I am a lifelong Democrat, but I think we should be using the term American rather than Democrat every time we can. Unless we're talking specifically about something like legislative strategy, calling people into this fight regardless of political affiliation will widen our nets. I have had conversations with multiple people lately that are some version of "Why aren't the Democrats doing something?" to which I reply "Why aren't we as Americans doing something?" Even those who consider themselves Democrats feel like they can distance themselves and place blame. When we frame this as a fight by Americans, we make it more about all of us rather than a party structure that most people feel distant from or even hostile to.
Oooh. Tom, I think you just accidentally hit on something. Why can't we call Democrats "the American party"? If Trump can unilaterally decide that the Gulf of Mexico is really the Gulf of America, why can't we grab the concept that *we* are the Americans here before they do? Please think about this a little. I'm not saying that we should rename the party. I just mean that we should give it a subtitle
Every time Democrats address the latest thing Trump/Musk are doing, they should lead with "He lied to you. He conned you". I understand the "well you voted for this" reaction to a lot of things. But we need people to wake up and blame Trump for the chaos, not "the government". Having one overarching message i think helps blunt the flood the zone strategy.
One frame I like to use is to flip the regime’s use of “waste” on its head. Musk/Trump are cutting “waste”? To them, waste is money spent on YOU and your family instead of on tax cuts for themselves.
Safe skies for when you travel? Waste. Education grants for your child’s IEP? Waste. Public health measures to protect your family? Waste. Veteran crisis hotlines for the brave servicepeople in your life? Waste. And so on.
Yes let's make him unpopular. What about focusing on the economy? Price of gas up 20c/gal. Inflation is getting worse...but what's been overlooked is when he talked about the US taking over Gaza, he said we'd build "very nice houses" for 2 million Palestinians. Wasn't he supposed to solve the housing crisis for his own constituents???
Now that is a winner. People in this country can't afford houses but he's going to build them in the Middle East? That will really make people mad. Good one!
Just wait until all of these organizations that run on federal funding decide the money is not coming and cannot shift funds around sufficiently to hold onto people. Let’s take a round number of $100,000 per person per year and divide the billions in ”waste” that are suddenly, illegally on hold. For every billion is 10,000 jobs and thus lives suddenly upended. Leaving aside the vandalism of damaging organizations that do critical research and community work, federal dollars fund an enormous number of jobs in the USA. Creating sudden unemployment spikes and shaking the consumer confidence are really good ways to create a recession.
Everyone needs to know the name Mathew Huttle (just like Laken Riley). Trump pardoned violent criminals convicted of child porn and we need to scream it from the rooftops in front of every camera.
So do you have the ear of anyone in Congress given your past Dan? All this is perfect strategy, but you're telling the wrong people. We don't have a vote for another 2 years, Congress votes every day on something or other. I don't understand a single Democratic vote for a single Trump agenda item. And Schumer jumping up and down looking like an older but no less idiotic Musk, is such a bad look for leadership. Can we get him to step down and find someone who's glasses don't have to sit at the end of his nose every time he's on TV lecturing to Congress? I'm 82 so this isn't the ageist view of a young person. We need young, strong, progressive voices who haven't sold their souls to the financial industry to be the face and voice of the Democratic party.
It’s important to note that Dan’s messaging does have an impact on Congressional representatives. One purpose of the Message Box is to help us refine our tactics and messaging within our sphere of influence. I’ll be applying this approach, starting with my state congressional representatives this week and at upcoming town halls.
right, other than AOC and somewhat Murphy and Raskin it's completely silent. I get emails asking for $$ and there is no damn way til the Dems start to stand up for Americans.
I have heard Brian Schatz, Andy Kim, Ron Wyden, Adam Schiff, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Murphy, etc make strong statements and/or interviews with well thought out positions. There are plenty of Dems making strong statements. Some you have to search for, but as Trump does ever more unpopular things, you will see them breaking out into more media outlets.
Don’t know what you mean by stand up for Americans—Dems are out of power and can only speak up and delay cabinet nominees. When Trump starts pushing bills, they can refuse to vote for anything that comes to the floor.
With ongoing federal cuts and the shuttering of agencies, the CR isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. What on earth is there for Democrats to negotiate on in regards to the budget? I don’t think they should even engage on budget discussion. Start messaging now that Republicans are wholly responsible for the budget - as the administration has shown no indication that they will adhere to whatever is eventually passed by Congress.
