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Obama would be a fine example of the success of this approach from the center-left (emphasis on the center). His campaign was - for the most part - one of universal messaging. Hope and change, "who _we_ are", our shared history, our shared promise.

Then when he got power, we got Obamacare, which is a very imperfect step towards something most people on the left want - some semblance of universal healthcare. ("Very imperfect" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here but you know what I mean.)

I don't get why this is so hard for people to wrap their heads around. Politics isn't a luxury good. You don't target it to a tiny percentage of the electorate and then wonder why you're not winning in the mass market.

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The main issue with the 1619 Project lies in what it reveals: our "paper of record" is willing to devote a lot of resources to a fundamentally ahistorical project helmed by the shallow and intellectually dishonest Nikole Hannah-Jones. It's pathetic that she's still popular after she publicized her own uniquely shitty version of "if you don't vote for me you ain't black."

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"But why oh why would you draw that absurd diagram, which makes the message here seem vastly more complicated than it has to be? What on earth is the word “intersectional” doing in a tweet from a presidential candidate during a campaign? Intersectional is a word that should never, ever be used by Democratic candidates for office in public messaging. It sounds like the unnecessary academic jargon it is. The trouble is that so much of left-of-center messaging is directed at insiders rather than average people; you get credit for saying “intersectional” within liberal enclaves and so it pops up again and again where it’s not needed."

This. One thousand times this. The most basic and necessary and critical part of every communication is the parties on the other side. If you have not carefully considered the audience and tailored your message to that audience, you may as well not bother creating the message.

But maybe those messages really are just intended for other liberal elites because liberal elites only consider other elites a worthy audience? I don't believe that, but some days it's hard not to feel cynical.

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“ When, on the other hand, we fight over the 1619 Project”

I’m not into conspiracy theories. But if I was part of a billionaire cabal trying to divert attention away from our looting and pillaging - the whole 1619/CRT would probably be what my highly paid team came up with.

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That pamphlet announcing the introduction of the NHS is one of the best pieces of political communication ever crafted - humane, clear and concise. “It will relieve your money worries in times of illness”. Beautiful.

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“No, we’re teaching children that all of us have a part to play in healing our country’s racial wounds, and to do that we need to help them understand how destructive slavery and Jim Crow were.”

Do you believe that what is being taught is actually conducive towards this stated goal? You talk about Rufo, so, more specifically do you think the various documents and presentations that he (and various others) have claimed are being taught in schools (and presented in city council meetings and board rooms, etc.) accomplish that?

That's a genuine question. Clearly I don't, and more to the point I have a tremendously hard time seeing how anyone could claim otherwise. And what I again find baffling is that all your writing on this topic leads me to believe that you don't think all that stuff is actually conducive towards the goal I quote above either.

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"The trouble is that so much of left-of-center messaging is directed at insiders rather than average people"

This nails it.

When I was politically 'involved' (ie mixing it daily on Twitter) I came to notice that maybe 99% of chatter was intra-leftish, with no concern for persuading anyone *into* the camp.

This would often manifest as me throwing in a question and then everyone talking *about* me, rather than *to* me.

It's as if 'libs' actually have no faith that people can be won over. And, in fact, no interest, love or compassion at all for the 'other'.

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You're right on in your critique, but I would add that, with Bernie at least, a big failing of his presidential campaigns was calling himself a democratic socialist at all. It seems most voters missed the democratic part and only heard socialist, even—or maybe especially—the media types who surely knew better but wanted to paint him as a commie outsider nutjob. (He honeymooned in Russia! ugh) Bernie is really, in my opinion, an old-school FDR-style Democrat. Why not run on that? I'm not a marketing person, but it looks like poor branding was part of the problem.

I'm not a socialist or a Democrat. I'm politically homeless now. I'm a Gen-Xer who was a staunch Democrat for decades. My first vote was for Dukakis and I voted nearly straight Dem tickets until after Obama broke my faith. (Yes, I know I should have wised up a whole lot sooner.) I went hard for Bernie—volunteering, donating, serving as a delegate at the three levels in my then-caucus state (Colorado). I changed my voter registration to Independent in disgust after it became clear that the Dems would do anything to stay on their corporate-friendly, third-way, save-Wall-Street-and-screw-Main-Street track. But my lifelong normie Dem friends did not get it. Many thought Bernie was too radical. I spent a lot of time explaining to them that Bernie was trying to rebuild our social safety net and put back the constraints on capitalism that allowed the middle class in which they comfortably grew up to exist in the first place. But the label Bernie saddled himself with was a problem.

