If you tell people they face an existential threat but don’t act as if the threat is real, how can you expect to get people to help you fight it? That’s the question Democrats need to ask themselves on a number of fronts this week, as I discussed on Substack Live with messaging expert Anat Shenker-Osorio.
When the source of political violence is MAGA, the right wing, and/or the Trump regime, we need to say so clearly; otherwise we help give it cover to further spread and grow. (See Anat’s messaging guidance here.)
When MAGA relentlessly repeats its story about how Democrats, big cities, or immigrants are to blame for violence, mayhem, and chaos, vague platitudes about how we all need to come together only leave that story uncontested. (Or as Anat puts it, we can turn the other cheek, but they’ll just keep slapping it.)
Meanwhile, Democrats quarrel with each other about 2024—but instead of bickering over who did a worse job reading the map of the electorate, we should be asking if we had the right map.
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