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Gary S.'s avatar

Boehlert wrote that there is such a “glaring disconnect between reality and how the press depicts White House accomplishments” that it seems the press is “determined to keep Biden pinned down.”

I am not surprised. Democrats govern better than Republicans (although Trump and his acolytes set new lows.) But people don't vote according to their interests. They vote to support those they identify with. And we Democrats are poor at messaging.

I would love to see more coverage in this blog about the struggles by Democrats to get the message across, especially to the voters who have turned against them.

Currently I'm reading everything I can to understand this better, including, recently, Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, where he shows that Democrats appeal to two fundamental moral foundations, Care/harm and Fairness/cheating, while conservatives appeal to the full complement of six, which adds Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation and Liberty/oppression. Democratic messaging -- not governance -- doesn't address the last four. What if we forcefully appealed to these also? (He writes this about conservative values, which he differentiates from today's radicalized Republican party.) Haidt lays out the evidence base for these moral foundations being innate as well as for people having a genetic disposition to be liberal or conservative. We need to reach those who don't as easily identify as liberal.

He is one of many who explores the societally disintegrating force of social media since 2011, especially in a new article in The Atlantic, "Why the past ten years of American life have been uniquely stupid: It's not just a phase." In that article he identifies the specter of artificial intelligence programs that can write a story and slant it in any direction so that such disinformation will increasingly flood social media and its unregulated algorithms. Our adversaries make up all sorts of outlandish lies that undermine our shared sense of reality and inoculate authoritarians from being blamed by blaming their opponents first. This firehose of noise takes up all of the oxygen. Of course there's the lock Republicans have on propaganda to radicalize conservatives through talk radio, cable news and other media. The GOP became very disciplined in messaging starting with the Reagan Administration. Propaganda and disinformation practices have long been carried out by Russia and are being exploited by other adversaries.

That is the war we are fighting. Blogs like this ground Democrats' actions in our history and reveal their efforts to do the right thing. But it's only reaching those of us with a liberal orientation.

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Rowshan Nemazee's avatar

Biden's achievements are being ignored, while the Republican buffoonery is splattered across headline news to attract readership. Why can't people be more intelligent, critical seers? What's more important, the facts or trumpesque sensationalism?

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