Indivisible has been taking the no layups position for the last 2 weeks and delivering letters to our moc’s with this exact message. Join your local Indivisible group to participate!
Several Indivisible groups have been organizing (or re-organizing) in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We're full of energy and calling our legislators during their "break" this week.
Dan, one other suggestion: The relentless focus on Elon Musk is understandable, but it draws fire to Musk and away from Trump. Musk has nothing to risk as a political matter, so his taking one for the team costs him nothing and provides cover for both Trump and Vance. I suspect this explains a lot about why Trump's approvals aren't significantly lower. He's letting Musk do the dirty work. When we all suggest that Musk is the puppetmaster, that's letting Trump off the hook.
Let's not stand on the sidelines wondering when the bromance will come to an end. Trump needs to be forced to own every last unpopular thing Musk is doing right now, including giving a bunch of teenaged Hitler youth access to our tax returns (and by the way, somebody please explain to me how viewing our tax returns is connected to "government efficiency").
Weaponize Trump’s age and cognitive weirdness. MAGA will never turn on him, but they know he’s in decline. Activate their grievance culture around the fact that the Musk/tech billionaires and the Vance/P2025 cabal are blatantly using the old man’s decline to steal the country, so they can further screw hard working Americans.
Why is it that Dems, who raised $2 BILLION dollars for Kamala Harris and other Dems in the just past election, are NOT urgently raising serious dollars to advertise in EVERY important media space (conservative and not) about the real impacts of what Trump is illegally doing?
Show children who will die here and abroad because of lack of access to vaccines paid fir with American dollars. Veterans who will go untreated because V.A. doctors have been fired. Elderly citizens who will be scammed and can't get help from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to get their money back. ETC., ETC. TELL THE STORIES THAT AFFECT ANERICANS' LIVES. Now. All the time. Everywhere. Over and over. GOAL:: drive down Trump's poll numbers. Slow down the dismantling of the programs Anericans depend on.
Speaking of Afghanistan, what we saw was the media channeling "the Blob", as our natsec establishment is known, trashing Biden for it's own failures in a 20 year long war, including its failure to challenge Trump completely undermining our position there. Defense and CIA apparently completely missed the fact that local 'walords' had seen the writing on the wall and already made deals with the Taliban, thus making Biden's assessment that we had to either withdraw or significantly escalate correct, and theirs that we could continue with a light footprint dangerously wrong. Biden was told he had a minimum of six months to withdraw, when he didn't have six weeks.
Did any talking head later say, 'In fact, he turned out to be right, and we were wrong'? Not that I heard.
Perhaps more to the point, we spent literally billions over two decades training the Afghan army. Generals routinely lied to the American public and Congress over the readiness of that army. When we left the army fled or actually handed their arms to the Taliban fighters.
(By the way, when Ben Rhodes was asked about this on the Al Franken podcast, he excused the generals by saying it was understandable that they wouldn’t want to admit an embarrassing truth. At that moment I was glad Rhodes is now a podcaster and not managing anything of substance).
The actions of those in charge of that training, and the fecklessness of those in government “understanding” when generals lie, led to Biden’s very wrong assumption that the Afghan army could protect its country for any length of time. The blame for Afghanistan belonged to Bush and Obama.
Of all the major actors in our 'effort' there, Biden was the least responsible for how it turned out.
That said, we had evolved a 'light foot print, just enough to not lose' posture under Obama, that could possibly have been maintained long enough to give cover for the evolution of a civil society/institutions capable if resisting the Taliban. This Trump and Pompeo utterly wrecked.
US "blob" didn't face up to the inherent length of time required in an effort like this and plan accordingly, and explain it to the public (which wouldn't have approved if they had, in all likelihood). It's said of Vietnam, 'We weren't there 9 years, we were there 1 year 9 times'. Much the same could be said of Afghanistan.
I suspect this is much how Biden saw it. He remembers Vietnam, even if the blob has apparently forgotten.
I too remember the disaster that was Vietnam, though from a more up-close and personal way than Biden did.
It gave me the insight to realize that Obama was as foolishly naïve as any president to think he could somehow finely tune our resource—numbers and types—to provide a “light footprint just enough not to lose”. War is not manageable in that way.
I dunno if he thought that, or ended up with just enough not to lose by default. There's no winning a counter insurgency quickly in a country lacking the institutions to sustain an effective government. You have to go long, you can't go big and get it over with. So, arguably, just enough not to lose is the best you can do.
