Be over the top. They are.
Our friend Jason Statler (LOLGOP) takes up for the MAGA Murder Budget as branding for what House Republicans passed last week. (I had thoughts about the margin of passage.) Per Common Dreams, it is the worst single transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor in US history.
It was the messaging advice of the Democrat-friendly House Majority Forward that set off LOLGOP:
He writes:
I’d been a fan of the “MAGA Murder Budget” frame since Stephanie Wilson brought it as an example of the good messaging that’s “out there” but not being used. It was no surprise to hear it had come from Anat Shenker-Osorio—the messaging mastermind, host of the fantastic Words to Win By podcast, and a personal hero I once got to break bread with at Zingerman’s Roadhouse.
I didn’t tag Anat when I posted the above skeet, but I—unfortunately for her and fortunately for me—summoned her spirit, triggering her into a quick discourse on how effective messages are tested and what the House Democratic leadership [uses] instead.
Anat rebutted House Majority Forward’s advice on a long Bluesky thread (excerpts below).
Aside from technical details about message testing, a couple of her points are key. We are in an attention economy: “a message no one hears, by definition, cannot persuade them.” No matter how wordsmithed and focus-tested.
Sarah Palin of all people defined the ACA debate with that phrase regarding “one of the wonkiest parts” and obscure provision of the bill. Go and do likewise.
Anat credits Erica Payne’s (The Agenda Project) 2011 “Granny Off the Cliff” ad from Paul Ryan’s tenure as Speaker of the HouseIt was as attention-getting as hell. They released it online only (IIRC) and had no budget for buying airtime. But it got attention and free replays on major media for days (weeks?). That’s how you do it.
You may recall the “horror” a shocked, shocked news media expressed in 2021 when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) attended a high-dollar Met gala wearing a white gown with “Tax the Rich” slashing across it in blood red. She dominated the internet for a week. People repeated her message in spite of themselves, including on Fox News. It cost her nothing. Occupy Wall Street popularized “the 1% vs.the 99%” framing, but took camping out for weeks to do it.
Democrats’ reflexive cautiousness is killing them, Statler suggests. They prioritize preventing loss over winning. I suggest that leading Democrats shy from potential blowback like abused spouses. Voters want boldness. Democrats offer them Mr. Rogers on Quaaludes. Why is their brand in tatters?
Statler’s “first rule of politics is that if you want to win, you do what Republicans do.” For financial and moral reasons that’s no workable, he concedes. So then what?
First, what’s needed, as Anat suggests, is a “break from any sense of normalcy.” That’s a comforting illusion. But establishment Democrats, especially the oldest among them, are in a sense rent-seekers, living off the positions they’ve spent their lives building. At best they will sway the boat but not rock it.
Statler concludes:
This is not something we can expect from Democrats in Washington, DC at this point in history. Either they don’t get the stakes, strategically believe in letting the GOP overplay their hand, or are literally traumatized by the power of a man who sent a mob to murder them four years ago and then pardoned that mob.
But we can call this bill what it is—the MAGA Murder Budget. And we can try to summon those who will be heard across this land to do the same. It’s the moral thing to do. And, ironically, it’s what Republicans would do.
And that’s why they win.
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