Democrats have problems, mostly messaging problems. Let’s hope the nonvoters Trump energized go back into their bunkers.
If someone can show us how to energize liberal nonvoters in that Trumpy way, I’m all ears. I think Obama was the closest we had, but that was more getting the base to turn out, not turning out nonvoters.
I am not the biggest fan of AOC, mostly based on policy and the fact that I don't view her as particularly pragmatic.
But she is 100% right on the incompetence of the DNC and establishment Democrats more generally regarding how to run an election, energize the base and bring new voters to the polls. And this is nothing new, it's a decades-old problem. It really started with AM radio, which is well-suited to the Republican voter in rural areas who spends a lot of time in their cars, covering long distances. The damage inflicted by right-wing talk show hosts, many of whom make Rush Limbaugh sound moderate, over the last 3 decades or so has been immeasurable. These are the people who were Fox News before there was Fox News and who continue to dominate the airwaves. The left ceded the airways to the right, which was understandable in part since your urban citizen isn't likely to listen to dozens of hours of radio every week. But the left has also underestimated the power of AM radio.
Then came Fox News, "fair and balanced" and the left basically ceded the cable news wars to the right. You can argue that MSNBC has since emerged as left-leaning, but there is still a Grand Canyon sized gap between what and how they report vs. Fox News. Plus, again, you have the challenge that most Democratic voters are urban and they just no longer watch that much cable tv.
Then we had the social media networks. I joined Facebook in 2006 when I was in law school, and later that year they expanded it to anyone over 13, there was no longer a student requirement. For many years, you had generally younger people on there. Certainly in 2008 when Obama ran, FB was dominated by left-leaning users. However, since then you've had such rapid expansion that nowadays it's a hotbed for batshit crazy things of every stripe. And the left has ceded to the right, in a format in which they actually held the advantage for a long time.
Digital media is the future, and the right used that with Brexit and with Trump's election to data mine and identify non-voters whom they could bring into their fold and use to drag them across the line when margins were razor thin.
The left, other than AOC & crowd, seems happy to yell about the unfairness of social media spreading lies, Russian and other bots, Zuckerberg and so on instead of themselves developing a cogent digital media action plan.
And that's also part of the reason why you need to get rid of dinosaurs like Dianne Feinstein and why Nancy Pelosi should also step aside.
