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submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

Non-paywall link

There is an assumption, probably particularly among those who cover the news and those who read it, that Donald Trump’s legal travails are common knowledge. We talk about things like the potential effects of a Trump conviction on the 2024 presidential election with the assumption that this would be an event that rose to the nation’s consciousness, triggering a response from both his supporters and detractors.

But this is a sort of vanity: Just because it is interesting to us certainly doesn’t mean it is interesting to others. Polling released by CNN on Thursday shows that only a quarter of voters seek out news about the campaign; a third pay little to no attention at all.

As it turns out, even major developments often fly under the average American’s radar. New polling conducted by YouGov shows that only a bit over half of the country on average is aware of the various legal challenges Trump faces. And among those Republicans on whose political support he depends? Consistently, only a minority say they are aware of his lawsuits and charges.

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[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 136 points 9 months ago

I don't think y'all inside liberal spaces like lemmy and reddit are honestly aware of how politically ignorant most Americans are.

"How could they NOT know?! Head all up in Fox News and nothing else?!"

Couple of anecdotes, so take them as you will.

  • My wife is Filipina, been here 3-years. She didn't think Trump was such a bad guy. All she knew was what her ex-husband told her.

  • We were at the Mexican restaurant the other day and the server saw a pic of Trump on my phone while I read CNN, wanted to engage me in a conversation about who I was voting for and clearly favored Trump. The man barely speaks English.

  • A year after Trump came into office my sister (62-yo at the time) only had a vague notion that he wasn't a nice guy, not really on the up and up, but maybe the hate was just politics? If my sister got a robocall saying Biden ate a puppy, she would run right out and vote Trump.

Yes, these people are ignorant. But they're not reading like you and I. We're interested, engaged, or we wouldn't be here, and you wouldn't be reading this if you weren't.

Not even going to get into how the GOP is flooding the media and internet to make all this sound like white noise, "politics". But these Trump voters are not all rabid lunatics. And don't dare come in a space like this and say, "They actually have a point on this particular thing..." or "They're wrong, but they believe this way because..." You will get shouted down and shut out.

If the Democrats don't fight fire with fire, we're fucked. No more "high road" bullshit. The GOP's propaganda machine is winning, and no amount of gotchas or exposal of hypocrisy matters. We can no longer play fair, aspire to logic and reasoning. We have to fight dirty and WIN.

[-] whostosay@lemmy.world 18 points 9 months ago

I really do love this take, but I have to ask. What does fighting dirty without becoming them look like?

If you could throw out an example that makes this work I'm all for it.

I just cannot stand the idea of obtaining votes through deceit.

[-] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 9 months ago

You don’t have to lie, you just have to appeal to emotion with your pitch. Bernie was a great example of a populist candidate who knew how to make people feel passionate about things without lying to them. He got a lot of flack for repeating the same lines, but that is all that some Americans can handle—a slogan. He was smart enough to pick ones where most Americans instantly knew what he was about, and it felt good.

Nobody really knows what “build back better” means, and it sort of implies that we’ve been damaged in some way and need repair. MAGA doesn’t really mean shit either, but it implies that we’ve tended to be pretty great, and all we need is to remember those times and recreate them. It is supercharged with Hollywood’s nostalgic eye towards the past, and it doesn’t even require you to know why Medicare is good to want to get on board with it.

So, from that perspective, democrats need marketing. They need meme reacts, iconic looks, and coolness, and they need to stop trying to stifle the candidates they have who exemplify those qualities.

If they can’t figure that shit out, they’re going to keep losing at moments that they sorely need to win.

[-] GraniteM@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Bernie, and Trump, and even Obama all had one thing in common: their campaigns were predicated on the notion that the status quo was bullshit and had to change. Obama was a once in a generation political talent, and he got elected on his message, and yeah he ultimately skewed to the center, but he demonstrated that the model could work.

When you get to 2016, your leading contenders are Trump, who is running on a platform of 'break everything,' Bernie, a socialist Jew from Vermont who was able to rocket to national significance on the basis of acknowledging populist anger, and Hillary, who squandered eight years of Obama administration goodwill and universal name recognition by basically coming across as a "let's get back to business as usual" candidate.

Sure, Biden was also "let's get back to normal" candidate, but that only works in the context of four years of Trumpish turbo insanity.

I'm amazed that Democrats seem to be so afraid to address the anger felt by people who feel abandoned by the rich and powerful in this country. Republicans were never going to deliver, but they have been able to seize power by billing themselves as champions of the common citizen and avatars of middle and lower class justice.

If Democrats can't wrestle that narrative away from the Republicans and meaningfully address just how powerless and forgotten so many people in this country feel, then they are going to have a very hard time stopping our backwards slide into fascism.

[-] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 months ago

I think part of the problem is that the democrats have been deep in bed with Wallstreet and tech since the 90’s. Populist anger may help them win, but the people they are angry at are the ones who are also paying the bills. It takes extraordinary self sacrifice and discipline to walk the tightrope of politics and keep your hands clean. Obama and Bernie did their best to do that, but both of them had a very difficult road without the traditional money banks.

[-] TheSanSabaSongbird@lemdro.id 2 points 9 months ago

The Biden administration is quite possibly the worst administration I've ever seen when it comes to messaging, and I am in my 50s. Someday in the future someone will write a PhD dissertation on why they are so dysfunctional in this respect, but for now I just don't get it. They are singularly inept when it comes to publicizing and taking credit for their wins.

[-] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago

Biden can only put on his sunglasses so many times before the meme gets stale.

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this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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