I don’t get it. Bring out the hand puppets. What does it mean “ruined his senior year last year by 17 points?” Was the school board member on a [basket,foot,other]-ball team that defeated Mr. Seppy? How did Mr. Seppy obliterate the school board member? Was there name calling & insults involved? Any hurt feelings or broken chairs?
No, but he does have a Senate majority and they look like a bunch of clowns on this spending bill that 95% of Americans have no idea what is in. They also have 0 support on FB and Twitter where voters hang out.
Yes, it’s an awkwardly worded tweet trying to be punchy.
- School board ruined kid’s senior year (school closures)
- Kid ran for school board.
- Kid defeated an incumbent by 17 points.
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This is such a key point. The Republicans have taken up a point of unified falsehood based obstructionism. You have to meet that with a clear voice on issues with simple obvious pro/con sides. The behemoth budget bills are needed in a bipartisan congress to balance everyone’s demands. When one side strictly won’t play you have to force them to obstruct an obvious single issue that benefits their constituents.
To kind of repeat myself: you mention the “Build Back Better” bill and the vast majority of America (myself included) has no idea what’s in it. The vast majority of those people will assume “shitload of government spending, lots of it wasteful, nothing good for me” and reflexively be against it.
So, put out some releases explaining what’s in it. No, Democrats can’t afford to be debating philosophy when Republicans are swinging spiked baseball bats. Having a massive omnibus bill was, is, and always will be a disaster. Break it up into however many individual pieces, force votes on every single one of them.
When Republicans vote against something, crank up the press machine and blanket the airwaves. Republicans just voted against paid family leave, which would allow parents to spend time at home with their newborns without fear of struggling to make ends meet. Republicans just voted against improving America’s roads and bridges, leaving thousands of unsafe and obsolete bridges at risk of collapse that would kill and injure Americans. On and on and on.
You do that 20 times, and before too long Americans hear “Republicans are against protecting Americans” and they get pissed, and now you’ve got issues you can repeatedly bludgeon them with in the next election. They won’t hear tax-and-spend Democrats, they’ll hear Republicans are endangering my life and vote accordingly. Plus, they’ve heard about all this work you’re doing in Congress and it’s being held up by one side instead of “Congress sat around for months, did nothing, tried to cram this one massive bill through, couldn’t do it” and think Congress doesn’t do a fucking thing, throw people in charge out.
This is not difficult. Except, we’re talking about the Democrats, so it’s way beyond their comprehension.
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The bipartisan Infrastructure bill could get passed tomorrow. Just unlink it from BBB.
I think we are on the same page.
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You have to win elections to make policy. Culture war is about winning elections.
We are. And it’s maddening that this should be incredibly obvious to the party apprachik and they continue to practice insanity.
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Too complicated.
The Democrats need to just make up a wedge issue and say that Republicans are for it. Like banning women from working and point out all their actions support it.
If republicans nominate anyone slightly less grotesque than Drumpf they will win by a landslide in coming years.
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Well, yes - that too. But it’s one thing to say Republicans don’t support ________. It’s a totally different thing to force them to get on the record about it.
It’s why you keep lining up votes. You vote on something, the press will report it. You do that repeatedly, the press now has an unintentional drumbeat of yesterday, the House of Representatives voted to pass ______, the bill now goes to the Senate where Republican leader Mitch McConnell has voted to oppose it and people start getting pissed that ______ isn’t flowing to them as a benefit they can enjoy, and then you use that as a cudgel repeatedly.
That’s not scary enough.
Republicans want 50’s style housewives and to eliminate their freedoms. It starts with their control over their reproductive rights. The wanted to discourage vaccines and drag out the pandemic to keep millions of women out of the workforce to keep their children safe. Etc. etc. Their voter suppression tactics will make it more difficult for working women to vote as it reduces their flexibility in how and when they can vote.
I have no idea what the right message is, but just put together a core boogeyman and tack every GOP idea to it.
Generally here in Europe, the US is considered to be a right wing country, not a moderate one.
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LOL. Assuming you are not from Poland, Hungary, or one of the Baltic states.
Republicans want to confine your wives and daughters to the home, keep them out of the workplace, and force them to have kids against their will - just like the Taliban in Afghanistan. They don’t want you to have the right to vote, and they’re trying to repress your freedom to speak out against them with dangerous new legislation that smacks of Communist Russia where dissent was crushed and punished with exile. They want to deny live-saving vaccines that could save the lives of your children, parents, grandparents and other loved ones, and their anti-vaccine actions have killed 740,000 people - or as many people as in (fit this to the area in question).
See the difference in messaging? Doesn’t have to be 100% correct. It has to hit people between the eyes and elicit feelings of fear and horror.
Then, you repeatedly make them vote on each one of those. When they vote against, you crucify them with a longer spot specifically tailored to that issue. Then you run that on repeat, until voters hear “Republicans are communists trying to control us by denying us freedom and choice.”
Or, you know, spend 10 months (and counting) trying to pass voting rights legislation, BBB, BIL, TFD, whatever, and getting nowhere with any of it and having no messaging about it while Republicans beat the shit out of you on it with simple, direct, inaccurate messaging. Whatever feels best.
I guess I meant Western Europe
Getting closer, but I don’t think the votes/facts really matter. As long as the scary message is close enough to what Republicans are generally for.
The media is all in on giving Republicans cover for whatever moral panic they invent. I fear any semblance of debate over real issues is long dead.
One benefit of inflation is Social Security checks will be going up 5.3% for COLA. If Democrats had any messaging, and learned literally ANYTHING from Republicans, they’d ‘take credit’ for that vocally. But they won’t.
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