Tarmac meeting: Republicans screaming day and night about corruption
Barr turning the DOJ into a personal legal service for Trump: Democrats change the subject to health care
It's really not that hard to see how it happened
Partisan leaders are major public figures who drive the public conversation about politics. If they are uninterested in something, or treat it as unimportant, the public will also treat it as unimportant. This is why Democratic strategic avoidance of corruption is a catastrophe
Democrats saw polls that said voters thought health care was their best issue (often on a list of, like, six generic issues - "Crime," "environment," etc.), and decided, ludicrously, that time spent talking about anything else was wasted
Like if only politics was so simple
This misunderstands things. It's not like Democrats can send a memo over to news outlets saying "Talk about this." It's that if Democrats spent a lot of THEIR OWN time talking about something, it will drive voter focus there, and news outlets will amplify
An alternative view from Neera Tanden, who is definitely not a party hack: "Democrats, the nation's largest major party, are the helpless victims of a media conspiracy and have no power to affect public discussion"
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