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I missed a few things over the weekend. Hakeem Jeffries had a very uninspiring turn on CNN where he repeated the “distractions” line that has been focus grouped to death. Cheryl Rofer had a good post where she points out that none of the distractions are really distractions — it’s all part of the Trump rolling shitshow and it’s hard to decide what to attend to.
If you want some insight into the reason that DC Democrats are sticking to lame, boring messaging that doesn’t meet the moment, Will Stancil obtained a strategy memo from Blue Rose Research, David Shor’s firm, that shows that Democratic messages don’t work and Republicans do. I’ll note that the way that the Democratic messages are phrased is boring and complex, while Republican messaging is straightforward.
It’s clear that DC Democrats in are in the thrall of folks like Shor and will be, in the main, functionally useless for the foreseeable future. This means that Democratic governors will be doing the heavy lifting. Fortunately, some of them are up to the task.
I’ve said my piece about Newsom, but I will note that he’s not focus testing his messages, and is instead throwing stuff out and seeing what sticks. Tim Walz and JD Pritzker are not focus testing their message.
Let’s start with Walz. He gave a barnburner at the DNC meeting in Minnesota yesterday. There’s a lot of excerpts, but here’s the whole speech. Key points:
He calls Trump and MAGA fascists.
He proudly calls out the diversity, equity and inclusion in the Democratic Party.
He notes that Minnesota is #1 in trans rights by some measure.
He’s angry, he shows it, he speaks in clear, unambiguous declarative sentences.
Simlarly JD Pritzker said something extremely important:
Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.
This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.
You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.
Newsom, Pritzker and Walz are showing the way for all Democrats.
Edited to add: I think Jamelle Bouie gets it right in this video. The Democrats who aren’t confronting the destruction of our system are projecting cowardice.
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