No, the Democratic Party Can't "Message Better" to Racism, Misogyny, and Ignorance

Let's stop pretending

In the wake of the election results, one of the most common media postmortems has been the Democratic Party’s supposed failure to reach those Americans who they were unable to persuade over the course of the campaign; rural and working class voters, especially. The airways have been filled with politicians and talking heads offer their critiques and suggestions on how Democrats need to rethink how they are messaging.

I’m sorry, but that’s largely nonsense.

This election result isn't about Dem messaging.

Their messaging during the campaign was pitch-perfect in any other iteration of America. It was about helping the middle class, lowering taxes for the average American, continuing with sound economic policies to cut rising grocery prices, preserving democracy, taxing the wealthy, affordable healthcare and education, the rights of women, strengthening the border, unity, opportunity.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz formed a balanced ticket filled with character, intellect, and genuine love for this country, and they delivered their vision beautifully and eloquently. Their respective resumes contained exemplary histories of their work on behalf of the working people of this nation. They were experienced, mature, and competent.

And none of these realities could overcome the America that we’ve become—or at least a sizable portion of it has.

This election result isn’t about policy or platform, it’s about racism, misogyny, lack of education—and a Right-wing media machine that caters to those realities.

There is no messaging strategy that can overcome deeply-held prejudice and rising ignorance, and those two factors are the only explanation for someone like Donald Trump even being the nominee, let alone getting 76 million votes.

Trump neither attempted to embrace working Americans nor offer them any substantive plans to help them, because he knew he didn’t need to. He simply peddled wild, racist fever-dreams and continually repeated grotesque fabricated nightmares about immigrants eating pets and sex-change operations on middle school students, knowing that terrified people without critical thinking skills are an easy mark.

For months, while Kamala Harris and Tim Walz breathlessly traversed the country laying out their concrete plans for a diverse nation where every human being would receive an opportunity to thrive, detailing support for first-time homebuyers and small business owners and adult parental caregivers—Donald Trump and J.D. Vance blasted people with nonsensical verbal-diarrhea rally rants about violent foreign hordes coming to rape women and about child predators lurking in public bathrooms.

And the results were what they were: more people chose a mythical war against non-existent problems, instead of sound policies delivered by reasonable human beings, because at the end of the day, they took the politics of least resistance. They objected to the hours necessary to read platforms and understand the issues at stake, in favor of a cheap-and-easy high that told them life was simple: everything was bad, enemies were advancing, and their vote would eliminate the bad people.

How the hell do you “message” against that?

Pressed in his disastrous debate with Kamala Harris about his supposed healthcare plan, this several-times bankrupt, convicted felon and court adjudicated rapist who has had four years as president and nearly a decade as the Republican Party’s de-facto leader, admitted to having only “the concept of a plan.” (Translation: the plan, is you getting sick or going broke or dying prematurely.) That alone would and should have disqualified him from office—but he said he’d kick out the black and brown people, erase trans kids, and destroy “wokeness”, so tens of millions of alleged adults said, “Yeah, he’s our guy!”

And people who are that cavalier and careless with something as important as the health and welfare of their families, cannot be reached with any methods, aside from Dems creating a lowest-common denominator, Left propaganda disinformation network that will offer competing simplistic platitudes. And that is a slippery slope, for sure.

We need to stop pretending there is some perfect Democratic candidate or magic messaging, to connect with people who have abandoned objective reality and complex evaluation, and chosen to embrace their false fears and uninformed phobias— while failing to do the slightest bit of work to know what candidates' policies and plans are, and the complex impact those things will have on their families and workplaces and futures. (The huge spike in Internet searches of things like, “How do tariffs work?”, “What is Project 2025?”, “Can they deport legal immigrants?”, and “Can I change my vote?” after the election, shows that whatever people were using to make one of the most consequential decisions in their lifetimes during the campaign, didn’t include the issues or platforms.)

I have always been as still am a registered Independent. Believe me, I know the Democratic Party isn’t perfect and that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz had flaws as any candidates would, but they provided this nation with a ticket and a campaign that should have been enough in the nation that we once were before 2016; before red hat-catch phrases and open racism and dehumanizing language usurped thorough examination of the complicated issues and the solutions to those problems. Donald Trump invited people to stop thinking and to let fear lead them, and I’m not sure how we reverse that for those who accepted the invite.

Kamala Harris and the Dems didn't fail America, they just exist in a nation where far too many people don't pay attention or care to understand what's actually happening.

Maybe more of them will now.