I have more noodling for the new year. Here it is: Republicans succeed mainly by scaring people about liberals. They'll ruin the country with huge deficits. They'll open the borders and let all the immigrants in. They'll make it impossible to be a devout Christian. Crime will surge and the whole country will be a hellhole like California. Etc.
The obvious response is to scare people about conservatives. The target here is not confirmed lefties who already fear conservatives, but centrist voters in swing districts, since they're the ones who will make a difference. But how?
Abortion won't do it. That's up to the Supreme Court. Donald Trump being an idiot won't do it. We have convincing evidence that most people don't care much about that. Conservative refusal to spend more on the poor won't do it. That just isn't scary to most people. Cutting taxes on the rich won't do it. It's not popular, but it also doesn't seem to bother most people.
Of course, there's always the reliable Democratic standby: Conservatives will cut Social Security and Medicare. But Trump was shrewd enough to kill that idea, and conservatives don't talk about it anymore.
Any ideas? Or is scaring people just not something that works for liberals?
On a related note, I’m not sure why the DNC and Blue states haven’t jumped on the VOTER FRAUD SCOURGE band wagon propagated by Red states and really lean into it.
If I was Tom Perez, I’d be pushing every blue state to actively and loudly enact real voter fraud legislation of their own. Firstly, penalties (you can’t deter crime without it). Large increases in minimum sentences for individuals caught wittingly committing fraud, and massive sentence minimums for those found guilty of conspiracy to commit voting fraud (companies, private citizens, government employees, (ahem) partisan election officials, (ahem) politicians etc.). Secondly, security. Outlaw Bamboo Paper Ballots!!, require non-bamboo paper ballot trails for all electronic voting machines, randomized audits, consideration of state issued IDs that are free, safe, secure, and obtainable for all socioeconomic groups, etc.
Next, I’d go around and blast Republicans for tinkering around the edges with knocking a few days off early voting or outlawing water bottles. Their light on crime approach won’t work.
Finally, consider having one state, say Illinois, be an exception. Have Illinois enact The Red State Solution To Voting Fraud Act and use Republican tactics against them. Since Republicans think having fewer polling place cuts down on fraud, Illinois could extrapolate that and make polling places proportional to population rather than precinct. Make vast swaths of red, rural Illinois drive ridiculous distances and then wait in long ridiculous lines to cast a vote. Illinois could replace independent election boards with ones appointed by the Democratic legislature, etc. Mirror Republican tactics and showcase how absurd they are for actually stopping real fraud.
They're lying cheating traitorous thugs. That's gotta count for something.
"Republicans will start World War 3" was good for a while, but Biden seems just as willing to entertain the idea.
If Americans aren't terrified because lunatics like Gaetz, Greene, Boebert, Gosar, Mast and the Cauthon kid - not to mention Trump himself - are dominating one side of politics, then I've no idea what else would scare them. Just concentrate on getting out the vote with old-fashioned grassroots organizing, and stop treating politics as a top-down marketing project.
Biden? How? The guy who's used missiles and drones less, pulled the US out of war for the first time in three decades?
His rhetoric over Ukraine and Taiwan suggest he's willing to contemplate war with Russia and/or China, for reasons he's yet to set out in convincing fashion.
We do need a good slogan in response to “Let’s Go Brandon.” My suggestion is “Don’t Look Up!"
Republicans don't just pick things at random to scare people about, they use the things that arouse tribal or group instincts for defense and attack. Not only is racism such a basic instinct, it was an official and legal part of Southern culture until about 1965. And it has been present elsewhere, if not official policy. Religions also arouse tribal feelings - most conflicts in the world today have a religious element. What really scares people in a political context is not personal danger, it is the idea that the "other" tribe will conquer theirs. People give up their lives for their country or for their side in a civil war.
The hope for Democrats is in tamping down this type of instinctive division, and in getting the attention of lower-income whites back on how they are suffering from increasing inequality because of Republican policies. Someone for them to hate would be billionaires and others of the real economic elite, but that has not worked well so far, partly because the big media are on the side of the economic elite.
If Democrats have to rely on economic inequality, it doesn't help when people draw attention to the relatively small gains that median and lower incomes have made and ignore inequality - which is what Kevin is prone to do.
Overcoming fear and prejudice is what liberal democracy is all about, while it's the fuel reactionary conservatives thrive on, is what it is.
This isn't an easy thing for Democrats, but I'm afraid it must be done. Railing on about income inequality, racism, threats to democracy, abortion, and taxes haven't done the trick so far, and I don't see that changing.
