The Theme Finally Emerges

Created
Thu, 27/06/2024 - 06:30
Updated
Thu, 27/06/2024 - 06:30
Here’s Dan Pfeiffer with a super-interesting newsletter about the Biden team’s message. [T]he concept of a “message box” … is an exercise every campaign should do at the outset. It’s a simple quadrant filled out to understand the message your campaign and your opponent’s campaign will communicate. While a little lost to time, a message box is still the fundamental building block of a successful campaign strategy. The best campaigns run every ad, tweet, speech, and statement through this filter to ensure they advance their message and undermine their opponent’s. For nearly a decade of running against Trump, Democrats have struggled with the lower left quadrant. We never really settled on a consistent argument about Trump. One of my maxims for politics (and life) is that the only thing worse than a wrong decision is no decision at all. That was the collective error our party made when it came to our anti-Trump message. We never picked one. He goes into the fact that Trump is notoriously difficult to define because he’s just such an asshole (my word not his) on every level. As he says, “it’s like ordering dinner at the Cheesecake Factory with their War and Peace-sized menu. Is he a crook, a clown, a dictator, an asshole, an idiot, a racist, or a Russian sleeper agent? All of these have elements of truth, but they also conflict. Trump has unpopular policies, committed crimes, overturned Roe, tried to overthrow an election, and says and does incredibly crazy things all of…