I'm a huge NKJ fan & like all of this. But I feel like it makes a common left mistake in focusing too much on the content of messaging & too little on the mechanisms. Right narratives stick not because they're more clever but because the right has a giant media machine!
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1325545838500843524
The right's narratives are echoed throughout a vast apparatus from Fox to Breitbart to radio to Facebook to, now, local newspapers that have been bought by RW billionaires. The left simply has nothing like that! It mostly tries to jam its messages through the distorting filter...
... of mainstream journalism (which doesn't work). This is such a ubiquitous fact about US politics I feel we almost forget it, the way fish don't notice water. So much discussion of what Dems say, or should say, & so little attention ...
... to the fact that the left simply lacks the means to ensure that the things it says reach the target audiences. No amount of cleverness or good storytelling can overcome this imbalance, which is ultimately about *money & power*, not good words.
One thing makes messages stick: repetition. The right can ensure that every single con hears consistent, repeated messages, day after day. The left's messages, even if they start out coordinated & clever, get diffused & distorted before reaching voters' ears.
That was the substance of AOC's (widely misinterpreted) critique -- not that Dems need to all say socialism, but that Dems need to *run campaigns suited to the modern information environment*, which means more than TV ads & f'ing press conferences. It's an online war.
Anyway, I agree w/ @nkjemisin about the content of messaging, but let's not forget the other side of the coin: the left needs its own machine to carry messages to voters *where voters are*. That's what it lacks. Until that imbalance is fixed, no storytelling will be good enough.
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