Josh Marshall would like a word with Democrats. I wish they would listen:
I know there’s been a push from biomedical researchers and, for lack of a better word, Team Science over at the NIH to have members come over to the building and meet with some researchers who can explain just the scope of research and new cures that are being tossed in the garbage each day. Just think one of your family members may end up needing one of those cures the garbage truck picked up just this morning.
That’s how you focus attention. You create kinetics and visuals and actions that reporters gravitate toward. I’m not saying exactly that model is the only way. Let a thousand flowers bloom. But a press release ain’t it. Do a thing that seems out of the norm, man bites dog, and draws attention to an issue in which the public doesn’t like what the White House is doing. Boost the salience, spread the word. Reps and Sens, fucking help me here? Good lord.
But my understanding is that those emissaries have basically been told some version of, “it sounds like a bit much, a bit out there.” “That’s not how we roll.” Or, “it doesn’t fit with the comms strategy.” That is both highly surprising to me (surprising and not surprising) and deeply disappointing? What are we doing here? Are we worried that young people are getting increasingly open-minded about supporting cancer and degenerative disorders? Really? No one supports this shit.
It is true that Democrats need to create room for candidates to depart from party orthodoxies in parts of the country dominated by Republicans. But the big and overwhelming issue that Democrats face right now has very little to do with this. The overriding problem Democrats have today is a general belief that they’re not effective at fighting for what they believe in or what the country needs to be protected from. There’s a related, but secondary issue that they worry that Dems are most focused on issues that are obscure or not connected to the lives of the great majority of people struggling to make ends meet. That lack of fight is shattering for self-identified Democrats as well as highly damaging for genuine independents and low-information voters who genuinely flip from party to party from election to election. That is overwhelmingly the challenge Democrats have right now.
The idea that up-for-grabs voters are waiting for important signals out of a bizarre intra-party score settling over Joe Biden’s age is just such unreal bubble thinking that it beggars belief. Democrats may have gotten ahead of the public on the language they used about trans issues or DEI. But the idea that voters are waiting for signals about that rather than wanting to see people stand up for the country against the current onslaught is again just some bizarre insider/consultant circle jerk.
If the narrative isn’t working for you … change the fucking narrative! Sometimes it will work and sometimes it won’t but you have to keep doing it, over and over and over again . Attention is everything.
And what Marshall is talking about with the NIH is VITAL. People do not realize that Trump and his henchmen are literally trying to kill us by cutting jobs and grants and other funding that has made it possible to fight cancer, heart disease, diabetes and all the rest and every one of those things are as personal and “kitchen table” if you will, as you can get. There is no one in this country who voted for stopping cancer research, not even MAGAs.
I find this inexplicable. Giving floor speeches is not going to get this done. Simply throwing trans kids under the bus and working hard to torture the homeless is a total waste of time. Those are culture war issue of 2024. Don’t they understand that the Republicans have dozens of those issues up their sleeves? They need to go on the offense about the things that people really care about — like cancer! My God. It’s staring them right in the face.