LogFAQs > #955682310

xp1337 posted...

Perhaps not, but I'm pretty sure the research has shown that where the GOP was able to successfully able to tie "Defund the Police" to Democrats it worked to their (GOP) benefit.

Even if the policy demand is correct, if the result of the activism results in the only side willing to hear you out even a little, then I mean... it's ultimately a backfire, isn't it?

I don't think the blame lies with the activists though. I think it's an indictment of the electorate. But then I think I also have a far dimmer view of the broader electorate than many of you!

I don't deny this happens but I still am forced to see it as a messaging problem, and one the GOP has a good solution for. For better for worse, the Democrats are working on a "big tent" methodology and that means that part of their job is to manage the tent. Various factions within the tent are always going to confront them with ideas and they'll have to synthesize something that works.

Take healthcare as an example. Here you have progressives demanding an extreme (Medicare for All) and moderates offering compromises as a rebuttal. The GOP of course seizes on the extreme (socialist healthcare!) but moderates actually have some sort of rebuttal (no, we are actually going to do public option, or expand the ACA, or whatever). Progressives don't have to be happy with it totally but you get the compromise and that's progress. That's how the system is supposed to work.

(Relevant aside here that one of the problems is that we don't even get the compromise. Biden has been awfully quiet about healthcare since getting elected, aside from lowering the Medicare age, which is a far cry from the ACA expansions he was touting during campaign season)

But the compromises to stuff like defund the police and green new deal? Crickets. They don't have tenable messaging or compromises on actual policy (often times because they don't WANT to even make a compromise, even on stuff that's popular like weed!) and so the party strategy just becomes "PR nightmare, deny and disengage" which pisses off the tent and isn't enough to fend off the GOP attacks. They straight up pick the [Everyone disliked that] option. This is never ever going to stop being a problem as long as the big tent exists and Dems can't afford to axe their entire left wing. There's no one to blame here but bad Democratic PR, that's the only sane reality. The other reality is the one Inviso subscribes to where the electorate really is that stubborn and immutable, and not only do I not think that's true from a cynical perspective (people are very susceptible to propaganda!), but electoral politics is just doomed anyways if that's true.

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I definitely did not forget to put the 2020 GOTD Guru winner, azuarc in my sig!