1. When I hear @clairecmc talk about Dems learning to talk to the Piggly Wiggly crowd, I hope she'll want to join/help w my moderate messaging electioneering overall for Ds effort. BC its CRUCIAL to understand- Ds & outside groups tried already to cater to these voters on the
2. persuasion. That in fact, this cycle was the product of a very concerted effort of that strategy driven by high profile data firms on the D side (many of which who've been critical of my work) & it was a complete and total failure for 2 reasons. The main 1 is that it wants
3. to ignore the effect that polarization is having on voter behavior & the limitations that is placing on certain electioneering techniques that USED TO BE EFFECTIVE and are now not. I want to make something really clear- it is only in places where at least 1 element of the D's
4. operation "went rogue" that Biden pulled out wins: GA, where Abrams made electioneering about turning out the new coalition, AZ, where the AZ state party did the same, but with Latino voters, MI & WI where the state parties put into effect base-centric voter turnout strategies
5. at odds w the party's conventional playbook to focus on turnout, and/or places where concentrations of the D's new coalition: college-educated whites + minority voters (and young voters) are so high (like NE 2) that sub-par strategy doesn't matter, turnout surges are naturally
6. manifesting enough to put Biden over the edge. This is bc in order to be freaked out by Trump & what is going on in America right now, you have to know about it. College edu voters of all races are the people that know about it. Dems assume everyone knows about Trump's actions
7. in office, a critical flaw I have pointed out in a thousand threads. This is not the case. The vast majority do not. The vast majority know next to nothing about what Trump is doing, thus, when they hear lies from him & no presentation of the truth from Ds (bc they are focused
8. on issues, the lie stands. Out there in regular America, Donald Trump is a successful businessman & a billionaire. That neither of these statements are true but were not focused on to be exposed as false are mistakes bc a great many "no-nothings" voted for Trump based purely
9. on these perceptions of him. Ds need to learn to stop talking to a mythical electorate. Their mythical electorate has a working knowledge of the system & the people operating in it. And a working base knowledge of the latest current events. The D's mythical electorate cares
10. about policy, not characters. Wants the electorate to be on substantive issues. Wants the tone to be civil and debate to be reasonable. While its true that we, the readers of the WAPO & NYT & believers in a functioning democracy do, in fact, want these things- avg. Americans
11. do not- at least not in a sense that will move them in a vote booth. And thus, if you design your electoral strategy around them, these mythical voters, these rotational reasonable focus group people, you will always find yourself losing. BC real people are not like that, at
12. not here in America, & at least not right now. We might be able to get people further down a civically-enlighted path, but not if we're losing elections. So for now, we need to work the clay we have, in the format it comes in, which is a low-info format that will only respond
13. to specific stimuli- exactly the opposite types of stimuli is was served in the 2020 cycle. I realize these very smart people have smeared at my theory, but the negative partisanship model/theory has been "horribly vilified" as one reporter put it by the 2020 results. Biden
14. has won exactly how the model predicted he would- off surged turnout of Dem coalition voters & the break toward him of pure Indies- a small group in the electorate. It will be a narrow win though bc just like in the 2018 midterms, Donald Trump's brand of politics- which is
15. negative partisanship on tap- also produced massive turnout of Republicans- saving several embattled GOP senators like Susan Collins and Tom Tillis & Mitch McConnell's majority. But as I argued in the original @nytopinion- in the battle of the bases the D's base is bigger. So
16. So Biden is going to eek out this Electoral College win & with it, remove from the presidency a cancerous tumor & the potential for America to collapse quickly into authoritarianism. But people should see this merely as a reprieve. WE were very lucky that Trump's personality
17. disorders made it so that he constantly self-destructs. If he is replaced with someone w the same impulses but better self-control in 2024 or 2028, America's institutions and body politic is in no condition to weather that kind of storm in her current condition. So we should
18. endeavor to fix, and fix right now, the way that Democrats electioneer and communicate to voters both in the campaign context & overall bc much will depend on their ability to finally come to terms with this new paradigm, polarization, we are living under.I have a new NYT
19. opinion piece under works on this topic/thoughts that I'm looking forward to sharing with you all.
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