The real of success of Trump for Republicans is carefully tailoring their message for, well we’ll call them “uneducated” people. Simple, positive slogans so vague that they can be attached to any policy you might name to record “a promise kept”. They don’t just acknowledge that their voters don’t know much about politics, they count on it. Democrats will be reluctant to follow suit, because frankly it is authoritarian gaslighting. But guess what: successful Democrats in the past (FDR) have pursued that sort of messaging and had it work out well for them.
See @triggercut’s post from yesterday:
We see this again and again in polling. Americans broadly agree with liberal policy objectives. They don’t agree with them if they’re called “liberal” or “socialist”
The one thing the left can do is make a “Centrist-Left” news network.
The trick about Fox is that it’s all very prim and proper as it pitches the destruction of democracy, and even gives counter view points plenty of time in order to hang them out to dry in the end. Centrists and right leaners really hate the Olberman style liberal media because it’s so obviously liberal. Conservatives watch Fox and genuinely believe it’s fair and balanced. That’s as much if entirely do to presentation style, not content.
We need people from South Cali, South Texas, and South Florida, Hispanic people, walking people through the issues in a news format that makes it clear that the GOP are the bad guys but not do so in a condescending, left coast way. The problem is that this just… isn’t the center of “power”, either culturally or economically for the Democratic party. TBH, the Democratic party is too “captured” by racial equality issues for African Americans, but AA only make up 13.5% of the population, while Latino makes up about 19%, and this may not play out well everywhere, and Democrats have to sell these issues not just to college educated white liberals in liberal states.
That’s probably the same reason why Trump fixated so heavily on sabotaging Biden two years ago. They were probably looking at the same kind of numbers.
Ok? The Republicans call literally every Democrat a socialist. They called Obama a socialist and he won handily. They even called Biden a socialist, so I am not sure what good this information does anybody.
Yea, whatever you say about Trump, someone in his coterie of villains had very clear eyed ideas about the election that even Democrats still don’t really have. They set this entire election season up and it’s basically playing out exactly as they seemed to have planned - it’s just that they’re not being given (yet anyway) satisfaction in the courts. But Georgia and Arizona are clearly states whose outcomes they did not expect.
The name sticks to some Democrats in the public mind, better than it does to others.
And how do you predict that? How do you manage that?
You create big think tanks and flood media from the top down with sophisticated New Capitalism content, then make pretty meme-y posters out of these ideas and post them on social media, then you have news networks discussing issues of justice and fairness and inequality and tax reform, ect.
What you don’t do is nothing, get accused of being a Socialist, and then blink like deer in the headlights and stammer out “oh, but no, i like the “free market” too!”
When you attach things like Minimum wage and college debt forgiveness and public-paid college/community college/tech school to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, they score off the charts as socialist policies.
When you attach them to Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg or even a Republican…they score as popular ideas that should be considered.
So you find someone who pass as moderate on the surface level, but put forth liberal/progressive ideas and policies.
Eh, I’m not sure that’s prescriptive. We definitely need a way to undercut that without requiring our policies to be mouthed by skeletons.
Yeah but Joe Biden and Michael Bloomberg don’t care about those policies and won’t get them done.
I mean yes Biden has said he wants a $15 minimum wage or whatever, but other policies? M4A? No.
They’re part of the Democratic platform that Biden ran with. He won’t get them done, but that’s because we won’t take the Senate… which is because we can’t compete in rural states.
I think it’s a little deeper than that. I think it only becomes a negative if 1) you call it socialist, and 2) people believe that it’s socialist. Yes, Fox is going to call everyone a socialist. But I don’t think anyone believes Biden is a socialist because he maneuvered himself as a pretty stark contrast to Bernie, who was openly advocating democratic socialism.
But I also don’t think it’s universally true for every region. AOC is pretty clearly positioned as a democratic socialist candidate, and she’s doing fine in her district. Lots of the progressive victories this year were for people who were definitely DSA-adjacent if not directly affiliated. The label clearly didn’t hurt there.
I think it takes a skilled communicator and a shit-ton of boots-on-the-ground work to talk to people, but if you ran a charismatic, progressive candidate in rural parts of this country with a platform of minimum wage, Medicare for All, free college, and a heavy focus on class consciousness, while sidestepping the socialist moniker, you would do pretty well.
In the Senate, how a Senator votes is less important on balance than that your party holds the gavel, and thus sets the entire agenda. I’d rather have 3 new Blue Dogs and Chuck Schumer in charge, but that’s just me.
I don’t think free college would be a big winner in the sticks, but the rest of it yes. You’re not gonna sidestep the socialist moniker, though. That’s gonna get put on you no matter what you do or say. Perhaps the only reason Biden has been able to avoid it is because he’s built a long career and reputation as “the Senator from MBNA”.
You can’t stop them from throwing it at you, but I believe you could keep it from sticking, either by some kind of endearing owning of it (well, if it’s socialist to want to make our lives better, i guess we’re all socialists? yuk yuk) or by just not engaging with it and letting your charisma and policies do the talking. That’s more what I meant to say.
No. I’m saying: that’s how you test the effectiveness how how well a term sticks to a politician.
If we say: How would you describe this Bernie Sanders policy proposal? And then give them a proposal, people are likely to call it socialist.
If we say How would you describe this Joe Biden policy proposal? And then give a similar but different group the same proposal…they don’t think it is socialist.
That’s what I was saying. The socialist tag sticks to some politicians, and it is toxic. It does not stick to others.
I deliberately used policies that are in the platforms of both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden’s platforms to illustrate my point.
You deliberately mentioned a policy that I did not.
Allow me to give you the Tommy Lee Jones “I don’t care” gif face. M4A isn’t germane to the point I’m trying to make.
If you put M4A in and tell people that it’s a Biden policy, they’re typically smart enough to know it isn’t and call it out as such.
The point is: there are policies that ARE very popular across the board. But they get branded when they’re tagged to specific politicians in much the same way that people are in favor of the ACA, but not Obamacare.