Dan Ancona looks at the recent special election in NC-9 and extrapolates it to a larger issue with Democratic messaging (we've cherry- picked from his thread; please check out all his tweets on the subject):
In the summer of 2016 a friend of mine who works for a big advertising firm (and is a 9/11 survivor, so maybe this is a good day for this) asked me why the Dems ads suck so much. I said, good question.— Dan Ancona, Extraordinary Western Liberal (@DanAncona) September 11, 2019
I had no idea what kind of Mr Toad's Wild Ride I was signing up for. 1/11
What I found pretty quickly was that the problem was *not* that Dems weren't using enough AI or psychographics or advanced stuff. Those tactics help on the margins and campaigns should absolutely be looking into them, but their absence wasn't the big problem. 2/11— Dan Ancona, Extraordinary Western Liberal (@DanAncona) September 11, 2019
The much bigger problem was this strong, overwhelming tendency to avoid making an effective argument. Basic blocking and tackling stuff, in terms of marketing: defining and positioning your product/worldview and explaining the benefits in a clear, emotionally compelling way. 3/11— Dan Ancona, Extraordinary Western Liberal (@DanAncona) September 11, 2019
Fast-forward to #NC09. @McCreadyForNC seems like a genuinely nice, intelligent guy and someone who would be an excellent Rep. Part of R message against him was "My opponent's allies are clowns." His response? "I'll work with the people calling my allies clowns."— Dan Ancona, Extraordinary Western Liberal (@DanAncona) September 11, 2019
See the problem? pic.twitter.com/aQ07J53ihB
Persuading the middle vs mobilizing the base is a false dichotomy. Good messages do both. (Truly great messages demoralize the opponent's base, too.) The beginning of this @chrislhayes podcast makes this argument as well as I've seen it made - https://t.co/EeJzRWzoYg 10/11— Dan Ancona, Extraordinary Western Liberal (@DanAncona) September 11, 2019
2020 is going to be a dirty, gut- punch election. Democrats better have their messaging together, and it better be clear and powerful and aggressively repeated.
BONUS: E.J. Dionne, Jr., correctly defines Trump's gut- punch messaging, as it was used in NC-9, and a response --
... Trump gave a preview of 2020 with incendiary fearmongering, accusing McCready of favoring the release of “thousands of dangerous criminal aliens into your communities” who were guilty of “sexual assault, robbery, drug crimes, kidnapping and homicide.” And the Democrats, in Trump’s rendition, became “the socialist Democrat Party.”
Are they/ we up to it?Trump knows he can’t win by offering a sunny rendition of his time in office. He has to turn his opponents into ghouls. The polls make clear he will lose if 2020 is a referendum on him. He can win only if he makes it a referendum on the Democrats. Their job is to make that as difficult as possible.
