Preaching To The Choir

Or how (not) to beat Trump, Musk & MAGA at the ballot box

If I may call it such, this revelation came to me while listening to a pundit on MSNBC a few nights back. The subject was Trump’s latest authoritarian chicanery and this man was expressing what is now the Left’s collective and unending outrage.

And that’s when it hit me. Sure, you’re ticked off. I’m ticked off. We’re all ticked off and ready to shoot someone, but please show me where this ranting and raving among ourselves is moving the electoral needle in any measurable way. Where our progressive media ecosystem is reaching the persuadable few that turn our elections. Not to knock all the fine folks and insightful reporting being done therein, but this has become too much like preaching to the choir. Group therapy for the down and out.

Rightly or wrongly, these observations have brought me to an inescapable conclusion. In our war against Trump and MAGA, we have left one of our greatest hopes for salvation on the cutting room floor: a singularly focused and relentless ad campaign. If this last presidential election taught us anything, it’s that a man like Musk can buy one by throwing his bottomless pit of money around.

Another lesson we ought to have learned from the last election. Identify where the persuadable few eat from the political trough, then hit them with a gut level message. Highbrow political rhetoric is utterly wasted on a politically illiterate electorate.

If I could shake some change out of our billionaires, here’s what I would do. Set up a bare bones operation ─ a research team focused on how to reach the persuadable, a great ad squad and whatever tech support is needed to keep things running smoothly ─ then flood every corner of the media with short and sweet spot ads, 24/7, 365 days of the year, the kind of messages that will at once stop people in their tracks and lay bare the right wing’s endless subterfuge. If we can’t take that mad hatter with his chainsaw, couple it with the suffering and affliction the Trump administration is visiting upon the American public and come up with ads that break through their sham propaganda, it’s probably time to get into another business.

There’s a simple truth at work here. Democrats are fighting for working class people. Republicans are not and if we can’t turn that into a winning message, we definitely need to find another job.

One thing is for certain. Musk and his cabal will go on throwing their billions at undermining our democracy. It’s time to acknowledge that our election cycles now go on without end and we’re up against a Goliath that never sleeps. Without our own well-funded and singularly focused war machine, we may as well resign ourselves to repeated electoral failure.

Which brings me back to the point of my message. Amidst our evermore balkanized progressive movement, where the whole has become less than the sum of its parts, can we somehow unite our energies and resources into our own suitably focused Goliath? Or are we doomed to those fateful words? Divided we fall.