Second: We're living through the consequences of three years of Democrats ceding the information environment to Republican deception, and of a collective failure to recognize that the abdication stemmed in part from Biden's unique limitations. www.offmessage.net/p/taking-sto...
Third: something straightforward but very hard to grapple with is staring us in the face. I think a better path forward is there for the taking, but the worst path forward is to change nothing and hope swing voters come to their senses on their own. www.offmessage.net/p/taking-sto...
Thus, when you reach the conclusion that Biden doesn’t have a credible plan to build and grow a lead, the appeal of the swap becomes clear. www.offmessage.net/p/biden-desp...
Crucially, Trump’s plan after Access Hollywood wasn’t simply to browbeat Republicans “get on board or shut the fuck up.” He also deployed a three-pronged strategy. www.offmessage.net/p/what-a-bid...
The bad news: I can’t think of any slam-dunk ways for Biden to muddy Trump up with his own liability, the way Trump did by trotting around Bill Clinton’s accusers. www.offmessage.net/p/what-a-bid...
The good news is the other two flanks are more easily replicable: They entail reminding base voters why they reliably vote D, and reminding swing voters why Trump is unfit for office by controlling the information environment in October. Doable. www.offmessage.net/p/what-a-bid...
But part of what makes the “how?” question so hard for onlookers to assess is that nearly all of us are working with incomplete information. For instance: What’s the true state of Biden’s health? www.offmessage.net/p/methodical...
Biden and his advisers don’t just need to be willing to read data clearly. They need to be able to perceive their environment clearly. www.offmessage.net/p/what-we-ca...
Biden shouldn’t concede much to expand the unified front. His promise to nurture the recovery and protect rule of law are enough. But he and Senate Dems could entice execs to make their concerns clear. And execs should know that silence is complicity. www.offmessage.net/p/the-busine...
New: If business leaders are *actually* down on Trump, and not just on the ~~~optics~~~ of supporting him, they should let it be known. Even if they’re worried about retribution, there are ways to make his unfitness clear. www.offmessage.net/p/the-busine...
This carries two reminders for Democrats: First, don’t fear Republican culture wars, because Republicans almost always over interpret narrow survey data to say the US is a hatful country, and roll out the red carpet for politically toxic people and ideas. www.offmessage.net/p/trump-bumf...
Second, Dems should see this as proof that tailoring their political vision to survey data is wasteful. Trump proves constantly that toxic ideas can be made to poll well with the right rhetorical gloss ( just call ‘em tariffs!). Use that insight for good! www.offmessage.net/p/trump-bumf...
Liberals are anxious about Thursday’s debate because they understand it to be a high-stakes moment, and know Biden’s not as nimble as he was when he beat Paul Ryan in 2012. The good news: beating Trump is easy, Biden just has to focus on 4 simple tasks. www.offmessage.net/p/a-four-par...
If polls suggest the race is a dead heat because half of all people rate the economy and their circumstance as dire, you really ought to factor asymmetric tribalism into your understanding of what that means. www.offmessage.net/p/conceding-...
Conceding reality to tribal shit talkers is soft, and guarantees an election fought on GOP terms. It’s also a poor omen for how Democrats will govern if they win. www.offmessage.net/p/conceding-...
Some of the facts pertain to Trump’s sexual proclivities and related confessions. Do they add up to proof that Trump was an Epstein client or co-conspirator? No, but we’re not exactly in “always the people you least suspect” territory here. www.offmessage.net/p/call-maga-...
There’s also the fact that Trump and his son and other lackeys get real weird about Epstein stuff! From promoting people who helped Epstein escape justice to the double take Trump recently did when pressed to release the Epstein files. Nothing to see here! www.offmessage.net/p/call-maga-...
In any case, there’s only one person in power right who can end the mystery, absolve Trump of these scurrilous, irresponsible newsletter inferences, let the chips fall where they may... www.offmessage.net/p/call-maga-...
We can’t shame Murdoch and other right-wing media into not spreading lies and propaganda, but we should have enough self-respect not to be easy marks. www.offmessage.net/p/republican...
If you’re interested in the view that Trump’s much more incoherent than Biden, it’s notable to me that making it requires no shady editing, as these huge, bewildering block quotations suggest. www.offmessage.net/p/republican...
The former is the most urgent, and the more challenging one to convey to unsuspecting voters. Thankfully, Republicans have done us all a service by writing it all down and giving it a nefarious-sounding name. www.offmessage.net/p/the-gops-f...
The bribery on the other hand is right out in the open, through Trump, GOP-loyal Supreme Court justices, and Republicans in Congress. www.offmessage.net/p/the-gops-f...
These are related forms of corruption, but not the same. Some innocent souls might even suspect business elites wouldn’t cozy up to Trump if he really meant to sow chaos. So—publicize the coming crackdown, condemn greedy donors as complicit, and remember. www.offmessage.net/p/the-gops-f...
“Hunter’s conviction is actually an OP to make Democrats LOOK GOOD and distract from REAL CRIMES!” repeats the formula. It’s a form of rot we all need to take on directly, because it’s incompatible with democracy or a free society. www.offmessage.net/p/republican...
We saw this most recently in the right’s coverage of the Trump trial: First with “news” that badly misled GOP audiences about the strength of the case, then with smears designed to explain away why Trump got convicted despite the supposedly weak case. www.offmessage.net/p/republican...
The short version is Biden turned the page on Trump too quickly, allowing Trump to revise the history of his presidency AND pin blame for everything post-Jan 20, 2021 on Biden. Three-plus years later, that’s not an easy problem to fix without time travel. www.offmessage.net/p/joe-biden-...
But I think there’s a way: conceptualize the universe of people who might be persuaded that the CW about the economy is wrong, and speak to them in a different register than Dems typically use. www.offmessage.net/p/joe-biden-...
The bad news: this has clearly worked on some Dems (cf @PaulBegala). The good news is, once you spot the con, it’s easy to detect in later instances. h/t @joshtpm www.offmessage.net/p/republican...
