tragabigzanda wrote:At this point I’ve got infinitely more ire for the Dems for their total lack of vision, strength, and messaging.
Wrong thread, but I agree with this part and it is infuriating.
“Hope” worked really well in the early aughts...It seems that their one-word message now would be “outrage.” That’s a much harder idea to rally around, since it actively repels roughly 50% of the population
This part, I disagree with.
First of all, attributing outrage-baiting primarily to Democrats while Republicans spent the same basic time period outrage-baiting everything from M&M costume changes to Dr Seuss's estate to basic cultural diversity to books in school libraries to CRT to masks to Disney Corp to You Are Being Replaced etc is selective.
Second of all, the reason both parties are doing the outrage dance is that it
works. Outrage has been a prevalent and effective political tool for decades, now. Just in this century, you see it in the reaction to 9/11, in the reaction to the reaction to 9/11, in the Tea Party movement, in the Benghazi hearings, in Trumpism, in the reaction to Trumpism, and so on. You see it in the last presidential election, where everybody was more outraged than they've ever been and both parties saw the biggest fundraising and GOTV success they've had in your entire life.
Neither party can let go of outrage at this point for the same reason one party can't unilaterally de-escalate gerrymandering: it creates an advantage. In a digital world outrage moves faster than anything. Heck, Jim Banks, who leads the House Republican election committee, titled his last memo on messaging "Lean Into the Culture War." Outrage sells.
The issue with Democrats is that they no longer have an "and then we" to add on to that. There's no follow-up, because they refuse to let go of an ancient leadership team who see themselves as "protecting the gains we made" rather than striving to do new things. They have no actual ambition to act, only to keep winning elections. So "VOTE" is the only message they have left.
Where Burt is consistently right is this: the Republican Party understands that America is in a state of epochal change right now, and is probably going to keep getting further and further away from the thing that it used to be. They recognize that the value of extreme action today is that you can shape tomorrow. The Democratic leadership is so busy arguing that earthquakes are short, actually, that it can't recognize the long term ramifications of the buildings falling down around it. They think they're "winning" by continuing to mimic old formalities. They're ghosts from the past, capable of haunting but not affecting.
Republicans, meanwhile, have an "and then." And the value of having an "and then" (even one made up of primarily unpopular things) is that you can find ways to advance it even as you aren't winning elections. And then your constituents have something besides outrage: they believe you are actually fighting for them. Bonus: moderate voters who oppose your "and then" will mostly not notice or forget about it, over time. There's, like, zero evidence of any real blowback risk to the thing Democrats are deathly scared of: acting.