This brainwashing hypothesis rings true to me. Think about the issue of inflation. Republicans ran on that issue, because there was a burst of inflation in 2021/2022. But most Trump voters don’t know that Trump’s promised policies will make inflation worse via tariffs and deporting part of our workforce. Good luck trying to explain this to any Trump voter. They don’t live in a universe where this is even discussed, let alone acknowledged.
Most Trump voters probably are fed bullshit about how illegals are committing a wave of murders. Try explaining to them that the murder rate has plummeted since 2021 to 50 year lows.
Most Trump voters probably think that illegals are taking away all of our jobs. Try explaining to them that the native-born American unemployment rate is extremely low, and that prime age employment is at a very high level, the highest since about 2001.
Most Trump voters probably think that Kamala will explode deficits and that Trump will lower deficits with his tariffs. Try explaining to them Kamala’s policies are less debt-laden than Trump’s policies according to just about all of the analysis done by actual economists.
The disadvantage that Dems have in talking to people isn’t just limited to policies. It also involves how the candidates words are discussed.
You can go back to 2016. Hillary says (accurately, IMO) that half of Trump’s base is deplorable. Trump says that anyone who votes for Democrats is crazy, insulting all of the Democratic party’s base. Well, only one of those comments was discussed by the right-wing propaganda media, as well as the mainstream media. Only Hillary took a hit for that.
There’s probably 25-35% (maybe more) of the voting public that lives in a fact-free Fantasyland that rivals Disney World’s Peter Pan ride. These people are completely unreachable. There’s no point in even trying.
Dems need to find ways to speak to the 65-75% that ARE reachable. In the current landscape, Dems are only trying to speak to part of that 65-75%…There needs to be a strong fact-FILLED propaganda arm of the Dems that puts everyone that isn’t completely in the MAGA-cult back in play.
My bolding; this is from the citation linked in the OP.
The point made has been entirely missed by, I’d say, 95% of the anchors and reporters and commentators on the non-Fox mainstream media. Again and again and again they’d talk about how voters they spoke to–out ‘in the field’ or as reported in exit polls–were “concerned most about the economy.” Never was the point made: it wasn’t the economy these voters were referencing; it was what they’d been told about the economy.
Any discussion of What Democrats Should Do Differently MUST center on the information segregation that affects some 99% of our nation. If that problem isn’t solved, the Democrats have no chance at all of regaining power.
I agree. The most depressing and irritating thing about this election is that it’s so very different from an ordinary election in which one side or the other prevails based on differences in policy and ideology. This was an election in which American voters were sold a pack of lies and bought them all, hook, line, and sinker, with the assistance of shameless right-wing propagandists disguised as “media”.
I’m absolutely infuriated by analysts and pundits who offer up erudite assessments of the American psyche to try to explain the election results when the answer is so simple, as these things often are: half of American voters are gullible morons. They’ve just put into power a cabal of the most corrupt, evil, and incompetent politicians in the entire country. And there’s no point in hoping that they’ll soon realize how badly they screwed up, because that same propaganda machine will spin everything as wonderful, no matter how badly this gang of mobsters mismanage everything they touch.
Sounds like reeducation camps are needed, to combat capitalist false consciousness. Or at least limiting the franchise to those who can pass political literacy tests.
This is on par with previous fascist takeovers: control of the news media means that those who’ve put the fascists in power never really understand what it is they’ve done. And further helping out the fascists: anti-fascists are constantly confronted with what is a fundamental injustice (that the bad guys are getting away with it). Humans react very badly to being helpless in the face of injustice. (‘Checking out’ and depression are common outcomes.)
We’re not at the point of utter helplessness yet, of course. Many of us have taken heart from the fact that Senate Republicans did NOT say ‘thank you sir may we have another’ to the insult Trump expected them to swallow (the nomination of Matt Gaetz). However, few of us expect them to stand up to him often, or even ever again.
