There’s a saying in marketing: “You don’t sell more mousetraps by talking about a better mousetrap. You sell more mousetraps by talking about scarier mice.”
The GOP has been talking about scarier mice for 30-ish years, while the Democrats have mostly been talking about better mousetraps and trying to convince people that the mice the GOP is talking about aren’t really scary. Meanwhile, things the GOP are actually doing and saying should be plenty scary to mainstream voters if we’re willing to talk about them the right way.
TLDR: I agree with @k9bfriender – lets make the GOP mice as scary as we possibly can.
I think we’ve reached the point where this is relevant:
(I sent this to my daughter — who tends to get sucked into a lot of meetings — with the comment that at least someone’s Buzzword Bingo card must have gotten filled out.)
The GOP has been talking about scarier mice for 30-ish years
usually their favored rhetoric along the lines of The Democrats Are UnAmerican And Want to Destroy Our Way of Life, peppered with ancillary warnings about The Homosexuall Agenda and They Are Murdering Our Children And Serving Them on Pizza. Essentially, they are telling their base that Democrats are not true Americans. But, perhaps “jingoistic” was the wrong adjective. Suggest a substitution of “fearmongering” in place of it.
No, fearmongering is exactly what it is, and although it appears stupid to many of us it’s been staggeringly effective. My suggestion is that we start fearmongering ourselves. It could be a lot less stupid, because the GOP has given us so many real examples of “scary mice” behavior.
Republicans don’t want people of color to vote.
Republicans will make abortion illegal, and then they’ll come after birth control.
Republicans want Covid to kill as many people as possible.
Republicans want to lock up kill anyone who disagrees with them.
Republicans are working with Russia to undermine American democracy.
These are all defensible, if slightly exaggerated, statements. Dressed up in catchier language they could sell a hell of a lot of mousetraps.
That’s really not scary enough, most of those don’t touch on things that personally affect the people you are trying to reach.
You don’t sell a mousetrap by talking about how mice infested someone else’s house, you sell it be talking about how they are infesting yours.
Republicans will prevent or invalidate your vote if you don’t vote for them.
Republicans want to control your personal lives, who and how you are allowed to associate with, who you can start a family with, and want to keep them uneducated by destroying public education.
Republicans have sided with the virus against humanity.
Okay, that’s not bad.
Republicans will work with anyone, Russia, North Korea, China or Venezuela to undermine American democracy.
I don’t see them as exaggerated at all. That they haven’t managed to carry out all of this doesn’t mean that they don’t want to, and won’t do so as soon as they have the power. The thin line against this tyranny are the Democrats, and they need your vote to keep fighting for you.
I say we start the “Eagle News Network”, the patriotic news channel that will keep you informed of all the attempts of Republicans to come after your rights, your freedoms, and even your lives.
ETA: I have to apologize that I attributed your mousetrap analogy to another poster in a different thread. I thought it was a different poster that made it, and I couldn’t remember what thread it was made in to double check.
While votes against Trump got Biden into office, it’s the Democratic failure to take big, decisive actions to give working people money/jobs that’s potentially going to cost them 2022. No minimum wage increase, a trivial infrastructure bill, loss of the BBB… each of these cost Biden support. Each of those was sunk, not by progressives, but by the Manchin/Sinema wing. Putting voting rights above jobs is the kind of elitist, out-of-touch action that Republicans (who will ignore voting rights anyway) accuse Dems of taking while ignoring the needs of working people. Without the progressive agenda, it’s just business as usual for Democrats, and that’s what put Trump in office in the first place.