« Mid-Morning Art Thread | Main | Jake Tapper Is Sad »

Wednesday Morning Rant

Refusal to Learn

Learning the wrong lesson, annoying as it can be for those who didn't learn the wrong lesson, is forgivable. The person who learned the wrong lesson did at least try to learn a lesson, though he came to the wrong conclusion. His is an error of knowledge and is thus correctable so long as he is sincere in his attempt to learn. Learning the wrong lesson on purpose is not forgivable but there is something still worse: refusing to learn at all.

Ace covered an article yesterday about a new plan being hatched by the Democrats to try to get some voters to come back. He rightly excoriates their laughable scheme to pretend to be real people, but I think the more fundamental issue is the approach itself. The original article (via archive.is) is illuminating for just how much no lesson has been learned.

Communities that Democrats had come to count on for a generation or more -- young people, Black voters, Latinos -- all veered toward the right in 2024, some of them sharply. And unlike Mr. Trump's win in 2016, his victory last year could not be waved away as an outlier after he won the popular vote for the first time.

The first lesson not learned: "waving it away as an outlier." They - the Dems, the GOP, the NGOs, the establishment across the board - wanted it to be an outlier. They wanted to believe that the "populist" - really, anti-establishment sentiment - surge was a flash in the pan. They wanted to believe their high-effort, high-stakes election "engineering" in 2020 was making the outcome match reality, not subverting reality to meet their expectations. They wanted to believe these things, so they did. They had the opportunity to learn a lesson, but chose not to.

Working-class voters of every race have been steadily drifting toward the G.O.P. And Democrats are increasingly perceived as the party of college-educated elites, the defenders of a political and economic system that most Americans feel is failing them. ... "We are losing support in vast swaths of the country, in rural America, in the Midwest, the places where I'm from," Mr. Crow continued. ... Even the gender gap -- which had long benefited Democrats -- helped Republicans in 2024 as men swung harder to the right.

Gee whiz. That sounds a lot like across-the-board degradation of position as more and more people figure out that the party of cloistered ivory-tower lunatics isn't on their side. Shocking. Failing to detect that requires willful blindness, which the Dems (and the GOP, of course - other than the "Trump Wing," the GOP is no different) have in spades. But the response is particularly laughable.

It is code-named SAM -- short for "Speaking with American Men: A Strategic Plan" -- and promises investment to "study the syntax, language and content that gains attention and virality in these spaces." ... "Above all, we must shift from a moralizing tone," it urges. ... He added that Democrats had "lost credibility by being seen as alien on cultural issues." ... Ms. Shenker-Osorio, the Democratic researcher and messaging consultant who holds regular focus groups, said Democratic voters today craved more action and less self-reflection.

Notice a trend in any of that?

This is all about perception, not reality (with the partial exception of "Ms. Shenker-Osorio," who is probably correct that the core Democrat voter does want more and bigger - though she misses the point that this effort is about getting more voters, not about appealing to a hard but shrinking core of ultra-progs). Study the "syntax" of the opposition so you can try to sound like them. Watch the "tone" you use to speak. Always be aware of your "messaging." These people have learned precisely nothing from the rise of Donald Trump. The lesson in Trump's rise, distilled to its essence, is "be authentic." No "messaging" massaging can be remotely helpful if you're obviously an inauthentic liar.

Inauthentic lying is the coin of the realm in politics, so much so that virtually nobody noticed it until somebody chose to not do it. In the 2016 campaign, everyone went to the Iowa fair in their brand new blue jeans and flannel shirts - just like you rubes! It's what they all do. Except Trump, who showed up in his New York suit and his helicopter. He wasn't going to pretend to be a blue jeans and flannel guy (unlike Elizabeth Warren when she pretended to be a beer-drinker) for the rubes. Everyone pretends to be one of the rubes, "just one of the guys" and it's never true. In the presence of someone who does not do that, the strategy becomes completely untenable.

The "messaging" is not the problem. The "syntax and language" is not the problem. The "tone" - moralizing or otherwise - is not the problem. The problem is not one of vocabulary and the problem is not the way the message is delivered. The problem is the message, not the messaging. Their message is crap, and the condescension, lying and inauthenticity are merely the foul icing on top.

"You have original racial sin" is a crap message.

"You have original sexual sin" is a crap message.

"You are irredeemable and worthless" is a crap message.

"Your place is to obey your betters because we own you" is a crap message.

"Your beliefs are evil and you are stupid" is a crap message.

"Reality is whatever we say it is" is a crap message.

"Your kids belong to me" is a crap message.

"You should be poor" is a crap message.

"You should have no freedom" is a crap message.

You can't polish this particular turd. Sure, the messaging sucks. It does. They are bad at messaging in part because they're so deeply rooted in the bizarre and cultish modern academic milieu, but their poor communication is not anything like as big of a problem as what they say and what they believe. The messaging may suck, but it doesn't suck nearly as much as the message itself.

This absurd "SAM" thing is the equivalent of putting up a flashing neon sign that says, "WE REFUSE TO LEARN" over the DNC headquarters.