Authoritarianism update; Failed messaging -- the Dem Party's fatal weakness

The NYT reports that at least some applicants for jobs in DJT's administration must pass a loyalty test to be hired. The test asks questions that show loyalty to DJT and rejection of inconvenient facts.

But before they leave [their job interview], some of them have been asked a final set of questions that seemed designed to assess their loyalty to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The questions went further than just affirming allegiance to the incoming administration. The interviewers asked which candidate the applicants had supported in the three most recent elections, what they thought about the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen.

Among those were applicants who said they gave what they intuited to be the wrong answer — either decrying the violence at the Capitol on Jan. 6 or saying that President Biden won in 2020. Their answers were met with silence and the taking of notes. They didn’t get the jobs.

Mr. Trump has told advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was appointing “traitors,” some of whom came to view him as a threat to democracy. .... He has singled out for especially harsh attacks his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, who has called Mr. Trump a fascist; .... and his attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and William P. Barr.  

Mr. Barr is a staunch conservative who satisfied Mr. Trump right up until the final weeks of his presidency, when he refused to use the Justice Department to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.  

Mr. Trump’s lawyers were quietly working on a plan, called Schedule F, that would make it much easier to fire career civil servants. Such employees have protections to keep a stable level of expertise from one administration to the next, regardless of whether the presidency switches from one political party to the other.

Mr. Trump’s allies have made clear that Schedule F will be brought back in his second term.

That speaks for itself.

One commentator "argues that even as Trump’s second-term plans are getting more overtly dangerous to the rule of law, Democrats need to do a lot more to alert the public to what’s coming—not just because it’s good politics but because the country needs it."  

At this point, I doubt that Democrats can warn anyone of much of anything. For now, Dem elites seem to be a spent force with low public credibility and not much fight left in them.

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Q: What do post election polls indicate about public approval and disapproval of the Democratic Party?

A: Post-election polls following the 2024 U.S. elections indicate a decline in public approval for the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party's favorability rating dropped to 38% after the election, a five-point decline from pre-election levels. This shift highlights a growing perception that Democrats are less aligned with voter priorities.  Among swing voters, the Democratic Party had a net favorability of -12 (42% favorable vs. 54% unfavorable), significantly worse than the Republican Party's net favorability of -4 (45% favorable vs. 49% unfavorable).

In my opinion, there is a huge issue here. Specifically voter perceptions are that the Repub Party aligns more with their priorities than the Dem Party. I think that is a mostly false perception. Non-trivial evidence supports that opinion.

Q2: To me, the Democratic Party is significantly more aligned with voter priorities than the Republican Party. In my opinion, the disconnect amounts to perceptions that do not align with reality. For example, the Republican Party in congress blocked its own border control bill so that Trump and Republican politicians could demagogue the issue in the election. Although Republican elites blamed Biden for inflation, other factors were more important than Biden's policies, e.g., the Ukraine war, COVID-linked supply chain disruptions, and old-fashioned corporate greed that boosted prices beyond inflationary pressures. Republicans also demagogued the issue of crime, grossly exaggerating the severity of overall crime. Is that a reasonable assessment of voter's "perception problem"?

A2: Your assessment of the "perception problem" regarding voter priorities and the Democratic and Republican parties is reasonable and supported by evidence. .... long response ....

Conclusion 
The perception that Republicans are more aligned with voter priorities often stems from effective messaging rather than substantive policy alignment. .... Meanwhile, Democrats face a challenge in bridging the gap between their policy achievements and public awareness of those achievements. (emphasis added)

I now think of the 2024 election as The Great Vaporware Election. Sophisticated dark free speech was front and center. Repub messaging was superb in creating false beliefs in the minds of millions of voters. Of course, aggressive Dem wokeness, was the Dems' own fault. However, even with that fault, the Repubs demagogued the wokeness issue to create unwarranted fear and anger, slandering the Dems as radical left lunatics, socialists, Marxists, anti-White racists and so forth. 

Q: Is it a reasonably defensible opinion to see the 2024 election as The Great Vaporware Election, or is that inaccurate and/or unwarranted? Or, have most recent elections been more vapor than substance, making this one not much different?