Messaging That Can Reach the Gut of All Voters
Resistance groups and leadership need messaging that strikes a chord not just with those already aligned but also with some disillusioned MAGA people. Messaging that can easily be taken up and repeated a lot. Here are a couple of suggestions.
First A Note On Speed
As much momentum as can be gained, and as much garnering of support as can gleaned, needs to happen as quickly as possible because there is probably a very narrow, and already closing, window for optimal progress. Trump being his most outrageous, doing what is most likely to disillusion at least some of his followers, may be happening now. With time the temperature may cool, plus some forces will work to normalize what’s going on. Courts are blocking some of Trump’s actions. He just announced that Musk doesn’t get to fire people, he only gets to tell department heads who he thinks should go but then it’s up to those department heads. We’ll see how that plays out but it may be a step in the slowing down of the early rush of craziness. Republicans in Congress may push back on some actions, and make others official, taking some of the focus off Trump as the source of damage. In numerous ways there may be less heat lighting a fire under the resistance as time goes on. Some things will heat up later, like the slow building of damage that tariffs might make, but now is a short, hot season for reaction.
Invoking the Cold War and “We”
The first suggestion on messaging is to amp up something that Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D, MI) said in her Democratic response to Trump’s rally in front of a joint session of Congress. It can be phrased as, “If Trump had been president back in the ’80s, instead of Reagan, we would have lost the Cold War.” That’s a powerful thought. Though the Cold War was quite a mess it would not appeal to most voters, Democratic or Republican, to think about some president back then capitulating to the Soviets, giving up, resulting in our having lost that struggle. It’s taken as a point of national pride, a high point of “American Exceptionalism”. To think we would have lost it is a deep, guttural ache. Regarding how that is phased the “we” is important. Not, “the nation would have lost” or, “America would have lost” but “we would have lost”. That little bit of personalizing it strikes deeper.
Fantasy vs. Reality
The other message, which can be presented many ways, is fantasy vs reality. They want to deal with fantasy. We want to deal with reality. They, Trump especially, make up a fantasy world where Ukraine is to blame for its own invasion. Where vitamin A is the correct response to measles. Where there are only two sexes despite nature, which is beyond government, sometimes making people who are a mix of each. Living in fantasy makes problems easy. Just pretend people who aren’t quite this or that don’t exist. Pretend dumping water out of a reservoir which then wasted into the ground will somehow help Southern California when in fact it had no way to get there. Or make up fantasy problems so you can fantasy-solve them. Pretend the Panama canal is controlled by China so you can act tough and then declare the problem solved. But we, all of us, live in the real world where real problems are often harder. A correct resolution of immigration issues, those it would be better to keep out, those we should welcome, those we need here with us, is complex. Thwarting invaders like Putin is hard. Big issues that aren’t even being considered right now like the huge number of people who have jobs but are homeless, and housing issues generally, are really hard and nobody who tries to tackle them is going to come out looking good but what progress can be made has to be tackled.
We’re real people in the real world with real problems that are really difficult, but the hard work is what we do. They want to make fantasy problems and pretend fantasy solutions are good enough. We can’t afford that. Leave the fantasy people to their childishness. Real people want to do real work to solve real problems.
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