I certainly don’t blame the Democrats for Trump. They had a primary, and he beat the “best” their party had to offer. The issue with Democrats and messaging has to start with the understanding that Democrats have a much harder job to do. Figuring out how to progress and improve lives is hard, and convincing people your plan will work is harder. Figuring out how to scare people into believing change is bad and will affect them negatively is easy. It’s kind of like being the defense lawyer in a civil case. At the end of the day, even if you have nothing, you can sit back and say “prove it.”
With that hill to climb, Democrats - and I don’t just mean the politicians, I mean everyone advocating for progressive reforms - would do well to focus more on issues that affect large portions of the country rather than trying to solve problems most people didn’t realize or believe exist. For example, every video of woke kids protesting a speaker at a college loses many potential voters. The image of the party is tainted.
If I was running the party, I’d do everything I could to shift that image back to the party of the working class. Every policy would be framed as: we’re improving the lives of people who go to work every day. Healthcare reform, raising wages, economic safety net, lower taxes, improving public schools. Let the GOP run their scare tactics and claim $15 an hour will ruin America and turn us into a socialist country. It passed in Florida. It’s popular. Losing working class voters to the Republicans is an abject failure and heads should role at the DNC.