this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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I think that's a good point. I wonder if reasonable politicians should prepare a few outlandish talking points to give the media something tasty to sink their teeth into. Like do a normal interview saying normal thoughtful and nuanced things, but also throw in a couple specific wacky clickbait nuggets so the media has what they crave for their news cycle.
Like, what if Kamala had worked this into her interview: Once his criminal trials are over, I don't think imprisonment in Attica would be appropriate for Trump as an ex president.
Leave it at that and have the media frenzy over it, even though it means nothing. Then they won't spend as much time trying to invent drama over her interview because she gave them some drama to go with.
I think that's what Trump is best at. Trump knows most of his base are dumb and the media are thirsty clickbait whores, so he treats his interviews with the decorum of a 2-bit bordello and ends up getting tons of attention that works for his base.
I feel that would only fuel the misinformation machine with more fake news. I’d be interested in knowing your rationale and how you feel it would be beneficial to anybody except the news organizations.
I'm talking about controlling the narrative a bit more. Dems are masters at speaking ineffectively and letting the media decide the narrative. And the media spends half its time reacting to whatever outlandish thing Trump said. And Trump says the outlandish stuff on purpose to control the narrative.
So 80% of the time we are in this cycle: Trump says something insane on purpose -> media reports it like it's half presidential and worth talking about -> Dems are asked to comment on it -> Dems try to ignore it or reply something sensible that gets buried.
The effect is this: Trump controls the narrative -> the whorish media is happy to repeat his BS and normalize him for clicks -> whatever Dems want to talk about doesn't matter. Low effort voters see Trump and his message everywhere courtesy of the whorish media. Trump remains a viable candidate.
I'm proposing that Dems could try to join the cycle at the input level instead of the tail end. If they say some aggressive or outlandish things about Trump, they'd be trend setters at the start of the cycle instead of irrelevant at the end of it. Like what happened with the "weird" thing, when seemingly by accident the Dems landed one narrative origination that left Trump on the receiving end unable to shake it.
My point is that this shouldn't happen by accident. The Dems should plan it as part of narrative control. Keep a schedule and say another big thing once per week. Give the media something big to talk about, keep an aggressive message on Trump and his prosecutions, crimes, terrible policies and so on. Anything that controls the narrative, puts Trump on the defensive, and makes the media spread the Dems message instead of giving Trump free publicity.
When the Dems choose not to do this, they are letting the media decide what narrative they want and the media will always prefer to go with sensationalized BS as much as possible, which usually means going over to Trump to say something insane so they have more fodder to normalize and talk about for clicks.
I’m not usually one to take this stance, but just because the Republicans are doing it does not mean the Democrats should too.
It seems to me that your main reason for your stance is that you feel the Republicans do these outlandish things, which makes them “newsworthy” and stand out in the crowd, while the Democrats are left sitting in the back mumbling like they’re Milton from Office Space. You think that if they start saying their own outlandish things, it’ll somehow balance the scales in the news media and get people back to paying attention to the Democrats and focusing on their real agenda.
The way I see it is that Republicans, while loud, are very much not well respected by most anybody that makes a difference to the Democrats. In other words, acting like Republicans to get attention would be counterproductive as it would greatly offend their base. You don’t win an argument by being louder than your opponent. You definitely don’t win when your answer is to model “I know you are, but what am I” responses.
If anything, no one wins an argument at all. What you want to do is to flip the narrative by remaining calm, focusing on the facts, and pointing out the flaws in your opponents arguments. You repeat what they’ve said, ask them to explain it further or that you don’t understand what they mean, and then hold them accountable for their responses.
It seems like we are talking about different things.
Also,
We know with well-tested confidence that that does nothing for half the electorate.
Or more than half of the electorate. There are dems on lemmy that want blood and conflict, who would rather see trump killed instead of being defeated in an election and being sent to prison. There are independents who will vote for whoever appears "stronger" on video as opposed to who is more likely to work for their interests. The position of president has been "who the american people (and remember, corporations are people) love from their media exposure to said candidate" far more than "who has the best policy" for a long time
just so we're clear and and the same page here, the reason why trump is in power at all, and is allowed to do this bullshit is BECAUSE of this rhetoric, if we don't engage with it at least a little bit we're going to keep losing to the worst part in existence right now, we do need to play dirty with them, but only enough to get one up on them.
I disagree with the idea that democrats need to play dirty, even just a little bit, to get one up on the republicans. Look at the whole “weird “ thing that riled up the R’s and excited the D’s — there was nothing dirty about it.
No, what the D’s need to do is keep up with intelligently pushing back. D’s don’t need to be louder or annoying or dirty. They do need to stop turning the other cheek, and ignoring the rhetoric from the R’s. They need people to stand up and say No to the R’s.
I saw a video where someone was saying that there is a difference between being peaceful and passive. That being peaceful does not make you weak. I believe that sentiment applies very well here: the D’s need to stop being passive.
ok so, this is what i mean by "dirty" in this context, previously dems have never really done this, as we've held this moral high ground. I'm not saying we should make shit up and lie, i'm just saying we should get into the mud and roll around a little bit,
Regardless, i will leave you with the idea that the only way to fight fascism is education... What do you do when fascism has already crept up? Good question.
You're replying to a song lyric
I’m not sure Trump actually has any idea what’s going on around him. His nonsense just doesn’t get caught by the equally stupid base so he looks like he’s playing them. The only people that would support him are the dumbest people imaginable so it’s like saying I’m a skilled athelete based solely on the fact that I can absolutely obliterate my competition…which just so happens to be a bunch of toddlers.
This isn’t to say he’s not a massive threat and that the base won’t vote him in if Americans don’t vote against him but let’s not give him any undue credit here.
Democrats don't want to create any conservative enthusiasm, so they tend to be very vague and cagey with regard to what happened to Trump next.
Republicans think harsh words juice their base, so they're a lot more hot blooded with their propositions and predictions.