Democrats Once Again Poor on Communication
I’ve harped on Democrats having no centralized messaging, no coordinated voice, and poor ability to scale to the top of the news. Of course presidents always have the edge on that but Democrats fall far short of what it seems they could do. The long TSA airport security lines are the latest example, and a critical one.
Public opinion about a government shutdown, even a partial one, is never going to hover in neutral for long. It’s a knife edge situation. Unstable and bound to fall to one side or the other quickly. The current news about it is the very long wait times at TSA airport security lines. The Democrats have done a little to get out their view but have mostly fallen short, and it’s about to bite them, hard.
There’s a lot at stake. Nationally there’s the question of whether any reasonable guardrails are going to be put on how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operate in arresting immigrants and deporting them. And on how they deal with protesters. Politically whether Democrats can win all, or part, of Congress and put some breaks on Trump will be affected by whether they come out looking great or terrible out of this shutdown. And it will be one or the other. Not much likeliness of middle ground.
Speed is of particular importance in this shutdown. The original idea, blocking funding of DHS until the Republican controlled Congress agrees to such guardrails, is great. At the time there were almost daily top-of-the-news stories of ICE killing or hurting people, or wildly inappropriate treatment and deportations. But the White House has backed off some. At least enough to reduce such frequent and terrible headlines. So that will have faded some in peoples’ awareness. In the meantime problems caused by the shutdown have started to appear and are bound to get to be more and worse.
Democrats can’t help it if Republicans hold out and drag this out. Well, if the public eventually howls too loud they could say they will listen to the public and relent, but make it stand out as a clear message of how fixed Republicans are on letting ICE run wild. They could, but it would be almost impossible to not also look like, their go the Democrats again, being ineffective. Given that dynamic, Republicans have every reason to drag this out.
The White House just blamed Democrats for being slow by saying they took weeks to respond to an offer. That actually had more to do with the offer being a non-starter and rejected, but that’s the way the game is going.
Just breaking news. Elon Musk has offered to pay the salaries for the next pay period of TSA workers who would otherwise go without. That’s an odd thing for him to single out to be helpful on, and seemingly contrary to what his buddy Trump would want. It may buy Democrats a little more time. This is an example of things being as unpredictable as can be under Trump and Musk and these loose canons.
In any case the situation is all the more reason why Democrats need to get a loud clear message out that it is Republicans who are refusing reasonable guardrails and it is their fault there are long TSA lines. They need that, both to try to make that knife edge public opinion fall their way, and to counter the Republican inclination to drag this out. If Republicans start feeling people are against them on this they’d at least have some push toward getting this settled.
Democrats have made some statements to that effect. Senator Cory Booker (D, NJ) blamed Republicans for the problem in an interview with CNN. Yet somehow their message doesn’t rise to common awareness. It’s not there, side-by-side with the stories of the TSA lines. It would be challenging, but if they want to be a winning party they have to meet such challenges.
If I was one of those people who leave news on audio or on screen all day maybe I would see more of it but I’m not. I consume news in a professional but structured way. Neither my patience nor my emotional health could tolerate it running all day. I follow the core points of major stories from leading credible sources. That with an eye toward knowing what the typical busy but interested citizen might see. That plus in-depth dives into select topics. From that it would seem that typical citizen would see much more about the shutdown being a problem than about it being Republicans’ refusal to have those reasonable guardrails.
Democrats started strong on this. Public opinion is going to fall one way or the other soon. Their odds of success are slipping with time.
Maybe they should designate one person, maybe a prominent leader not currently running for office, to give a daily statement. And make it news worthy. Show up at the TSA line today to speak about that. Show up in Phoenix tomorrow to talk about this record breaking heatwave and climate change. And on and on, over and over. Some way to get their message to have clarity, voice, and rise to the top of the news. Surely people who can win national offices should have some idea how to do this. And if they don’t it’s just going to be a bad result all over again. Will they do this? We’re waiting.
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