Regarding Democratic Political Messaging

I have criticized democratic political messaging here before. Informed experts have been criticizing it for years.[1] I criticize it again. This is from a letter to the editor at the San Diego Union Tribune on September 4, 2020:

“Donald Trump may well win in November. 

Why? In a nutshell, the strategists who designed the Democrats’ convention message seem to have learned little from their defeat four years ago.

They appear to live in a dream world, in which good triumphs over bad, people always recognize truth from falsehoods, and voters will “do the right thing.” Unfortunately, none of these assumptions are true. If they were, Hillary Clinton would be president.

The strategy .... is simple and twofold: first, maximize use of the “Big Lie” technique and, second, let the media (that you supposedly hate) give you all the free publicity you could want.

Let’s look at the Big Lie tactic first. It didn’t originate in Germany in the 1930s; it’s been around a lot longer than that. Autocrats love it.

Consider the word “crooked,” used to label a recent presidential candidate. In this (and all other Big Lie endeavors), there are four phases. First: “Gee, that’s kind of mean-spirited.” Second: “Well, I’ve heard that she did do … something.” Third: “It must be true — everyone’s talking about it.” Fourth: You’ve won — enough of the voters believe it.

Sadly, it works, at least through phase three, almost every time.

The second strategy — let the media do your promotion for you — helped promote Trump from a noncontender to leading candidate in 2016. Current example: use (even promote) every violent demonstration, knowing the media will always give free top-story publicity to fires and Trump’s assurance that only his hardcore “law and order” enforcement can save America’s cities. Strategy two ensures the success of strategy one. Any defensive Democratic reply may get buried on page nine.

And what was the Democrats’ convention message? “We’re nice guys; they’re not.” But no plan to counter Trump’s allegations. The Democratic National Committee needs to go on the offense before the polls show Trump closing in on Joe Biden just as he did with Clinton in 2016. Then, the vacillating voter will opt in November for the allegedly strong, decisive, neighborhood-saving Trump, while MSNBC assures us niceness will prevail. The latter didn’t work in 2016, and it won’t in 2020.

The Big Lie offensive must be vigorously countered; Hillary Clinton learned the cost of not doing so. The Democrats need a much more aggressive counterattack, including rightful outrage at closing in on 200,000 coronavirus deaths, Russian election interference, numerous emoluments clause and Hatch Act violations, IRS document withholding, White supremacy approval, billionaire-enriching blatant cronyism, impaired postal delivery, Putin pandering and the loss of our allies’ respect.

At their convention, the Democrats unveiled no effective winning strategy, and they have only a few weeks left to find one.

The alternative, with disastrous results for our country: Donald Trump wins in November.”

No, that's not my letter. I didn't write it. 

But it basically does represent my opinion about democratic messaging, how awful it is, and how badly the professional media deals with the situation. In my opinion, if the democrats lose in November, their crappy messaging will have been a major factor in their loss. Only widespread revulsion of the president seems able to defeat him. That alone may not be enough to get him out of office.

After decades of their messaging weakness, the democrats still have not figured this out. Unfortunately, the MSM isn’t much better.

Footnote: 

1. This gets right to the point: “Republicans understand moral psychology. Democrats don’t. Republicans have long understood that the elephant [the unconscious mind] is in charge of political behavior, not the rider [the conscious mind], and they know how elephants work. Their slogans, political commercials and speeches go straight for the gut . . . . Republicans don’t just aim to cause fear, as some Democrats charge. They trigger the full range of intuitions [emotions] described by Moral Foundations Theory.” (emphasis in original)