and we should expect our politicians to endorse it.

On issue after issue, Americans prefer democratic policy positions.

We don't need to improve our policies.

We need to improve our image and our marketing, and we need to destroy theirs. We need to complain about them and their policies with at least the same viciousness they whine about ours.

We're just too soft on messaging.

We've been framed as baby killers, freedom haters and groomers with no pushback from the party and we have no viable 50 state strategy.

And I find our messaging tactics borderline embarrassing.

❤️

And it will only get way worse over the next 4 years. Actually it's starting pretty quickly already.

Democrats understand that republicans will find millions of dollars easily to scandalize and defeat any one who bothers them enough. The msm will never do anything that republicans deem unfair to them, as if they are impartial. The msm always talks about topics republicans approve and in terms they approve of.

It's really hard for democrats to get their spin on things out the way republicans have mastered through decades of a coordinated, well-funded strategy. We have nothing like that.

We need a good way to get our message out. Aoc has done well with social media, but zuck and musk and others are ruining that as well.

Absent Cuban and soros and maybe gates and Buffett buying up some of the media for our benefit, I don't see how we can really improve our messaging. Finding the right words is one thing, but there's no longer a level playing field to put it out on.

Russia sent bots out to facebook (Cambridge Analytica).

Elon Musk has turned Twitter into a cesspool.

From a substack around Monday Jan. 13, 2025: an anonymous Twitter worker said state-backed groups from Israel, Iran, and Russia were running their own influence campaigns on Twitter. Their goals aligned with Musk's goals, broke Twitter rules, but that didn't matter because Musk didn't stop it.

"We specifically targeted certain groups of people, knowing exactly how to manipulate their views and emotions."

That is psychological warfare from Musk and his Russian allies aimed at American citizens.

Our government allows it.

American psychologists are professionally required to call this nonsense out. I don't know why they are not. Maybe they are, but the tech bros who control all our media are censoring the information...

We are not free. We need to live in the truth, not in the lie. Paraphrasing Vaclav Havel et. al.

Need to have a way to balance out the corrupt just-us-es on it either way.

For decades we have been lectured about "going too far," about the need to be "practical" and "realistic." We need to be patient, take baby steps, elect Democrats first and then later worry about "issues." Keep our powder dry, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, business as usual.

We are to imagine a "spectrum" and "swinging pendulums" and not get too excited or worried.

Has the time not come to "go that far," to advocate for that which is right and true? The things we advocate will not happen merely because we advocate for them, but they most certainly will never happen if we don't advocate for them, for fear of "going too far." People were fighting for Abolition and Women's Suffrage long before they were pratical or realistic.

I probably should not be shocked, but I am. Why would any Democrat ever vote for any of Trump's nominees or proposals? What could possibly be gained by that?

democracy so they should grow a spine, realize the reality we are facing, and do not support anything the Rs want to pass.

Like many on DU have expressed already -- no political donations to dems without them first showing us their plan.

I don't remember what the situation was, but a dozen or more years ago people took to mailing their senators (I think) spines as a replacement for the ones they had lost. Time to revive this campaign.

An old English judge once said: “Necessitous men are not free men.” Liberty requires opportunity to make a living – a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people’s mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

...

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the Government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody’s business. They granted that the Government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the Government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the Flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the Flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

The brave and clear platform adopted by this Convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that Government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

For more than three years we have fought for them. This Convention, in every word and deed, has pledged that that fight will go on.

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/acceptance-speech-at-the-democratic-national-convention-1936/

it worked for the rethugs in 2010. we need new young voices that arent afraid to disrupt the status quo.

Somehow, we need to speak directly to people who are struggling financially, but who are not technically defined as poor by the government measures. I've been saying that we need a second War on Poverty.

I wish the DNC would at least consult with sociologist/author Matthew Desmond and Rev William Barber II because they understand the intricacies of this population so intimately. Barber claims the missing (how many is it?) 70 million eligible voters who don't are significantly in this category of Americans.

The billionaires own the media in the USA. As such, you can have great messaging, say whatever you want.

Just don't expect to be heard.

The bots will make it appear like the truth is a lie. Make the fascists seem like they have more support and followers than they actually do. It is psychological warfare. Nobody seems to be countering it. It appears to be coming from both within and without our borders.

Plus the fascist cult members are in a cult, "encapsulated in a bubble" like that asshole George W. Bush said. It's hard to get through to them. They'll only leave the cult when they want to.

the filibuster. Until that is done we won't be able to ever accomplish much. The days of having 60 votes in the Senate are over. The country is too divided for that to happen anytime soon.

I don't like being a 2nd class citizen.

I don't like that the rapist felon and his woman-hating bros have any say over my freedom.