Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Sunday, December 10, 2023

Messaging Ain't The Problem

 This is a good amalgam post at Balloon Juice by Anne Laurie about the problems that Democrats have with messaging. It's not the actual messaging, it's the fact that Democrats are truly a big tent party with a lot of disparate wings. There is no singular message or messenger that can bridge all those wings. 

Some of this is just typical "JUST DO SOMETHING" but with words. Some of it is that people without real understanding of how politics (or foreign and military policy) works want an outcome without seeing the constraints that prevent that from happening. Student loan relief is a good example of that. Biden has done exceptional work to try and ease the debt load of millions of students. He has been constrained by the courts and a Congress that isn't going to help. He has not eliminated all student debt, however, because he can't. Still, there will be those who resent the fact that only a very small part of their loans were forgiven, when someone else had more. Nor will they necessarily appreciate that Republicans would double their debt out of spite if they could.

Usually, that dynamic relents as we get closer to the binary choice on election day.

Let's hope.

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