New York Times opinion writer Michelle Cottle blasted the Democratic Party Friday, warning “few people are excited to invest in an insecure loser.”
Cottle specifically skewered the Democratic Party’s fundraising messaging in a piece headlined, “This Pathetic Groveling Is No Way to Rebuild a Party.”
“Not infrequently, I open my email to find a fund-raising request from the Democratic Party with a subject line that reads as though it was sent by a contrite boyfriend,” she wrote, claiming it has reportedly sent messaging like “’Can I explain?’ ‘You deserve an explanation’ ‘Sorry to reach out on a Sunday, ‘Let me try to convince you, ‘Please.’”
Her point, she said, “is that, right up front, these messages telegraph insecurity, pleading, chagrin. Hardly the vibe of a confident political team fighting the good fight. My overriding impulse is not to give the party campaign cash but to offer to pay for group therapy.”
While she recognized that Democrats feel humiliated by having been defeated by President Donald Trump, she urged “enough with the public hand-wringing and self-flagellation, especially when it comes to asking people for money.” She argued instead, “The blue team needs to claw back some self-respect and reassure voters that they aren’t being asked to back a bunch of losers.”
Things aren’t much better across the political aisle, she said, joking that GOP fundraising messaging to its voters amounts to, “Give us $20 right now or Barack [Obama], Hillary [Clinton] and [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] will send their baby-eating, terrorist-coddling, devil-worshiping minions to your house to imprison your family and turn your dog into a Communist.”
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But one aspect that Republicans have going for their messaging, she said, is a primal sense of belonging.
“One point in the Republicans’ favor: Scratch away the toxic layers of fear and hysteria in their solicitations and, if you squint hard enough, you can sometimes catch a glimmer of something constructive. Many of the messages are peddling a sense of pride and belonging — primal impulses at the heart of the MAGA movement.”
Even so, this tribalism, she said, is based on exclusion, something she said Democrats cannot tap into.
“A core problem — maybe the core problem — with Trumpism in general is that it relies on divisiveness and hate to foster that sense of community. This only makes it more crucial for Democrats to hawk a strong, confident, appealing counteroffer,” she said.
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By contrast, she noted that Democrats “can skip the ‘Patriot’ palaver. Its voters don’t roll that way. Likewise, bullying commands are unlikely to resonate in a party not trained to follow a strongman.”
She went on to note that as dated as some of the Obama-era optimistic messaging was, it at least gave people a sense of hopefulness, and with that in mind, “The Democrats should be focused on making voters proud to support their team again.”
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