They haven’t been good at shifting the narrative for a very long time.
Everyday, Trump goes out and says outrageous stuff that’s not true, downplays the outrageous stuff that is true, and mocks the media. The media is almost completely stuck in the old model of “If the President says it, it must be news to repeat what he said”. At this point, the Dems need to accept that the media may never “learn” to report actual truth. That they’ll never put the truth first in the headline and burry the direct statements in paragraph 4 that nobody reads along with the fact check.
By now, the Dems should be able to read the room, and have people out there making outrageous statements everyday. They can add the nuance deeper in the statements. Which, should get the media to print the outrageous item in the headline and then include the nuance 4 paragraphs in. They have the advantage that they can make outrageous statements that are true. Things where the fact check adds the nuance instead of reversing it as a lie.
They need to be doing something that will take the shiney light off the president spouting whatever nonsense reported with no filter.
“Dem Politician says Trump stole $10M from Treasury department.”. Makes for a nice outrageous headline. They can add the nuance later that this is done by charging the government at his own properties.
“Dem Politician says Trump wants to be king.”
“Dem Politician says I’m told Trump wants people in Michigan to die.”
Every dam day they should have one of these in the spotlight. Sure, they’ll be fact checked, adding nuance and come back as “mostly true”. Which is still worlds better than the pants on fire lies the media prints in the headlines for him.
It’s super depressing to know this is the only way. I’ve given up hope that media in general will every pivot from headlines of “President says XYZ” with no context at all, to actual news coverage of “President lies about topic ABC, claims XYZ, which is false”. Their desire to “both sides” everything to death doesn’t know how to deal with statements that are simply false.
There’s no hope for the actual Trump supporters. They’re effectively a cult and lost. There’s no way to win them over to a Democrat. The best hope is to depress them enough that they don’t vote at all. A classic Republican strategy to depress the vote.
It’s the more casual republicans. The one’s that don’t follow politics on Twitter and aren’t in the bubble. They’re getting at least some mainstream news. That bump in Trump’s approval when he finally started to respond at all to COVID-19. That was a result of the appearance of doing anything showing up in the media. Even though it was all lies, repeated without any context. “Oh look, the news just reported the President says we’ll have a million tests by next week, yeah, it’s very leaderly.”.
The Dems need to do something to remove that spotlight. The twitter bubble mocking that a million tests didn’t happen, and is still unbelievably not enough still today, isn’t going to cut it. Something shiny that attracts news coverage to lessen the spotlight on “The President says” needs to happen. Lecturing news organizations that they’re repeating lies isn’t going to cut it. Those casual republicans, and even casual democrats are hearing all the lies and don’t know it’s lies and graft all the way down.
The Dems need a better marketing machine that can push out more content that has a flashy spotlight to attract more coverage. Something that does compete with “he said some crazy shit, watch this car chase”. They should absolutely back it with real information and solid plans. But, they need to attract the attention first. I recognize that it’s a huge hurtle because “The President” still carries a lot of weight simply from the title alone, no matter who it is.
It’s all so freaking depressing. From the news escentially failing, to the realization that the fact that anything works at all is just dumb luck that we expect it to work.
