow, despite the fact that Republicans have not done a single damned thing for the “working class” for at least 3 decades (except maybe reinforcing their prejudices), it’s always the Democrats who are blamed for being “elitist.” It’s also manifestly true that misogyny played a part, but the cold, hard fact is that fighting that problem is going to take at least another generation, and it’s not going to happen by scolding the misogynists no matter how well deserved that is.
Well, maybe now we can have a conversation about messaging on this site without people rolling their eyes and dismissing the idea. In Kos’s article referenced above he notes that the Republicans have built an entire ecosystem for pushing their propaganda, while we’re left with MSNBC and a bunch of bloggers for the most part. Establishing a more integrated and wide-reaching progressive media system is vital, and worth the effort.
However, it’s not just having a platform. Democrats have got to start crafting what we tell people much more effectively. With apologies to people like Paul Krugman, chirping that “core inflation is down and wages are rising” doesn’t help when people are paying $4 for a carton of eggs and $3.98 for a gallon of gas. It damned sure doesn’t help with people whose wages don’t happen to be rising either. Talking about Joe Biden’s historically strong support of unions isn’t going to resonate with the working class in right-to-work states, and bitching about those laws is useless.
The next cold, hard fact is that some of the message is going to have to be negative, no matter how much we dislike that. It’s a simple fact that Republicans have never and will never be penalized for negative messaging, even if it’s a lie. Democrats don’t have to lie, but we’ve got to start showing our opponents for what they are. Jettisoning the sanctimonious “when they go low we go high” standard was a start. Actively attacking the spin from media personalities is another start. The next time some talking head yaps about “abandoning the working class” the only reply necessary is, “tell me one thing the Republicans have done for them.” And when we have reams of data indicating that inflation is being caused by corporate price gouging, attack the gougers, not the people who don’t perceive some incremental improvement. The enemy is the bad actor, not the regular person who is trying to make sense of what is happening to them.
Messaging has got to be backed up by action of course. Trump can promise the world and get away with doing nothing, but Democrats can’t. The first priority has got to be kitchen table issues. To be frank, Biden should have been going after the gouging corporations with both fists, starting in 2021. But now that those chickens have come home to roost, Democrats have to start at least laying the groundwork for preventing the same thing from happening again. It’s analogous to Maslow’s Hierarchy: we need to learn that people vote based on what they see every day, and the higher ideals come when that stuff is taken care of.
