Tune In. Not Out.

We disengage from the Donald at our own risk

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If you have turned on a television or opened a browser or a newspaper — I know, a quaint notion — in the past six days, you have been bombarded with dozens of reasons why Kamala Harris lost and the Democrats are flailing. The finger-pointing and recriminations are only adding to the despondency so many are feeling right now. 

Those feelings are valid, and wanting to disengage is an understandable reaction. After all, many of you were hyper-engaged for an exhausting nine years, and now, we are here. But to disengage completely would notch another win for Donald Trump. The less people know and understand what he is doing, the better for him. Writing off the country, moving overseas, binge-watching every “Real Housewives” episode — whatever disengagement looks like to you, it plays right into his hands.

Exit polls showed that the more attention voters paid to political news, the more likely they were to vote for Harris, by wide margins. Harris +13 for voters who paid a great deal or a lot of attention. Trump +23 for votes who paid little or none at all.

So, as soon as you are able, we all need to focus on his far-right MAGA agenda. Ignorance is not bliss.

While the loss in the presidential race wasn’t quite as dramatic as first thought, the trends are troubling, with traditional and sure-thing voting blocs moving away from Democrats and toward Trump. The solutions are more nuanced than simply moving more to the left, or to the center, or rejecting the “woke” agenda.

Whether it was the economy, or the border, or identity politics, the biggest problem for the Democrats was and is messaging — how voters perceived those issues. In a double-blind poll conducted in October, voters preferred Harris’s policies to Trump’s when they weren’t told whose policies were whose. Read that again.

The Democrats need to radically change how they communicate and thus campaign and ultimately govern. It is head-spinning to many who cover American politics that somehow Republicans are now perceived as the party of working people. That is a major messaging failure by Democrats.

The Republicans have been masterfully playing the communications long game, and it’s paid off in a huge way. They orchestrated an asymmetry in news coverage. It started with Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, which gave birth to his Fox “News” with Roger Ailes as puppet master. Next came Newsmax and its ilk. Now the right has two huge social media networks: Truth Social and X. The thing that is so remarkable about the right-wing media is the cohesiveness of its voice — which doesn’t speak the truth.

The rest of the media landscape doesn’t speak with one voice — nor should it, not in a healthy democracy. But if you are trying to combat a right-wing media monster, it is a big disadvantage.  

The Democrats, who have been using an outmoded communications playbook for far too long, are also speaking in an echo chamber, not able to reach people outside their core constituencies. Preaching to the choir was never more obvious than this election cycle.

Post-election social media has seen a surge in stories of Trump voters surprised to hear that tariffs will raise prices. And Trump voters are shocked to learn that their undocumented relatives could be deported. There was no shortage of stories about the dangers of tariffs and mass deportations, but the information wasn’t getting to the people who needed to hear it. 

How do the Democrats get them to hear it, or see it, or read it?

According to Democratic strategist Dan Pfeiffer, the right wing has found a way to infiltrate non-political social media “on topics like comedy, gaming, gambling, and wellness,” he wrote in Media Matters on Substack. “We haven’t incubated our progressive political media enough, nor have we been willing to go into the non-political spaces where the most critical segment of voters are getting their info.”

If they can figure out how, they will have a great opportunity the moment Trump is inaugurated. He has said his first piece of legislation will be a huge corporate tax cut, given to the very companies who are gouging consumers at the grocery store. The Democrats need to communicate the real ramifications of this tax cut, whom it will hurt and whom it will help. To do so, they need to pop the liberal information bubble.

Please know, all is not lost. This election wasn’t a blowout like Reagan’s 1984 result (he won by 18 points) or even Obama in 2008. Just over 2 points separated Trump and Harris. In many states, voters backed Trump but also backed ballot initiatives that are counter to the MAGA agenda: abortion rights, paid family leave, and raising the minimum wage. In Missouri, 12 percent of voters chose Trump and abortion rights. While the Democrats have an enormous hill to climb, they aren’t starting at the bottom of it.

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Stay Steady,

Dan