“Gaslighting of Trumpian proportions”
It’s infuriating. The media narratives post-Nov. 5 focus on what Kamala Harris did wrong in her upbeat, mere three-and-a-half month presidential campaign. What did Democrats do wrong? How did they lose this group, that group, etc. How must they reinvent themeslves after a sufficient period of sackcloth and ashes?
“Democrats Lost Their Base and Their Message,” declares the New York Times’ Nate Cohn. Trump’s reelection means “the end of the Democratic Party as we knew it.”
Really? Millions face violent deportation, Ukrainians face losing their country, Gazans face continued slaughter, and the world faces the collapse of NATO and the rise of fascism American-style because Democrats have a messaging problem? And the 77 million Americans who chose those outcomes (by a “landslide” of 1.6 points)? Their hands are clean?
Mehdi Hasan is not buying it either. He issued this rant against media narratives that Democrats veered too far left:
The ‘moderates’ got *their* candidate in every single election in which the Republicans nominated Trump: 2016 Clinton, 2020 Biden, 2024 Harris… and they lost to Trump two out of three times. And now they’re going to blame *the left* for that? No f*cking way.
“There was nothing left-wing about Harris,” Hasan reminds YouTube.
Clearly, Democrats need to make more inroads in rural America where Republicans eat their lunch.
Democrats need to advertise their accomplishments more. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell Tuesday night mentioned how Alaska’s state ferry system will get replacement ferries and on-ship wifi that no one will know arrived because of Joe Biden’s economic policies. Some RW commenter will complain that Joe Biden didn’t give Alaska new ferries, the American taxpayer did. Then he’ll credit Donald Trump with the stimulus checks Congress appropriated to which Trump added his signature.
Democrats’ victories in North Carolina this year came not simply because the GOP slate was so extreme, but because voters are more inclined to trust the Democratic brand with local and state matters than with national ones. That, despite national Democrats’ polices being overwhelmingly popular. Just more popular than federal-level Democrats are.
I hear the regular complaints that the left sat on its collective hands as conservative billionaires consolidated control over the media in the last few decades. Why don’t “our” billionaires fight back? Has anyone asked them?
Vox asks Democrats like Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez where Democrats went wrong (by 1.6 points). She insists, “I think there’s a lot of work to be done on conveying cultural respect and regard for the people that are building our country, that are growing our food, that are keeping the wheels on the bus and conveying that respect sincerely and thinking and listening with curiosity.”
No argument there. Yes, there is a toxic and widening class divide in the country, but given the structure of the Electoral College, bridging the rural-urban divide is perhaps more proximate to Democrats winning back the White House and the Supreme Court.
Blame the notion that Democrats have veered too far left on right-leaning media narratives. But also on Democrats’ failure to recognize that marketing is more effective than messaging.
Americans who chose Trump are not off the hook for what comes next. They need to take a long look into the mirror.