In the history of the world, no successful democracy has ever been “installed” in one country by any outside force. Not even Japan or Germany after WWII. It was stupid to change the original mission from kicking the Taliban’s ass until they gave up bin Laden to somehow installing democracy in a feudal, tribal society that had no inclination to advance from the Middle Ages.
Since, currerntly, both Germany and Japan's deomocracies are very arguably in better shape than ours, I'd say we were successful. It's a task that has to be understood, and it currently isn't. There has to be a foundation of culture and institutions, both existed in Germany and Japan, but obviously not in Afghanistan. How do you build them? How long does it take? Afaik, there's no good answer to that.
A consensus formed that we (and this included NATO) didn't want to return there for yet another punitive expedition in the future. Looks like we will anyway. IIRC, a punitive expedition was Biden's preference from the start.
We are in the midst of a dangerous experiment that will determine the public’s view of Trump:
Can you run a government that ministers to the needs of 350 million people with absolute chaos, firing people wholesale in every agency with no knowledge whatsoever of what those people do? Can you work to destroy our relationship with military allies and disrupt a complex web of international trade relationships? Can you turn our most private confidential data over to a modern-day pirate?
Can you do all this willy-nilly, with no plan? And when something blows up in their faces (as it will) is a genius hero going to arise from the ranks of the bungling right-wing kooks he has surrounded himself with?
When it happens, all Dems from our elected officials to our citizen activists have to pound the message that the chaos and its damage all belong to Trump.
Indivisible is doing a great job with strategic guidance and targeting the electeds who need to hear this. Even if you're not in it locally, the national resources are strong.
This is exactly right. Why do our leaders think the public rewards them for bi-partisanship which compromises Democratic ideals? They just look weak. This man is not popular. His policies aren’t popular. Why are our leaders so afraid?
I am a lifelong Democrat, but I think we should be using the term American rather than Democrat every time we can. Unless we're talking specifically about something like legislative strategy, calling people into this fight regardless of political affiliation will widen our nets. I have had conversations with multiple people lately that are some version of "Why aren't the Democrats doing something?" to which I reply "Why aren't we as Americans doing something?" Even those who consider themselves Democrats feel like they can distance themselves and place blame. When we frame this as a fight by Americans, we make it more about all of us rather than a party structure that most people feel distant from or even hostile to.
I like it, and I like the overall take back of what a Real American means.
But like it or not, we need to build the brand of the Democratic party. There will be no “American party” candidates in the 2026 midterms.
Oooh. Tom, I think you just accidentally hit on something. Why can't we call Democrats "the American party"? If Trump can unilaterally decide that the Gulf of Mexico is really the Gulf of America, why can't we grab the concept that *we* are the Americans here before they do? Please think about this a little. I'm not saying that we should rename the party. I just mean that we should give it a subtitle
I think we can do both.
great point
Every time Democrats address the latest thing Trump/Musk are doing, they should lead with "He lied to you. He conned you". I understand the "well you voted for this" reaction to a lot of things. But we need people to wake up and blame Trump for the chaos, not "the government". Having one overarching message i think helps blunt the flood the zone strategy.
Agree, but put it in the present tense.
One frame I like to use is to flip the regime’s use of “waste” on its head. Musk/Trump are cutting “waste”? To them, waste is money spent on YOU and your family instead of on tax cuts for themselves.
Safe skies for when you travel? Waste. Education grants for your child’s IEP? Waste. Public health measures to protect your family? Waste. Veteran crisis hotlines for the brave servicepeople in your life? Waste. And so on.
Perfect messaging!!
Yes let's make him unpopular. What about focusing on the economy? Price of gas up 20c/gal. Inflation is getting worse...but what's been overlooked is when he talked about the US taking over Gaza, he said we'd build "very nice houses" for 2 million Palestinians. Wasn't he supposed to solve the housing crisis for his own constituents???
Now that is a winner. People in this country can't afford houses but he's going to build them in the Middle East? That will really make people mad. Good one!
Just wait until all of these organizations that run on federal funding decide the money is not coming and cannot shift funds around sufficiently to hold onto people. Let’s take a round number of $100,000 per person per year and divide the billions in ”waste” that are suddenly, illegally on hold. For every billion is 10,000 jobs and thus lives suddenly upended. Leaving aside the vandalism of damaging organizations that do critical research and community work, federal dollars fund an enormous number of jobs in the USA. Creating sudden unemployment spikes and shaking the consumer confidence are really good ways to create a recession.
Don't forget those egg prices--still elevated and likely to go higher!
If you can find any. And the avian flu is still spreading.
