I want to share with you this note from TPM Reader PP. But context is important. I received it on November 7th – two days after the election. So you need to understand it in that moment. But it’s been rattling around my head ever since. I’d actually intended to publish it at the time. I just didn’t find the right moment. What he says doesn’t mean the conversations about new ecosystems are wrong. They’re not at all. That’s not my takeaway. But if you’re serious about building up alternative media that isn’t dominated by right-wing voices and politics-adjacent channels dominated by rightwing ideas, I don’t think you can succeed or even have a plan to succeed without starting with the premises PP is articulating.
I have read TPM for just more than half my life, and the entirety of a 20-year career in political campaigns and consulting that I decided to wind down earlier this year to pursue a very different and unrelated career.
I’m writing now somewhat in response to the broader conversation about Democrats/men/algorithms/media and somewhat in direct response to TPM’s recent article about Democrats adapting to the “new media landscape.”
A lesson that I spent several election cycles but at this point believe as a near axiom is that “our voters” (e.g., liberals, people of color, people who live in this-zip and not that-zip, etc) just don’t respond to bad-faith communications in ways that are helpful to Democratic candidates or progressive causes. There is no machine to get Democrats outraged about obviously fake shit for the obvious but really astrategic reason that Democrats don’t want to do that.
It’s hard to argue with the notion that a party that just lost badly should try new stuff. They should! But we’re not talking about a failure to build a better mousetrap, we’re talking about the fact that some people just don’t want to eat mice.
Without getting into too much detail, I’ve been through multiple rounds of qualitative and quantitative tests involving rumors, memes, etc, and Democrats and “Dem +” voters just… respond to this stuff like adults are supposed to. I want to be clear that I am not talking about negative messaging or the notion of beating up on your opponents credibly (everyone responds to that stuff, and everyone also claims that they don’t). I am talking about, basically, winking at your own base.
Just my POV, but one borne of years of TRYING to figure out how to do Karl Rove stuff for the good guys. It’s like wondering why the Celtics don’t have a better third down defense or when McDonalds is going to get serious about the muffler game. The answer is that we need a different question.
