“The short-term strategy is, win the House of Representatives,” stated the former president, garnering applause. “Because that’s going to be the circuit breaker that will give us control of one major component of the federal government. With that as a bulwark, we’re now able to block some of the worst impulses that are coming out of this White House.”
The former president laid out a two-pronged strategy for Democrats: to reclaim a House majority next year, and to work on honing the party’s messaging in the coming years.
“Long term, let’s tell a story, a better story about who we are as Americans and what we share,” Obama said, according to excerpts shared with CBS News. “We have to tell the story that makes people who feel outside that process, we’ve got to bring them back in.”
I think focusing on the message isn’t going to help all that much. I think most voters have become desensitized to political messaging. Obama’s own “hope and change,” message helped with that desensitizing, after people felt that in the end they had neither.
I think most Americans are now looking more for a real, material plan for improving things. And I don’t think the problem is that no one has a plan, plenty of politicians do, but I think Americans just aren’t sure which plan will work. It’s the perfect environment for political grifters who are able to convince people they have a plan to help them, even though they have no such thing. One thing I think most Americans were pretty confident about was that the plan that establishment Democrats put forward of “nothing will fundamentally change,” was not appealing. When the people are absolutely desperate for positive change, that’s the last thing they want to hear.
I don’t even think it’s that complicated. Look at the overlap between Trump voters and AOC or Mamdani voters, or Obama->Bernie->Trump guys. From my perspective, it seems like there are a lot of people who want massive change in how things operate in the US, and a good number of them are willing to vote for whoever says they’ll really shake things up in office, regardless of the details of said shaking or the candidate’s political affiliation.
The Democrats’ problem isn’t messaging, it’s their message. They destroy their credibility with voters when they claim they’ll be able to fix things and make life better on the campaign trail, yet once in office, they work tirelessly to maintain the status quo voters are already so unhappy with. And when they do have a candidate come along who promises the sort of change people are looking for, who people actually believe are being sincere when they say they’ll change things and deliver for the working class, the Democrats and DNC have shown they’ll do everything they can to prevent that person from actually winning and sideline them as much as possible in the event they do win. The politically engaged are tired of busting their asses to get people elected or promote their policies, only to see the Democrats shoot themselves in the foot, rolling over and watering down their goals in the name of bipartisanship, often before the Republicans even ask for it. If a Democratic Senator told me they were campaigning on free ice cream for everyone, I’d expect to be brought down to “One cup of skim milk for everyone at or below the federal poverty line, provided they can complete 20 pages of paperwork to prove they really deserve it, and submit this documentation on a website that’s only operating between 1-3pm on February 29th, but closed every other day during leap years and completely inoperable in regular calendar years,” by the time a draft materializes, much less after Republican obstruction and pushback.
It’s no wonder people have soured on them.
100%. I think Biden’s “status quo” messaging only worked because of the chaos that was Trump’s first term and COVID. That is not a platform to run on when Trump pushed the country into full-blown fascism. The pendulum needs to swing in the other direction. The only thing I fear is that those in charge of the DNC have proven they are not interested in supporting social democrats or democratic socialists for the presidency. We sorely need a third party that is taken seriously.
It’s hard to explain a real plan when most people are only semi literate, with no attention span, and no real knowledge of how government works.
What percentage of people believe the president writes laws, do you think?
That didn’t stop us from the New Deal