Everyone needs to know the name Mathew Huttle (just like Laken Riley). Trump pardoned violent criminals convicted of child porn and we need to scream it from the rooftops in front of every camera.
He’s also trying to get Andrew Tate released. Andrew Tate! This should be shouted from the rooftops too.
So do you have the ear of anyone in Congress given your past Dan? All this is perfect strategy, but you're telling the wrong people. We don't have a vote for another 2 years, Congress votes every day on something or other. I don't understand a single Democratic vote for a single Trump agenda item. And Schumer jumping up and down looking like an older but no less idiotic Musk, is such a bad look for leadership. Can we get him to step down and find someone who's glasses don't have to sit at the end of his nose every time he's on TV lecturing to Congress? I'm 82 so this isn't the ageist view of a young person. We need young, strong, progressive voices who haven't sold their souls to the financial industry to be the face and voice of the Democratic party.
It’s important to note that Dan’s messaging does have an impact on Congressional representatives. One purpose of the Message Box is to help us refine our tactics and messaging within our sphere of influence. I’ll be applying this approach, starting with my state congressional representatives this week and at upcoming town halls.
This is true--and important to remember.
right, other than AOC and somewhat Murphy and Raskin it's completely silent. I get emails asking for $$ and there is no damn way til the Dems start to stand up for Americans.
I have heard Brian Schatz, Andy Kim, Ron Wyden, Adam Schiff, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, Chris Murphy, etc make strong statements and/or interviews with well thought out positions. There are plenty of Dems making strong statements. Some you have to search for, but as Trump does ever more unpopular things, you will see them breaking out into more media outlets.
Don’t know what you mean by stand up for Americans—Dems are out of power and can only speak up and delay cabinet nominees. When Trump starts pushing bills, they can refuse to vote for anything that comes to the floor.
Tell them exactly that. They need to know.
With ongoing federal cuts and the shuttering of agencies, the CR isn’t worth the paper it is printed on. What on earth is there for Democrats to negotiate on in regards to the budget? I don’t think they should even engage on budget discussion. Start messaging now that Republicans are wholly responsible for the budget - as the administration has shown no indication that they will adhere to whatever is eventually passed by Congress.
Indivisible has been taking the no layups position for the last 2 weeks and delivering letters to our moc’s with this exact message. Join your local Indivisible group to participate!
Several Indivisible groups have been organizing (or re-organizing) in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. We're full of energy and calling our legislators during their "break" this week.
Dan, one other suggestion: The relentless focus on Elon Musk is understandable, but it draws fire to Musk and away from Trump. Musk has nothing to risk as a political matter, so his taking one for the team costs him nothing and provides cover for both Trump and Vance. I suspect this explains a lot about why Trump's approvals aren't significantly lower. He's letting Musk do the dirty work. When we all suggest that Musk is the puppetmaster, that's letting Trump off the hook.
Let's not stand on the sidelines wondering when the bromance will come to an end. Trump needs to be forced to own every last unpopular thing Musk is doing right now, including giving a bunch of teenaged Hitler youth access to our tax returns (and by the way, somebody please explain to me how viewing our tax returns is connected to "government efficiency").
This. Every time a Democrat is interviewed, this is the messaging.
And they need to message that the budget, debt ceiling, and CR are all on the GOP and the GOP is responsible.
Weaponize Trump’s age and cognitive weirdness. MAGA will never turn on him, but they know he’s in decline. Activate their grievance culture around the fact that the Musk/tech billionaires and the Vance/P2025 cabal are blatantly using the old man’s decline to steal the country, so they can further screw hard working Americans.
Why is it that Dems, who raised $2 BILLION dollars for Kamala Harris and other Dems in the just past election, are NOT urgently raising serious dollars to advertise in EVERY important media space (conservative and not) about the real impacts of what Trump is illegally doing?
Show children who will die here and abroad because of lack of access to vaccines paid fir with American dollars. Veterans who will go untreated because V.A. doctors have been fired. Elderly citizens who will be scammed and can't get help from the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to get their money back. ETC., ETC. TELL THE STORIES THAT AFFECT ANERICANS' LIVES. Now. All the time. Everywhere. Over and over. GOAL:: drive down Trump's poll numbers. Slow down the dismantling of the programs Anericans depend on.
