Update: 1 27 2025;Messaging again: this opinion piece has a lot of validity. However, what is lacking is what do you call Project 2025 or oligarchs if that is just too intellectual. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/trump-s-billionaires-aren-t-oligarchs-they-re-something-else-opinion. Calling out billionaires as billionaires is so what. I like oligarchs because that is what is considered evil in Putin's world, too. The analogy to a dictatorship has its own value.
Original 11/17/2024 post continues:
MAGA has turned the GOP into the party of the poorly educated and made it easy to manipulate them with simplistic gobbledegook. The challenge for Dems is to speak their language and explain the unintended consequences of simplistic solutions to complex problems. Appropriate messaging to voters of various education levels is key to political success. Democrats are just not good at that. Education is the greatest predictor of how someone will vote. It may be an insurmountable challenge, but they must at least try to improve to reach across the education divide. https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/14/politics/the-biggest-predictor-of-how-someone-will-vote/index.html.
Abstract concepts and warnings of unintended consequences based on facts, data, and historical experiences work in communicating with the more educated. The messaging challenge for Democrats is they have to wait for reality to catch up with their predictions and make the connection in simple, 6th-grade-level terms. That is the average reading comprehensive level for the United States. Democrats need to express themselves in terms that reach them, too. This means speaking to the public just as you would a 6th grader about policies that even Ph.D.s debate. It can be done. MAGA did it.
The lack of reading comprehension is not new. What is new is that Americans have become auditory and visual learners and they get their news and develop opinions shaped by blogs, podcasts, TV personalities, and social media. Simple speak is just that: speak. The problem is that often those who deliver news and opinions also get their information from the written word, too, but translating their views into simple speak takes some skill. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/news-influencers-social-media-pew-report-rcna179786
"I told you so" or "you are too stupid to get it "are not the best responses to the loss Democrats experienced on November 5 as they try to place the blame on "low information voters". Enough of those cost them the election, true, but Democrats in the future need to figure out how to reach them, too. It comes down to asking themselves what those voters are feeling and seeing in their daily lives in the here and now. Political and economic theorizing and warnings about consequences are not on the kitchen table for dinner for those who are not absorbed by politics. The best approach is a cynical one, which is exactly the one MAGA dis. "See, the price of eggs is ridiculous. Remember what it was like when X was in charge? Therefore all of these prices and inflation are their fault, implying vote for him and he will fix it."(whether it was or not true or the hows to do it are missing). Harris attempted to bring messaging down to common terms better than most Democrats lately, but it was not enough, and she was reluctant to criticize Biden. Bill Clinton was the best explainer in the simple language of any politician I can recall. What goes around eventually comes around but at that point placing the blame should be in simplistic language, too. If I ever hear again "existential threat", or other jargon like that, libs need to get their tongues examined. Showing how smart you are to use big words is unhelpful.
Communicating with those who are illiterate or who have 6th-grade reading comprehension abilities takes a special set of skills. For a good part of my professional life, I have specialized in trying to do it in both columns and in books, in politics, and in educating people about being good and smart consumers. I write in simple English and try to avoid jargon. Sometimes I fail and fall into the jargon trap. Other times to alleviate my own frustrations, I write blog postings about messaging failures or suggest maybe "it could be said this way".
The problem is today's problems are not simple and the solutions to them are complex and the harmful result of ignoring complexities is unintended consequences. ..making the current victims even victimized more. Dumbing down equals dumbed-down policies that the dumbed-down only see it in the price of eggs and then vote for the candidate whose policies will increase the price of eggs. Democrats need to get their messaging , spoken and written, to the 6th-grade level if they want to make hay in pointing blame in the next two years.
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/trumps-achilles-heels-unintended.html
https://mufticforumblog.blogspot.com/2024/11/if-its-economy-stupid-magas-rise-is-its.html
"Registered voters without a four-year college degree back Trump over Harris (52% vs. 42%). The reverse is true for registered voters with a college degree (57% Harris vs. 38% Trump)<.https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/10/10/the-harris-trump-matchup/
