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Part of the reason I’m so focused on the Democratic response to Trump is due to something Seth Moulton said in his interview with Jon Lovett on Pod Save America a few days ago:

This [slandering trans folk without rebuttal] was exactly what the Republicans were able to do with immigration.  I remember being on the House floor last year, and there were some people / colleagues running for the this position of Democratic Messaging like Committee Chair, so supposedly in charge of Democratic messaging for the House, and I asked one of the candidates how she thought we should deal with immigration.  She said we should not talk about immigration.  I said, well, I actually think a lot of people are concerned about it because it does seem there’s a real problem with the southern border.  She said, nope, it’s dangerous to talk about it because it’s used against immigrants.

The whole Moulton interview starts around 1:42 on this YouTube recording.  Now, is Moulton lying?  I doubt it.  He did a terrible job talking about trans people in his NYT interview the other day, and he takes some lumps from Lovett on that regard, but he does make the point that Democrats not responding on major issues where Republicans are making a lot of noise (like trans rights) is not good for the party.  His anecdote raises an important question about the Democratic leadership’s attitude towards messaging.

Now, when I write that the Democratic leadership has not responded to Trump’s interview, I mean almost the whole of the Democratic leadership has been silent.  I covered what was said on Sunday shows yesterday, and none of it was a response to Trump’s comments.  Jim Clyburn, who didn’t cover himself in glory yesterday with his talk of pardoning Trump, went on CNN today and compared Trump’s desire to jail the January 6 committee to the time when Jim Crow became the law of the land.  Adam Schiff stood up to Trump on X earlier today.  That’s two.  Are there others?  I’ve been looking pretty hard and can’t find any.

Of course, Liz Cheney was out with a tough statement.  That’s because she’s a Republican who understands what the fight is.

People got upset in the last comments about me posting Will Bunch’s crack  about sending the Democratic leadership to space, but if you’re not responding to at least one of the dozen bad things Trump said, and voicing the Democrat’s position opposing it, you might as well be orbiting the fucking planet for all the good that you’re doing.  If the person who was running for chair of messaging had the attitude that Moulton relayed, then we have a big problem to even have that person be considered for the position.  Messaging means relaying your message, not sitting in silence.

I’ll close with some good news.  Ken Martin, one of three candidates for DNC chair (the others are Ben Wickler and Martin O’Malley), understands the assignment:

Martin, the Minnesota state chair, says the party must invest “significant resources” in a comprehensive, granular mapping out of how different political demographics get electoral information, including via non-news sources. Martin also sees the information problem as directly linked to a Democratic brand problem, in which “the majority of Americans now believe the Republican Party best represents the interests of the working class and the poor.” As Martin notes, Republicans have been allowed to keep up a “constant drumbeat hammering away at our brand.”

“Because we’re not in these information spaces, we’ve allowed the Republican Party to define us,” Martin said. “We’re not defining them. We have to be present in every channel.” Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg has aptly termed this the “loudness gap.”

To counter it, Democrats must enlist an army of “trusted messengers and validators” in those spaces, Martin said, to “remind people who we are and what we’re fighting for.” Martin noted that during the campaign, Trump reached deep into various nonpolitical markets (as Ilyse Hogue details, Trump worked male-heavy audiences particularly hard). Democrats must find their own large niche audiences as a means to giving “people a sense that you’re one of them,” Martin said, adding: “It can’t be inauthentic.”

Importantly, Martin argues that the Democratic consultant class still remains too wedded to traditional paid advertising. During the campaign, some Democrats criticized the leading Super PAC, Future Forward, for spending too much on overly tested ads on network television. Martin declined to fault the group directly but said the party must reorient generally away from broadcast ads made by Democratic admakers.

This is the kind of attitude we need in our leadership, not the notion that we need to shut up about important issues where the Republicans are killing us in the media.

Hush Hush, Keep it Down Now, Voices CarryPost + Comments (291)

This is the latest on the hunt for the killer of the UHC CEO:

Police are reportedly questioning a man in Pennsylvania in connection with the New York City shooting death of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson.

NBC New York reported that the man being questioned on Monday was in or around Altoona, Pennsylvania – and had been found with a gun similar the one used in Thompson’s killing.

A separate report from CNN said the person being questioned was traveling by bus and had a firearm suppressor as well as a number of false identifications. Citing a senior law enforcement source, the New York Times reported that the man being questioned was confronted at a McDonald’s – and showed the same fake New Jersey identification that police believe Thompson’s killer presented when he checked into a hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on 24 November.

This whole manhunt has re-surfaced a lot of hatred towards the police.  It begins with the disproportionate response to this killing versus the killing of others.  It continues into the lackadaisical search of Central Park that was on the news yesterday and roundly mocked on the social media I saw.  (The social media I saw also included this report that NJ State Police essentially stopped enforcing traffic laws after racial bias was found.)

Some of this is pretty unfair, of course — the killer took enough precautions that this wasn’t going to be an easy case to crack.  But when years of copaganda about how massive police budgets will help keep us safe bump up against the ugly truth of police incompetence, anger and resentment ensue.

Closing In?Post + Comments (178)