Speaking of Afghanistan, what we saw was the media channeling "the Blob", as our natsec establishment is known, trashing Biden for it's own failures in a 20 year long war, including its failure to challenge Trump completely undermining our position there. Defense and CIA apparently completely missed the fact that local 'walords' had seen the writing on the wall and already made deals with the Taliban, thus making Biden's assessment that we had to either withdraw or significantly escalate correct, and theirs that we could continue with a light footprint dangerously wrong. Biden was told he had a minimum of six months to withdraw, when he didn't have six weeks.
Did any talking head later say, 'In fact, he turned out to be right, and we were wrong'? Not that I heard.
Perhaps more to the point, we spent literally billions over two decades training the Afghan army. Generals routinely lied to the American public and Congress over the readiness of that army. When we left the army fled or actually handed their arms to the Taliban fighters.
(By the way, when Ben Rhodes was asked about this on the Al Franken podcast, he excused the generals by saying it was understandable that they wouldn’t want to admit an embarrassing truth. At that moment I was glad Rhodes is now a podcaster and not managing anything of substance).
The actions of those in charge of that training, and the fecklessness of those in government “understanding” when generals lie, led to Biden’s very wrong assumption that the Afghan army could protect its country for any length of time. The blame for Afghanistan belonged to Bush and Obama.
Of all the major actors in our 'effort' there, Biden was the least responsible for how it turned out.
That said, we had evolved a 'light foot print, just enough to not lose' posture under Obama, that could possibly have been maintained long enough to give cover for the evolution of a civil society/institutions capable if resisting the Taliban. This Trump and Pompeo utterly wrecked.
US "blob" didn't face up to the inherent length of time required in an effort like this and plan accordingly, and explain it to the public (which wouldn't have approved if they had, in all likelihood). It's said of Vietnam, 'We weren't there 9 years, we were there 1 year 9 times'. Much the same could be said of Afghanistan.
I suspect this is much how Biden saw it. He remembers Vietnam, even if the blob has apparently forgotten.
I too remember the disaster that was Vietnam, though from a more up-close and personal way than Biden did.
It gave me the insight to realize that Obama was as foolishly naïve as any president to think he could somehow finely tune our resource—numbers and types—to provide a “light footprint just enough not to lose”. War is not manageable in that way.
I dunno if he thought that, or ended up with just enough not to lose by default. There's no winning a counter insurgency quickly in a country lacking the institutions to sustain an effective government. You have to go long, you can't go big and get it over with. So, arguably, just enough not to lose is the best you can do.
In the history of the world, no successful democracy has ever been “installed” in one country by any outside force. Not even Japan or Germany after WWII. It was stupid to change the original mission from kicking the Taliban’s ass until they gave up bin Laden to somehow installing democracy in a feudal, tribal society that had no inclination to advance from the Middle Ages.
Since, currerntly, both Germany and Japan's deomocracies are very arguably in better shape than ours, I'd say we were successful. It's a task that has to be understood, and it currently isn't. There has to be a foundation of culture and institutions, both existed in Germany and Japan, but obviously not in Afghanistan. How do you build them? How long does it take? Afaik, there's no good answer to that.
A consensus formed that we (and this included NATO) didn't want to return there for yet another punitive expedition in the future. Looks like we will anyway. IIRC, a punitive expedition was Biden's preference from the start.
We are in the midst of a dangerous experiment that will determine the public’s view of Trump:
Can you run a government that ministers to the needs of 350 million people with absolute chaos, firing people wholesale in every agency with no knowledge whatsoever of what those people do? Can you work to destroy our relationship with military allies and disrupt a complex web of international trade relationships? Can you turn our most private confidential data over to a modern-day pirate?
Can you do all this willy-nilly, with no plan? And when something blows up in their faces (as it will) is a genius hero going to arise from the ranks of the bungling right-wing kooks he has surrounded himself with?
When it happens, all Dems from our elected officials to our citizen activists have to pound the message that the chaos and its damage all belong to Trump.
I agree. But also take note that inertia (the tendency of an object to stay in motion) will protect us for a bit.
But once something happens the fallout may make the Afghan withdrawal look like a Sunday in the park.
I think you are 100% right, now how do you get the democrats in congress to understand this?? Sign them up for Message Box?
WE do. Download the 5 Calls app and start calling your rep and Senators daily.
Indivisible is doing a great job with strategic guidance and targeting the electeds who need to hear this. Even if you're not in it locally, the national resources are strong.
This is exactly right. Why do our leaders think the public rewards them for bi-partisanship which compromises Democratic ideals? They just look weak. This man is not popular. His policies aren’t popular. Why are our leaders so afraid?