The self-indulgence of liberal messaging
Liberals would often rather preach at voters than persuade them.

Brian Beutler has written what I think is an extremely revealing post on opposition strategies to Trump. He wants our messaging to focus on “democracy and ethics and other abstract values” that Trump has fallen afoul of, and disagrees with the common perception that this approach has “somehow failed.”
But then, in order to challenge that “new conventional wisdom,” he embarks on a 2000 word explainer — about why these values are so important.
Do you see the leap in logic here? I have to admit, Brian makes a truly compelling case that democracy and equal rights are good and that corruption is bad. What I cannot figure out is why he thinks that establishing these things in particular is what will turn people against Trump.
Consider Brian’s heroic defense of democracy. I think he’s right, for example, that democracy is “better than the alternatives.” But as it turns out, so do an overwhelming majority of Americans:
The problem here for Brian is that 81% of Republicans say that they prefer democracy, too. Are they being irrational by saying they support both democracy and Trump? Sure! But it does nothing to challenge that irrationality to argue for a premise they already agree with.
Similar points hold across the board. Brian argues for equal rights, but it takes about five seconds to find Trump himself saying that “The Federal Government is, and must always be, committed to the fair and equal treatment of individuals before the law.” Brian argues against corruption, but Trump famously ran on a campaign slogan of draining the swamp. In both of these cases, the problem is typically not that Trump voters oppose these values in principle — it’s that they oppose these values in practice.
Why then does Brian bother to take us on a 2000 word journey through high school civics? I don’t think one can read this article and miss what this is really about: self-indulgence. Brian enjoys lecturing the reader about obvious things. He likes explaining to us that
Corruption is a shitty thing that shitty people do to enrich themselves at the expense of general fairness
because he likes to imagine that his political rivals need these remedial lessons. And that’s what I think is so telling about this piece. Brian begins as if he is going to deliver a powerful strategy for persuading voters against Trump, but that’s not what he’s actually interested in. What he’s actually interested in is positioning his rivals as idiots and moral simpletons, which — even if it is true! — is an entirely different project.
This, in my experience, seems to drive a lot of liberal talk about political messaging. Ostensibly, it is about what will persuade voters; but in practice, it’s about what liberals want to say to voters.
Research has shown that voters, for whatever reason, don’t find this Trump-as-threat-to-democracy messaging persuasive. In a rational world, a strategic and calculating partisan would look at this research and conclude that economically populist messages are significantly more effective. He would conclude this even though it may be more personally satisfying to deliver little speeches to voters about why democracy is so important.
In this case, the economically populist message is straightforward. Trump won with 81% of his supporters citing the economy as their most important issue and 76% claiming that prices have caused “severe hardship” to their family. He won by promising voters that he would bring down prices, but his strategy for doing so (cutting government spending) is unlikely to work, and his other policies (like tariffs and mass deportation) may very well ramp up inflation again. Trump’s opposition can therefore make him own the cost of living, and if past is precedent, voters will punish him for it when it fails to decline.
Beutler argues that voters should care more about democracy than the price of eggs. I think he should probably consult the old Maslow Hierarchy of Needs on that one, but who knows, maybe he’s right. Regardless, the numbers are what they are, and as it turns out voters don’t care more about democracy than the price of eggs.
So which opposition strategy should we run with: the messaging that liberals like Brian think that voters should respond to? Or the messaging that we know they do respond to? Do we make the grand speeches about democracy that we want to make — or do we go with the boring kitchen table issues that, incidentally, are the ones that happen to work?
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