DEMS’ MESSAGING PROBLEM DWARFED BY GOP MEGAPHONE
Democrats have a messaging problem, as you’ve no doubt heard since their recent election losses.
Weak messaging has defined Democrats for most of the years I’ve covered them. Theirs is a diverse, fractious party that currently spans “the Squad” on the left to Manchema on the right; what’s “on message” is often up for debate. They’re wonky and wordy: A Democratic bumper sticker, the joke goes, ends with “Continued on next bumper sticker.” They resist spiking a football amid good news, for fear of seeming insensitive to anyone who’s not feeling it.
Stuart Stevens, a veteran of five Republican presidential campaigns, recently tweeted: “Dow is over 36,000, unemployment has dropped from 6.3[%] in Jan. to 4.8. Over 5 million jobs added, a record. 220m vaccines in
10 months. And only 30% of country think US is on right track. The Democratic Party has a huge messaging problem.”
Even some Democrats agree. Imagine Donald Trump with those economic indicators — the stock market gains alone would have him in celebratory fits of credit-taking. Yet Republicans counter “Inflation!” and Democrats are on the defensive.
Yet Democrats’ ineffectualness by itself doesn’t explain why Republicans are so much better at this game.
Republicans have an entire conservative media ecosystem, dominated by Fox News and extending to right-wing websites and local talk-show hosts, to amplify their message and to shred Democrats’ arguments.
While Republican Glenn Youngkin managed to win over both pro-Trump rural voters and many anti-Trump suburbanites to be elected Virginia’s governor, key to his balancing act was conservative media. Fox News was Youngkin’s direct channel to MAGA voters. Meanwhile, the fleece-clad candidate projected a moderate image campaigning in vote-rich suburbs not attuned to the likes of Fox.
In past years, conservative media often attacked Republican leaders and promoted their harshest critics, contributing greatly to the rise of the tea party movement and Trump, and forcing other Republicans to fall in line. “Trump got everyone on the same page,” Nicole Hemmer, a historian of conservative media, told me. “There’s a real political power in that.”
The Democrats have no analog. Republicans and others who suggest CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the rest of mainstream media are comparably in Democrats’ corner aren’t paying attention.
As Democrat-friendly as CNN and MSNBC are, they thrive on covering conflict, as journalism always has. For months, the conflict has been among the Democrats who control the White House and Congress — progressives versus moderates, battling to pass an ambitious domestic agenda despite thin House and Senate majorities. Mainstream media has been a megaphone for the “Democrats in disarray” narrative that’s been so damaging to Biden and his party.
That framing isn’t wrong; Democrats have provided plenty of self-defeating drama to fill it out. And after years of adversarial reporting on Trump, many outlets want “to look as tough on Biden,” as Hemmer said.
Yet the focus on Democrats’ scrapping gives short shrift to the substance of what would be transformative policies. And it lets Republicans off the hook.
Their united opposition to the larger of Democrats’ two bills, the nearly $2-trillion, multiyear package of social spending and tax cuts, is simply taken as a given. Too often Republicans are allowed to dismiss the entire package simply as “socialism” or “wasteful spending,” without being challenged to address its popular particulars.
Democrats could have the best message ever, but voters who rely on the likes of Fox News or Breitbart.com won’t see or read it, except perhaps in mockery. At the same time, the message from Republicans and their media propagandists elevates culture wars over policy discussions (what policies?), and conspiracy theories over facts, even about presidential elections and insurrectionists (Tourists? Patriots? Let’s just move on).
That’s the real messaging problem.