Democrats: It’s Not A Message Problem

0
227

by John M. Grondelski, American Thinker:

New York City launched its “congestion pricing” scheme January 5. It’s a charge for entering midtown Manhattan, ostensibly designed to reduce “congestion” in the Big Apple while channeling money to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the entity that runs New York’s subways. Besides funding the subways, the idea is to push people to take mass transit in lieu of driving.

The idea was originally planned for last summer but diverted at the last minute by New York governor Kathy Hochul. Governor Hokum insisted she wanted to modify the program; the real likelihood was that dropping a new charge just before elections might not have redounded well to blue hopes, even in indigo New York. With elections safely gone, the plan could be trotted out and was fast-track approved by the lame duck Biden Administration, which also spun “congestion pricing” as a way of reducing climate change by disincentivizing driving.

TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

What’s stood out to my attention, however, has been an op-ed by Slate writer Henry Grabar in the January 5 New York Times. The piece has had various mutated headlines, though its primary name is “The Future of the Democratic Party is Rolling Down Broadway.” The top webpage of the Times tags it as “Early This Morning, New York City Proved What the Democratic Party is Capable of.”

The gist of Grabar’s piece is that we should make congestion pricing work because it will provide a message of “equity, quality of life, and the fight against climate change.” The author insists congestion pricing can be proof that “that nation’s biggest, bluest cities have [not] become dysfunctional.” He sketches opportunities for messaging, like Governor Hochul announcing the “first billion” in fees alongside bus and subway riders or rapidly building pedestrian zones and biking paths in Manhattan.

What I find nonsensical about Grabar’s essay is a constant trope in the modern Democratic mind: that the Left’s problems are bad comms. If only they could find the magic communications bullet, then America’s veil would be torn away, looking through the big, bad Trumpian mirror darkly would end, and everything would be peace, joy, light, and unicorns. Democrats’ problems, in this mindset, are advertising: how to sell dumb policies. Never admitted is the idea that the thought might be irremediably dumb.

“Messaging-not-message” was the whole Kamala Harris campaign. America needed “vibes” and “joy,” not relief from inflation or predatory criminal aliens. If only Beyonce and Taylor Swift and Oprah delivered better, we could be continuing to spend money the country doesn’t have like drunken sailors.

That’s why the November 5 political post-mortems of the Left have been so sterile. They have consistently refused to consider whether the reason for not gaining control of the House, losing control of the Senate, and losing the Presidency (including in seven of seven swing states) was bad policies, not bad comms.

The reason for this denialism is, of course, that it would force Democrats to engage in ideological circumspection, an assessment of whether what its “progressive base” spins is what America wants to hear. But the truth is that Americans have seen that the lifestyle libertinism and economic globalism pushed by political movers and shakers have been toxic for the average American. 2016 was a wakeup call, but Democrats insisted on somnambulism. 2024 sealed their fate: when asked whether there was anything she would have done differently from Joe Biden, Kamala Harris could identify nothing, it was clear she and her party were intellectually braindead.

Read More @ AmericanThinker.com