I'm seeing a lot of "Trump's racism and sexism is good for Dems" takes like Greg's here, and as part of a big ecosystem that's been studying this obsessively since 2016: it's a little complicated. A quick🧵.

https://twitter.com/GregTSargent/status/1818980273582710991

The bad news is these attacks do actually work, by activating something academics call status threat. (see the thread this is from) The good news is, we have a strong toehold on how to respond effectively. The more bad news is, most Dems don't use it.

https://x.com/DanAncona/status/1769043465055433004

To my beloved Democratic family, I have some great news. You do not need to run away from crime. We have a strong story to tell here. Little 🧵 and some video illustrations ➡️ A couple months ago, some kids ran their car into our favorite local ice cream joint, allegedly so they could get to the ATM, which had $300 in it. Would more police funding have prevented this? Unlikely. Would prevention have worked? Much more likely.

Since @Nate_Cohn raises the possibility that “other theories may have merit” yet then expends zero effort investigating this, here’s one alternative theory of the case: 6+ decades of asymmetric right wing investments in media and persuasion may be playing a role here. Quick 🧵. Conservatives have focused so much effort and money on marketing, media and persuasion over the past few decades for a pretty simple reason: their ideas have terrible outcomes and are consequently very unpopular.

I would like to strongly encourage people to think critically about some assumptions in this latest Haidt joint. It is very bad and bothsidesy, despite the share image that is truly awesome, and which I am definitely going to use as a theme for my next orgy. Some quick thoughts: There are a number of potential hypothesis one could consider for why things are so stupid. Maybe they fit in 3 bags 1) It’s the tech. Sure, social media could be largely to blame. But maybe it’s 2) the left! Out of control left wing political correctness! But what if...

In response to the most frequent question I got after my Mr Toad's Wild Dem Messaging Ride thread that took off last week (thanks @chrislhayes, @TheRickWilson, @RachelBitecofer and everyone else who amplified and commented), here finally is a thread on What Does Work.

1/18 Dems need to start making the case for all the hot issues where public opinion is divided. Health care reform, repro, gun safety, climate - all of these need clear, effective arguments made for them.

But in this thread, I'm going to focus mostly on immigration.

2/18

In the summer of 2016 a friend of mine who works for a big advertising firm (and is a 9/11 survivor, so maybe this is a good day for this) asked me why the Dems ads suck so much. I said, good question.

I had no idea what kind of Mr Toad's Wild Ride I was signing up for. 1/11 What I found pretty quickly was that the problem was *not* that Dems weren't using enough AI or psychographics or advanced stuff. Those tactics help on the margins and campaigns should absolutely be looking into them, but their absence wasn't the big problem. 2/11