Political Memes

Okay, great! Now, here's where I point out the problems. Keep in mind that I am not happy that Trump won, what I want is for the democrats to take their well-earned lessons from their fuck up and not fuck up again, instead of staying in denial of any responsibility and trundling into the midterms convinced that they did everything perfect in '24.

1. A lot of voters fundamentally didn't feel the good things Biden did. We have a lot of student loans debt, and I can live with the fact that our debt didn't get cancelled, but it's really frustrating that they touted the payment plans for those whose debt remained as some kind of win. Those cool payment plans they were making a fuss about actually would have increased our payments. More on that below, but that's kind of the general vibe of Biden's accomplishments and how they were oversold in '24. Yeah, he did undeniably do some good things, but those good things were ultimately just kind of okay for the average person, and got sold as if he was the ghost of FDR. A lot of folks are out there drowning, and the campaign's messaging vibe around it was "congratulations on having been rescued by Joe Biden!" It's a little like when you're on hold with a cable company for four hours because they're the only Internet provider, or you're playing phone tag with the health insurance company because they're the only option provided by your employer, and they start bragging about how cool they are on the hold message. It does not spark joy. If you pointed out that the economy wasn't better for the average person, or that the messaging was tone-deaf, you got accused of being MAGA and told to shut up. So, the message of "continuing Biden" in a time where incumbents around the world were getting their asses beaten, and Biden was at his lowest popularity yet, was a huge fucking mistake imo.

I still don't get why they had to die on the hill of defending a guy who was no longer seeking re-election when they had a perfect opportunity to put distance between them. It should have been the obvious thing to do when the Trump campaign was also trying to make sure that voters associated Kamala with Biden.

2. I don't think that fear is effective messaging anymore, and I'm not sure it ever was. Running on "Trump's going to get you", even if it is true, has a 50% track record (at the time, now 33%) at the best interpretation, 0% at worst (being that Biden didn't run on "Trump's going to get you"). There's too many people who don't follow politics closely. As someone who likes arguing with strangers online, this confounds me, but it's true. I don't think fear-based messaging is meaningful for those folks, even if true.

I mean, pretend you didn't pay attention to politics. What's a better one sentence pitch? What you said, or "you're going to win a lot, you'll be tired of winning"?

P.S. Following up on student loans: It's also frustrating that instead of trying to make a meaningful change to at least start addressing the system that creates the student debt problem, the big fix they offered was a band-aid of debt forgiveness (for some people). That's not meaningful change, it's a band-aid.