How Can Democrats Do Better?

First, don’t think of an elephant. Remember not to repeat false conservative claims and then rebut them with the facts. Instead, go positive. Give a positive truthful framing to undermine claims to the contrary. Use the facts to support positively-framed truth. Use repetition.

Second, start with values, not policies and facts and numbers. Say what you believe, but haven’t been saying. For example, progressive thought is built on empathy, on citizens caring about other citizens and working through our government to provide public resources for all, both businesses and individuals. Use history. That’s how America started. The public resources used by businesses were not only roads and bridges, but public education, a national bank, a patent office, courts for business cases, interstate commerce support, and of course the criminal justice system. From the beginning, the Private Depended on Public Resources, both private lives and private enterprise.

Over time those resources have included sewers, water and electricity, research universities and research support: computer science (via the NSF), the internet (ARPA), pharmaceuticals and modern medicine (the NIH), satellite communication (NASA and NOA), and GPS systems and cell phones (the Defense Department). Private enterprise and private life utterly depend on public resources. Have you ever said this? Elizabeth Warren has. Almost no other public figures. And stop defending “the government.” Talk about the public, the people, Americans, the American people, public servants, and good government. And take back freedom. Public resources provide for freedom in private enterprise and private life.

The conservatives are committed to privatizing just about everything and to eliminating funding for most public resources. The contribution of public resources to our freedoms cannot be overstated. Start saying it.

And don’t forget the police. Effective respectful policing is a public resource. Chief David O. Brown of the Dallas Police got it right. Training, community policing, knowing the people you protect. And don’t ask too much of the police: citizens have a responsibility to provide funding so that police don’t have to do jobs that should be done by others.

Unions need to go on the offensive. Unions are instruments of freedom — freedom from corporate servitude. Employers call themselves job creators. Working people are profit creators for the employers, and as such they deserve a fair share of the profits and respect and acknowledgement. Say it. Can the public create jobs. Of course. Fixing infrastructure will create jobs by providing more public resources that private lives and businesses depend on. Public resources to create more public resources. Freedom creates opportunity that creates more freedom.

Third, keep out of nasty exchanges and attacks. Keep out of shouting matches. One can speak powerfully without shouting. Obama sets the pace: Civility, values, positivity, good humor, and real empathy are powerful. Calmness and empathy in the face of fury are powerful. Bill Clinton won because he oozed empathy, with his voice, his eye contact, and his body. It wasn’t his superb ability as a policy wonk, but the empathy he projected and inspired.

Values come first, facts and policies follow in the service of values. They matter, but they always support values.

Give up identity politics. No more women’s issues, black issues, Latino issues. Their issues are all real, and need public discussion. But they all fall under freedom issues, human issues. And address poor whites! Appalachian and rust belt whites deserve your attention as much as anyone else. Don’t surrender their fate to Trump, who will just increase their suffering.

And remember JFK’s immortal, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” Empathy, devotion, love, pride in our country’s values, public resources to create freedoms. And adulthood.

Be prepared. You have to understand Trump to stand calmly up to him and those running with him all over the country.

What we want is we close this thing with joy and love of country and love of one another. These are far more powerful emotions than fear and worry.

24:20
Let me say one last thing. . . I want to remind everybody about one of the central reasons that we're all here together at hopium, which is that -- and Joe Biden talked about this in his State of the Union speech this year. He talked about FDR's speech in 1941; FDRs State of the Union address. He talked about how that address was the beginning of the call of America to rally against fascism and rising authoritarianism in wht became the rallying cry tht began to move America into World War II. That speech though was also the speech where FDR laid out his vision of the four freedoms and how he wanted a world that was not base on dominion and control, one country having control over another or one person having control over another. A world based not on dominion, but freedom. And he laid out the Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear, Freedom of Religion, Freedom of the Press. He laid out these four freedoms for all of us . . . And these four freedoms became the foundation of the modern world. The four freedoms became the basis of the Atlantic Charter that got the United States and the United Kingdom together in 1941, that became the basis of the alliance that won World War II. The four freedoms became the basis of the United Nations Charter in 1945, which laid out an international law, a global system where one nation could not have control of another; dominion over another. And it was the beginningg of the unraveling of all holdings by European powers, their colonial system. FDR forced the unraveling of all that to be consisten with the United Nations view that no nation should have dominion over another. This is part of the the war in Ukraine is about. Russia is trying to go back to a period prior to the United Nations where countries coul have dominion over one another. And then in 1948, negotiated in part by Eleanor Roosevelt, there waas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which ws the first time in international law individual people had human rights... And that world of freedom -- of these four freedoms, that world of Pax Americana over the last 80 years has created a golden age in human history. There's never been better time to be alive in all of human history that there's been in over these past 80 years. We've seen life expectancy go from 45 years to over 70 years now in the world, we've seen extreme poverty, dispite huge explosion of population, plummet in raw numbers. We've seen more people living under democracy that any time in human history. We've seen more people being literate an being able to read and write. Three times as many people today can do so as a percentage of the population than in the 1940's. Meaning they have more capacity to do and contribute and live out their dreams than anytime before. This has been a golden age in human history.

What's important for us is we get this final fuel to go do the work that we need to do for our country and our democracy and for our kids. We have to remind ourselves that that world - this golden age in human history -- was something that WE did. The Democratic Party of the United States did that. We created a golden age in human history. And it's my view that there has never been an organized force that's done more good for more people than the Democratic Party that we're all part of.

One of the reasons I'm so confident that we're going to prevail here in the next 13 days is that when our party was called in the 1940s, we all answered. We rose to the occasion, and we defeated authoritarianism and fascism then. And what Joe Biden began in his State of the Union speech, he was making a new call asking our party to once again answer a all to defeat fascism here and all around the world; to make sure that freedom continued to prevail over dominion.

The reason I end all of this so confident and so optimistic is because all of you have been answer this call. Millions and millions of Americans have been going to work, donating money, writing postcards -- 80 million postcards are in the process of hitting all across the country -- canvasing every day, texting, phone banking, info warring, working your networks with good informtion. You guys have gone to work, you've answered the call. Millions of you have done this. And the millions of you who have answered this call is more powerful than the dancing dipshits on the other side, right? Let them have Elon Musk and a bunch of these oligarchs. We've got all of you. We're more powerful than they are. And we are doing the work for our democracy...

Do more, worry less...