So, my question is, are candidates helping or hurting themselves with any type of socialist label, whether it truly applies or not? I agree with you that it will take years of work for dem socialists to build a large base under any circumstance. But maybe minds would change a little faster with a greater attempt to appeal to normies?

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Maybe my long-ass comment on the other post would've been better for this one. I agree that the current messaging sucks, for the reasons you describe. I agree that the examples you propose are infinitely clearer, simpler, more compelling, more "relatable" (ack) -- just better in every way.

But I don't think anything would happen if we had better messaging, because no one in any position of power -- and no one whom the major parties choose to run for office -- intends to do good things for regular people, and that includes any people marketing themselves as Democratic Socialists, progressives, whatever.

AOC and her ilk are distractions, and their purpose is to make us believe "This is why we can't have nice things": We, the inadequate voters, haven't persuaded our fellows to elect people who will act in our interests. (The corollary to that, I suppose, is that we're expected to believe that all the bad things the current legislature does is "what we want, because we elected them" -- pfft.)

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See, this is the sort of thing that would actually make me vote for a local Democrat, until I remember that sending a reasonable local Democrat to Washington just turns them into a faceless backbencher cipher, another tick in the tally strengthening the demonic zombie oligarchs running the federal party.

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Shoot, I forgot to say congrats! I hate the NYTimes anymore, but it doesn't change the fact that getting published there is still a huge deal.

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Phenomenal essay once again, Freddie. I'm not sure what happened but it feels like we got lost in the mid 2010s and started caring more about personalities and culture war than about bread-and-butter issues. Still doesn't feel like we have a message nowadays other than Noun/Verb/January 6.

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"Really incredible that this became so controversial in the popularist debate, but the dirty secret of politics is that if you get elected for saying popular things you can also try and slip in the unpopular things when you’re in power. "

That's the David Shor line, but (and I speak as a huge fan), he's wrong. The Republicans spent 30 years saying popular things and then selling out the base and it led to Donald Trump and a radical shift in the party to the point that you can no longer say or do things out of line because they violated the trust for so many years.

And I am completely certain that if moderates voted for Dems saying popular things, and the Dems went in and upped the tax rate and increased immigration and whatever other things Socialists want, that they would start losing in a hurry. History suggests Dem backlashes are far more immediate than Republican ones.

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I had some fun trying to follow that web as if it were a meaningful diagram, where a spoke directly between Issue A and Issue B ought to mean they should have some sort of unmediated relationship, while no spoke connecting A to C, but one spoke connecting A to B, then another spoke connecting B to C, ought to mean that the relationship between A and C is mediated by B. The results were interesting.

"Infrastructure investments", despite its centrality to the Democrats' message, appears as a hub with only three spokes, none of which link to "Environmental protection", which makes it seem as if ecologically-conscious infrastructure development is not a priority. "Jobs programs for unemployed youth" links directly to "More jobs and higher wages", "Investment in communities of color", and "Universal health care", but not to "Investment in underserved communities", nor does "More jobs and higher wages" link directly to "Investment in underserved communities". Looks like underserved communities are underserved even by this diagram.

Doing informal schematics right isn't easy. Letting go of rigid mathematical relationships in order to produce graphics more legible to humans takes discernment, and there isn't necessarily one right way to do it. But there are a lot of wrong ways.

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Hi Freddie: I really enjoy your work and am happy to subscribe to the substack. This claim, "People vote based on their needs and the needs of their families, as well they should," is, I believe, not true (the first, empirical clause, not commenting on the normative clause). Check out "Sociotropic Politics: The American Case" by Donald R. Kinder and D. Roderick Kiewiet and its progeny if you're interested in digging into the empirical literature on this.

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Freddie, I know you don’t want the job(s), but I’d vote for you for anything in a fucking heartbeat. Thank you for your diligence in the face of profound asininity. Peace and fortitude to you.

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