Populism: Why can't we use it?

[JHan]

10. It's 2018. We've had 2 years to acquaint ourselves with the dynamics of 2016 and yet ..

this analysis exists.

I don't blame you, I blame pundits and the overarching theme of media narratives which exists in two modes for the most part: "dems in disarray" & "Dems don't have a message"

Pundits, who are (sometimes) former campaign message people or pollsters, love to push the idea of "messaging", and their ideas of "messaging" are empty non-substantive platitudes. It's the laziest take in the universe because there's no empirical way to test whether it is true or not. Every single loss is chalked up to "lack of message" even if a candidate just loses by a couple votes. If a candidate wins by a couple votes, then their "messaging" won. Lack of messaging is not the problem, it is how that messaging is received and whether it can pierce through the noise of competing narratives and very often that is outside of the control of Democratic candidates. When you have legacy media outlets legitimizing terrible takes and pushing bothsideism , the framing of issues become fucked.

Because God fucking forbid we look at how the GOP has gamed the system, from voter suppression to Gerrymandering. I guess those things aren't sexy enough to talk about.

When Ossoff lost it was the same nonsense about messaging. Jason Johnson at The Root then had to school some folks:

The Georgia 6th was drawn in a way to guarantee that a ham sandwich, a wet tablecloth, Team Rocket or a Margo Martindale clone will win any race so long as they have an “R” by their name. There was no “message” from Ossoff on how he was going to turn college-educated Republicans into Democratic special election voters. There is no cheat code to make up a 9 percent registration deficit that either Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton or JFK could have come up with to change the election results. Privately, most Republicans in Atlanta will acknowledge that Ossoff ran about as flawless a campaign as possible, given the circumstances, but he couldn’t overcome the structure of the district.

.... ( Also special shout out to those who refused to vote in 2010)