Utter helplessness/hopelessness won’t set in until the Trumpites cut off all avenues of communication. And no one should assume this can’t happen. Trump deeply admires the degree of control Xi and Putin and Kim Jon Un have over their respective nations. He craves this same level of control. (The possible purchase of MSNBC by Elon Musk would be only a small part of the elimination of all dissent in the USA—a project that will certainly take a while unless Trump gets his Big Event, the one that would justify martial law.)
Re-visiting that “99%” conjecture: it’s true that only the hard-core right remains fully siloed (by choice). Assuming for the sake of argument that they are 33% of adult Americans and that another 33% are left-leaning and do stick mainly to left or centrist sources of news, that leaves the indifferent-to-news 33%. (With 1% free of self-silo choices–pessimistic: yes.)
The indifferent folks are siloed in their own way: they expose themselves to so little news that they are effectively segregated, too. For example, anti-trans ads on sporting events they watch may have hit them especially hard because they have so little knowledge of trans people that they are easily frightened by the GOP message that ‘a vote for Harris means you will have to be trans, or date trans people, or something else that will horrify you.’
Literally nobody has suggested telling anyone they’re stupid.
You on the other hand refuse to deal with the fact that people are obviously misinformed on undisputed matters of fact, and you have no solution other than “who’s to say who knows what?”
You are so invested in the notion that there can be no privileged sources of information that you’re perfectly happy to tolerate the inescapable conclusion that all information is equally valid and nobody can possibly know what’s real and what isn’t. And that’s exactly the defective attitude that got us to this point.
Well what are you suggesting for an answer? Better information? The whole point of this thread is that better information was available and a large percentage of Americans chose not to avail themselves of it. At that point I don’t see what else is left to propose except to ban sources of information you consider illegitimate.
You probably think you’re being funny or sarcastic or something. “Literacy tests” for voting have a sordid reputation because they were used in the past for the sole purpose of preventing Black people from voting. And I’m not suggesting that they be brought back as a universal test for voting eligibility because that would never fly. But it does suggest an interesting thought experiment.
Suppose that in the last election, everyone seeking to cast a vote had been required to answer about a dozen questions in two categories – six questions of the kind that everyone seeking to become a naturalized citizen has to answer, like questions about the basic structure of government, and six questions about current events (like recent trends in the inflation rate as measured by the CPI) for which there are clear factual answers.
If passing such a test – demonstrating the most basic knowledge about government and current events – had been a prerequisite for the right to vote, how do you think the election would have turned out? And what does that tell you about the reason the election actually turned out the way it did?
I don’t think this would have the desired effect, though. Trump voters have shown themselves willing to jump through numerous hoops. If they had to jump through the hoop of “name the three branches of government, etc.”, they would simply study for the test like anyone else, pass it, and then…continue voting for Trump.
They are voting based off of anger, delusion and emotion. People can certainly study for a day, pass the exam in an hour, and retain every drop of their anger and spite.
I don’t think so. The questions would be randomized, and the key would be in the “factual knowledge about current events” part. If Trumpists had to actually gain some factual understanding of current events in order to pass a voting competency test, it might start to dawn on even the most obtuse of them that the Orange Peril and much of the right-wing media was constantly lying to them.
I thought it was structured to make thousands of square miles with a few whites and their slaves equal to as many square miles with free men working forty acres each.
What does a constituency of gun-totin’ illiterate hillbillies have to do in any way with how a government is structured, and in particular, with how well it serves the people? Which explains why ruinously counterproductive governments are sometimes elected in America by a plurality of ignorati and why the self-defeating culture of “distrust of government” has taken such a firm hold on the population.
This particular election was the most consequential in living memory and its results likely to be the most ruinous ever. The aforementioned illiterate hillbillies produced a terrifying outcome, one that poses an existential threat to American institutions and norms and to American democracy itself.
I assumed it was the standard "Ahh! gun owners are super scary and powerful and the government wants to placate them so that overweight guys with rifles won’t overwhelm the American military machine".