One thing that many people value highly is loyalty, and that could be a useful avenue of attack. Don't talk about overthrowing democracy or welcoming dictatorship - play explicitly on how they don't want you to be loyal to the country but to instead be loyal to The Party and The Zillionaires keeping folks down. Imagery of where loyalty to The Party gets you should be part of the pitch, though I think China is a better target than Nazi Germany. Wave that flag! And please, don't aim all of your pitch to middle class city and suburb dwellers. The small towns and rural voters must be an important part of the message.
No, and not very convincing.
First, your target audience will be those who aren't dismissing the Mainsteam media- in other words, the peripheral of the Fox market. The fundamental idea isn't exactly coherent, but taking scary images of the right-wing and linking them to major right-wing media personalities. I've got two scary images.
1.) The violent right-wing loon. The important bit is *violent*- not racist, not sexist, not bigoted, not just delusional *violent*. This is a dude who will beat you and rape your daughter if he thinks you're betraying the "real America", and the real America is something that only exists in his head.
2.) The Fox News addict. This is the ordinary uncle, brother, or son, the poor grandfather, grandmother, or aunt hooked to Fox News, and shelling out the last of their money to right-wing politicians- and more importantly, right wing grifters and those shady fellows advertising on right-wing channels Though we shouldn't be calling anybody in *specific* a grifter- just that they're out there.
The attack needs to make an escalating, and roughly chronological sequence of atrocities the right-wing "owns" right-wing owns and- this part is critical- ones where some right wing personality still popular or recognized today initially condemned, or refused to defend. The George Floyd murder, for example, and the January 6 riots. Then you've should run though each atrocity, following a pattern of four clips overlaying and interspersed with the first two images First, a pathos-heavy clip of some atrocity the Second should be a clip, ideally taken from a public speech, or their own program, showing them shocked, horrified, condemning, or outranged at the atrocity. To build upon the George Floyd example, you want the bit where Rush Limbaugh is condemning the murder- before the BLM protests and riots. Third, a linking sequence. This part must involve a radical and/or conspiratorial right-wing person- no need to be major- pushing a full throated defense of whomever committed the atrocity. This part should be particularly heavy on the scary images I mentioned earlier, and at least one image of the "elite counterpart"; for the violent man, some (always male) right-wing figure making excuses or calling him a patriot, and the (leaning male, but occasionally female) right-wing grifter calling on people to send in to save America, or selling the viewer some way to save themselves from the evil liberal. Then the fourth clip, of that same media personality voicing a full throated support for whoever supported the atrocity in question, echoing the wackjob from the third image. Repeat for each of the atrocities, escalating in both violence and imagery both from words to actions. At the end, clip that goes REAL (images of right-wing violence) AMERICAN (image of some impovered dude shelling out money to save America and himself) PATRIOTS (famous clip of outright murder- George Floyd saying "I can't breathe is best here).
Then some stinger- something like "if this isn't what you think america should be, vote democrat".
The ultimate image we want to give of the right-wing is the delusional, violent white dude who not only will wreck up brown people, but also anybody who the fever swamp may think are liberal. He should be helpfully dressed differently from the other, cooler wide dudes who aren't violent. The other image is the ordinary person whom the target audience knows and is related too, scared to death of the liberal menace imagined by the fever swamp and sacrificing dearly for it, and being led astray. The image we want to give of the right wing elites is someone who basically echoes the fever swamp, defends the violent delunatics, and scares the right-wing victims.
Again no, even less convincing, and please see the book Faces of the Enemy by Sam Keen.
While I don't see eye to eye with Kevin with a fair amount, I've learned a massive amount about "the numbers" and look forward to all his posts. A big item was hammering home about the employment numbers with the phrase "we need 60,000 new a month just to keep up with population increases". No one I talk to has any idea about this.
Fear about baseless claims is easy, it's always been easy. I still remember listing to the "old guys" shooting the crap around the back of a pickup truck. They meant well but it was mostly gut feels and such.
So where are conservative / republican websites that detail "the numbers" to go along with their posts? There must be some but so far I haven't found any.
If gun worship, white supremacy and the violent overthrow of our constitutional republic don't offer enough, I am not sure anything ever will.
It isn't all about the Republicans scaring people about the Democrats. The Democrats also scare people about the Democrats. It scares me that you "want to do something about it". The best thing is to engage in real debate, not to silence. And to stop saying stupid things. If you are poor and white they don't care. And why has the world gone nuts over transsexuals? These are losing issues for the Democrats, and people are getting bit in their every day lives by wokism run amok. Democrats, ignore it and claim the high ground at your own peril.