ryan cooper: like the fattest, slowest political softball imaginable, and yet Democrats are anxiously pondering whether to bunt or let it go by abcnews.go.com/Politics/plu...

like the fattest, slowest political softball imaginable, and yet Democrats are anxiously pondering whether to bunt or let it go by abcnews.go.com/Politics/plu...

Half of Americans think Trump's guilty verdict was correct, should end campaign: POLLabcnews.go.com Forty-seven percent say they think the charges against Trump were politically motivated. At the same time, 51% think Trump intentionally did something illegal.

imagine a more perfect political gift than "my opponent and leader of the party was convicted of 34 felonies." and yet the principal reactions I've seen are "settle down, we still have to vote him out" and "wahh this is going to step on my pharma pricing pitch"

to clarify a bit, the complaint isn't that they're not saying anything, it's that they're not doing the kind of theatrical, shocking antics that will keep this in the news over the long term. still this is better than nothing bsky.app/profile/conv...

Anyways this is the literal campaign stuff being put out now, but this website lives in an alternate reality

And it doesn't have to be like, a dramatic reading of Stormy Daniels's memoir into the Congressional record. Biden holding a press conference to announce that Trump isn't getting security briefings because he's a felon is good enough

Why do you think that would matter? I can't see that being more than a blip in the news coverage

It's less about one individual event and more about establishing a message. A series of headlines putting "Donald Trump" and "convicted felon" together. It may be one blip in coverage by itself but that's why it had to be a series of things.

Come on, you know the headline is "Trump lashes out after Biden administration denies access to security briefings", with the reason in paragraph 8

They are trying to draw a contrast between normal politicians and the ones who use theatrical and shocking antics, you can disagree but they think that the media and the voters they need won't respond well to that.

"Better than nothing" I don't think I've ever heard a more succinct description of the democratic party

"sometimes better than nothing"

"We want the campaign to be about other things"

They are so fucking awful in so many ways

cowards and fuckwits

one must never ever suggest anything bad about Republicans, whom we love and honor and cherish and respect, our dear colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and since they are eagerly supporting this 34 time convicted crook, we have to avoid making our friends mad

Seriously, how many times are Democrats going to invalidate legitimate blows to trump's campaign—things that should implode it—and instead shove all their chips onto the vulnerable general election?

The Democrats elected someone who wants a strong Republican party. That pretty much says everything you need to know, IMHO.

yep and he was essentially last on my list in the primary

He didn't even enter the primary until six months in.

bsky.app/profile/m00p...

ironically, too strong a republican party would also result in them never getting elected again

They need a strong Republican party so they can perpetually fundraise promising to stop the Republicans. (Not actually stopping them, merely promising to.) It will always be The Most Important Election of Our Lifetime.

right bsky.app/profile/m00p...

but that would require them to find the current status quo repugnant, and also realize that “the current status quo” has changed from what it used to be—today’s republicans (and dems) are not identical to yesterday’s, so strategies must be updated accordingly.

US democracy and a human-habitable planet are on the line and they're fighting old wars with old mentalities, like it's a grand old game

better yet, "my opponent, an anti-family adulterer, dangerous rapist (www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...), anti-American coup-leader, and lawless convicted felon"

bsky.app/profile/conv...

that's a good start! now 1) it needs to be more memorable and cutting, 2) get the dems to repeat the same 2 or 3 simple nuggets, even moderate dems, but most importantly ...

*pair it with some political theater* -- some political action that is newsworthy! the right constantly pairs their pts with asking supporters to do something disruptive. it demonstrates stakes and engenders buy-in from supporters, in some larger (and nutty) narrative of good vs evil. that's useful!

Not just that, currently the opposition is trying to get your son convicted of a crime in order to even the stakes! How much more evidence do they need!

We don't want to play this up because Bob Menendez is going to be going through some things, and we want to keep his felonious ass in his Senate seat so we can confirm more judges.

But you have to admit, it's not like Trump did something seriously bad like (checks note) winning medals for military service in Vietnam or (checks notes again) helping fund the massive expansion of the Internet.

MFer is announcing restrictive immigration policy instead of having a parade over trump's conviction

What president would be happy about the precedent set by a president being convicted of a crime?

A president who doesn’t commit crimes? I’m guessing.

Name one

You got me. Of course, I’m talking about Trump-like, mob crimes, not GWB/Obama type war crimes. The latter will never be prosecuted though they definitely should be.

Of course! Just goofin

Damn, that's terrible. www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...

Biden administration gave 'mass amnesty' to 350,000 illegal migrantswww.dailymail.co.uk Over 350,000 migrants who entered the U.S. illegally have had their immigration court cases dismissed, allowing them to go free without a verdict on the merits of their entry, a new report indicates.

Marisa I am LIVID. And heartbroken.

Me too.

I know it won’t help but I called my electeds to tell them how cruel and counterintuitive it is. I didn’t know what else to do.

I think that's VERY good to do

why don't we go BIG on the border instead

Or one of any host of issues that according to our media establishment's rules winds up being distorted into a referendum on whether you want communism

I dunno, Ryan, I just jumped over to Twitter and checked three random Democrats and here's their posts. Seems to me the problem is they don't have a captured news network to repeat themselves every hour on the hour. (Also there's a chorus of folks saying they aren't saying what they're saying)

Could they do this better, oh sure. But I don't think that's the reason why their hashtag isn't trending and their statements aren't getting splashed on a chyron

(granted, that's three Democrats and one of them is Maxine Waters, so I certainly did not do a galaxy-wide dredge through social media posts)

Yeah, I think it's important for people repeating this meme to check personally to see if it is accurate first, especially pundits.

I'm generally grousing about organized Democratic action because they legitimately aren't great... but it's also the case that almost every Democrat would rather grouse about organized Democratic action than actually go around and reflect that there's organized Democratic action actually happening.

Also for all the vaunted "the GOP are always on message" notes about the GOP... the GOP's most solid message consistency is on their absolutely most content-free talking points. It doesn't take message discipline to keep repeating obviously silly things, it takes shamelessness.

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