Dems are unpopular! The media is very concerned!

[Redleg]

4. We aren't a brain-dead cult but we do sometimes engage in magical thinking

An example: "We will win if we just had a candidate who could craft just the right message."

From my perspective, this is magical thinking because there is no "right message" that will sway some of our citizens to vote for a Dem for any reason. You can "speak to the people where they live" but they ain't necessarily goin' to listen.

I am not denigrating the importance of effective communication- how and what we say is important. It just seems to me that we are often looking for the one-in-a-lifetime candidate and are inevitably disappointed by the eventual nominee. Then a bunch of Dems don't show up at the polls to vote for the eventual candidate.

The rethuglicans have been playing hardball since at least the 90s, they have shaped public opinion of Democrats and still do shape it. Look at the feckless media adopting GOP and MAGA talking points and perceptual frames. The media always seems to act like only the Dems have agency- the Dems need to be the adult in the room, the Dems need to reach across the aisle, the Dems need to bring our nation together. We have all heard this bullshit before. When is the last time the media asked the GOP to do this? No, the media treats GOP wins like mandates and and Dem wins like small victories.