Why are Dems so bad at “messaging”

The story is the story. That is, the resistance needs to shape its own narrative about the kind of future it envisions and how that connects with both the lived experiences of a pluralist and rights respecting constituency that is shocked by the lawlessness and abuse being heaped on us and our neighbors and affronted by the techbillionaires and christian-nationalist zealots think they are better than us and deserve to run our lives as they would like and profit from.

This should not be a hard story to tell and already every politician who speaks to that desire is being all-but-canonized. It’s not looking for a person to SPEAK for us all, though we like hearing Bernie, Cory Booker, and Buttigieg say what we want. It is a desire to be HEARD. And as such every alternative is good, and better than repetition of the old story of FDR and the glorious period in which Boomers grew up when inequality actually was curbed and opportunity (for white people especially) flourished and men’s family position was secured by a new social role (the single breadwinner patriarchal nuclear family).

The problem with boomer politicians in their 70s is that this past is their vision for the future. And anyone who buys into reactionary backward looking images of the glorious past is openly seeing T as their advocate, and dems are not going to recruit real pluralists to a past in which racism and sexism and gay people were all conveniently invisible to the relatively prosperous white middle class.

So either we help craft a narrative that takes the reality of today as incorporating a BETTER future, or we hand the narrative to T and his clown show fascists. They have a future story to tell that involves going back to open racism, sexism and homophobia and emphasizing the parts that seem newest and least accepted: trans rights, positive DEI programs trying to do affirmative action rather than talk about it, climate activism as essential to all our survival.

It’s all one story, but we need to focus on telling it, applauding it, celebrating those who get it, affirming the awakening we have been through since that supposedly glorious FDR created past and building a new one, not trying to sell the old one as sufficient now — if only T were not somehow peddling the same nostalgic goods with an added dose of resentment.