Opinion | For Democrats, it’s the messaging, stupid

Welp, that sucked. 

America on Tuesday or Wednesday, or whatever day this is now, officially elected its first felon as president of the country. In hindsight, we probably should have known that we first had to elect every kind of man, including the dumb ones and corrupt ones, before we elected a woman. 

That’s not to say that I believe misogyny was anywhere close to the reason Kamala Harris lost. I don’t believe it was. 

It was the economy, stupid. 

Actually, to be more precise, it was the framing of the economy and the manner in which Democrats consistently allowed Donald Trump and Republicans to paint inflation as a uniquely American problem created by Joe Biden and Democrats, while also allowing them to pretend as if COVID didn’t happen during Trump’s tenure and that he held no responsibility for the response to it. 

And that’s why I’m here – to talk about what has to happen now for Democrats to get this thing back on track and recover from what was a thorough ass kicking. 

People try to over-complicate politics and elections sometimes. At their core, they are simply about messaging. Figuring out which issues and cues people are responding to and then making sure your message on those issues is getting through.  

This was the downfall of Democrats in this cycle, and it has been the core issue within the party that has allowed Republicans to hold ground. There is nothing else. 

Democrats have good, well liked candidates. Democratic policies are better received. Democratic policies have proven to produce a better functioning government and economy. 

Republicans, over the last several years, have essentially stopped trying to seriously govern. Just take the biggest issue facing most Americans – health care. We’re going on two decades now since the creation of Obamacare and there still isn’t a single serious Republican idea for replacing it, despite hundreds of phony votes to repeal it. 

But then, Republicans have figured out a secret – it’s not what you do, it’s what you can sell in today’s political world. And they are so, so, so good at selling. 

If you doubt this, consider, again, the economy and inflation that won the 2024 election for them. Won it so well that they made unthinkable gains in Hispanic voters, while their candidate for president was simultaneously calling them vile names, saying they were poisoning the blood of the country and promising to mass deport millions of them and their family members. 

That was some messaging job. But it’s actually even more remarkable when you consider that it was all BS. 

Trump managed to construct a narrative of the economy that painted Biden as the responsible party for your eggs costing $5 and high energy prices, while he simultaneously reminded everyone of how great his economy was.

But here’s the thing: None of that is true. 

First off, both he and Biden gave out government checks during the pandemic, but only one of them consistently questioned and undermined efforts to keep the virus at bay and get people vaccinated. Then, when prices started to tick up because of the pandemic, major corporations started price gouging and taking advantage of the “Biden did that” campaign that started four years ago. In addition, Trump never did anything to build or better the economy. That was Obama’s economy that he inherited. He then passed out massive tax breaks to the wealthy – which ran up the debt – and left behind a smoldering rubble of an economy when he was shoved out the door. 

This is the reality. But so very few people know it. 

And that’s a Democratic Party problem. 

For too long now, the party has sat back and simply accepted that life has to be as it is in terms of the media landscape in this country. A landscape that has the mainstream media on one side and a rightwing messaging apparatus on the other. 

Fox News and its various off-shoots and imitators aren’t even trying anymore to hide their bias. And why would they? They’ve admitted in public court filings that they’re networks are not news networks, but are entertainment, and they’ve been caught red handed essentially working for Republican campaigns, and nary a rightwinger cares at all. They’re still tuned in every night to get their dose of outrage, carefully crafted and produced to push the latest GOP talking points on whichever topic is resonating with the public. 

Democrats have nothing like this. 

They have relied on truth and facts and legacy media to tell their stories and get their message across. But too often now, in some misguided attempt at fairness, those mainstream outlets are being sucked into the rightwing propaganda fest. And the Dem message on important topics is getting lost in the shuffle. 

Again, take inflation. While several of the major networks did, at times, attempt to tell the complicated reality of GLOBAL inflation, they also fell into the “look how much eggs cost today” laziness that drove anger and misrepresented the reality of the situation. 

That’s not really a knock on the mainstream media. It’s not their job to handle messaging for Democrats. And the party cannot rely on those old techniques any longer. 

Democrats are going to have to fight fire with fire. They’re going to have to devote significant resources to creating a daily information service spread across multiple platforms that pushes out the facts about their policies and their views of the most important issues. They have to attack Republicans’ talking points and lies and they have to illustrate – in easy to understand terms – the manner in which GOP policies are hurting people/making issues worse and contrast those with Dem ideas.

And here’s the big one: Democrats have to start spiking the ball. All the time. 

If Trump had this current economy, he’d be on TV 27 times per day talking about how it’s the greatest economy the world has ever seen after a pandemic, “no one thought we could do it,” “many people were saying it was impossible,” and yada, yada, yada. Democrats, though, have barely made a peep, as if they were embarrassed to say anything. 

Look, you just lost to a 34-time convicted felon who literally led a coup against the country and who was caught paying off a porn star, despite having policies that produced a robust economy and having women firmly on your side. You’ve got better ideas, better policies and better results. 

But none of that matters if no one knows it.