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0 pointsapi11mo ago0 comments

I agreed with that, though not entirely with how it was done, but they didn't take credit for it. Very few people even knew it was happening.

Objectively I don't think Biden was a bad president, and no I didn't vote for Trump.

They also never took a principled stand on it. Biden and Harris never said "the trade policy of Reagan and Clinton was a mistake and we are reversing it." If Harris had said that, she would have flipped Michigan and Wisconsin and maybe Ohio. With one sentence. Throw in "the Iraq war was a mistake, and while I support Ukraine we need to make sure we don't repeat the mistakes of the past" and she might have flipped a few more.

If that's at all what Harris thinks, then the Democratic Party has an enormous communication problem. They don't know how to connect and they don't claim their wins. They sound like their whole communication agenda is set by consultants and PR people, because it is, and when people hear that they dismiss it as bullshit because everything consultants and PR people say is bullshit. That communication style is a huge contrarian indicator. When people hear a press release they tune out.

The right has learned how to talk to people. Or rather, they've un-learned the communication playbook of the latter half of the 20th century. That's why they're winning.

I knew Harris was going to lose when she skipped Rogan for SNL. I'm not a big Rogan fan (he's gone way downhill since his early years) but he's how you reach people today. Nobody cares about SNL.

I think a good first step would be to start listening to people like AOC -- not necessarily about all her policy views but about how she communicates. She communicates like a 21st century politician, not like someone from 1980.

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surgical_fire11mo ago

> The Democratic Party has an enormous communication problem. They don't know how to connect.

I am not from the US, but I perceive the same problem in my country of residence (and in other countries I know people from).

The main issue I see is that politics became a sort of entertainment. So a more serious politician (the adults in the room, so to say), communicate in a fairly dry, and even careful tone. And that happens because politics is supposed to be a dry and boring subject.

Budgets, policies, et cetera and so forth, all those are dministrative administrative, not something to be decided with emotions.

But that doesn't lend itself well to communication. So what people pay attention to is the far right buffon yelling about white replacement or such bullshit.

apiOP11mo ago

It's part politics-as-entertainment and part the fact that the whole late 20th century PR flunkie style of communication was never popular. People never liked it. Now that the Internet has blown up the old media that used that style, people don't tolerate it anymore.

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