A challenge to illustrate the difficulites of breaking through the right-wing misinformation machine

[EarlG]

7. Bumper sticker politics

I've heard it said that one of the issues we have is that it takes Democrats two or three times as many words to explain things to people...

But I will add that I think this challenge is probably impossible, and that's the illustration. Millions of people voted for Trump because they perceived that one or more of the problems above were serious, and that Trump had a solution. This happened because the right had an extremely powerful misinformation machine firing on all cylinders and influencing all media.

It's not enough to say that we need to come up with a better way to explain our solutions to people, because the right isn't just providing the solutions, they're also providing the problems, and they're creating tailor-made solutions that we can't compete with.

This dynamic flips around once reality catches up to Republicans. As soon as people realize that they're not getting what they thought they voted for, they swing back to Democrats. This is when Democrats are good at messaging -- when the messaging meets reality and Republican attempts to spin away from it can't work. Think the latter years of the Iraq War, the economic crash of 2008, Trump's response to the pandemic, etc.

So rather than bang our heads against the wall trying to counter messaging which is designed to thwart us, perhaps the judo move is to take that messaging and turn it back on Republicans. They literally created these problems -- now they need to provide solutions. If they can't do that, buyer's remorse will set in and people will swing back or not vote. I think whatever we do next, it should be about trying to accelerate that process.