Another Trip to Meta Land

Reader J sends over the Sunday show lineup:

J notes that there’s nobody talking about Trump’s crypto dinner (or the $400M plane). Bennet, Himes and Hays (who dat?) will probably talk about Medicaid being slashed if they can get past talking about whether they should talk about Medicaid being slashed.

I don’t know if the Sunday shows are that important. But two things are clear:

1. Democrats don’t like to go on them. We’ve got the second string, at best, on these shows.

2. Dems are constantly talking about what they should be talking about.

In a world of the fattest, easiest-to-hit political targets ever put in front of Democrats, this need to talk in public about messaging strategy, rather than just saying something about Medicaid, crypto, bribery or anything else, is toxic. Republicans don’t spend their precious time in front of a TV camera talking about what they’re going to talk about. They just attack, relentlessly.

Related to this (I’ll explain why): A couple of people have sent me links to SnoozeFest WelcomeFest. Look at this lineup and be dazzled:

I don’t doubt that every single speaker here will have a meta-conversation about what Democrats should be saying, all while shitting on the ones who just go out and say something. For example, Slotkin has already dumped on AOC and Bernie for using a big, complicated word: “oligarchy”. She just says we should say “no kings”. I’m sure the attendees at DonorFest WelcomeFest will welcome that message because it takes the heat off of the rich people who are paying for this obvious piece of astroturf.

This is another reason that Dems can’t come together on messaging and instead are stuck in an infinite loop of meta conversation: the messaging that sticks, that really resonates, will piss off big donors. I spent a good part of yesterday with my brother-in-law, a smart guy and a good carpenter. He and his girlfriend were complaining about prices and felt really screwed by big corporations. And, of course, since we’re in the Dakotas he blames Joe Biden because that’s who their media tells them to blame. He did that in almost the same breath as he name-checked Sam Walton and blamed him for price-fixing at WalMart. (Obviously he meant the Walton family, beer and the devil’s lettuce were involved in this conversation.)

The “wisdom” peddled by “popularists” like Shor and Yglesias would tell us that a moderate message from centrist Democrats could possibly get my relatives to vote for a Democrat. My guess is that they’d be more moved by what Bernie and AOC would say about big corporations and oligarchs.

Somewhat related to this, Reader a different S sent over a piece about economic “dealignment”, which argues that the reason that folks making less than $100K split their vote down the middle is not because they suddenly became Trumpers, but rather because they didn’t feel aligned with either party and just picked one. Democrats’ “la la la I can’t hear you” response to people pushing back on the supposedly great Biden economy was a big part of that.

Going forward, if Democrats are engaged in constant meta debate about what our message should be, in part because donors can’t tolerate the obvious message, then we’re just going to keep losing. And we’re also going to be incredibly boring. Kat Abu is interesting. AOC is interesting. Some minor Biden-era functionary who had the title “Director of Message Planning” is the acme of tedium and the nadir of interest. Yet that’s who we’re sending to talk on Fox. Jesus wept.