Day 12 – How The Dems Blew It

Sunday, January 12, 2025

I have just finished reading an article in Rolling Stone that reports on analysis of what the Trump campaign did versus the Dems and Harris campaign. The Trump campaign sought out marginal voters via streaming platforms. They hammered the same messages over and over again. This started back in 2016.

The Dems depended on their data and kept changing their message depending on which ad they test did the best. It came across as unfocused and they all blended in. The Dems didn’t go after edgy streaming podcasts. They bought time on the sphere instead of billboards on the highway.

Okay. Got it.

What wasn’t mentioned in the article was the huge right wing media machine. Nor did anyone mention doing a sanity check. Granted, this should have been what the Dems could have done, but man. Remember Goldwater? His ad line was “In your heart you know he’s right.” That was followed up by a whisper campaign “But in your guts you know he’s nuts.”

Yeah. Nothing like that emerged in this campaign.

I got to hand it to the Republicans for the last fifty years. They hammer away at “tax and spend” and blame the Dems, all the while they are the ones doing it.

Time to start a whisper campaign?

Time for some Dems to go on Fox and Joe Rogan and ask, “Well? How do you feel? Being lied to? Being a tool, a pawn?”

The Republicans and the Trump campaign have, once again, figured out how to message better than the Dems. Okay. Have they figured out how to govern? How to do anything, other than belly up to the trough?

Remember Paul Ryan boasting that with the huge tax cuts they gave to the rich now a woman could afford a membership at Costco? Is someone going to hold their feet to the fire? Are they going to confront the Hannities and Rogans and call them out? Is there going to be an undercurrent of outrage and economic truth?

I don’t know. It seems that the Harris campaign and the Dems writ large made the same mistakes this time as they did with Hillary. Maybe, it’s not a woman issue or a black woman issue, but a really poor job of messaging, and messaging in the right places?

It’s sad to see that people are this ignorant, but what can we expect while the right destroys our schools and education systems and tries to get rid of child labor laws and public safety laws all in the name of being anti-woke or anti-trans?

How far will it go? Well, I’ve been wondering that since Reagan. It hasn’t gotten better, that’s for sure. I keep hoping that enough folks will wake up, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. When you actually trap a  MAGA or a right winger with facts they revert to either: “I don’t believe it,” or to some magic wand idea, like “it will go away on its own.”

I see these memes that show how much CEOs make compared to the hourly wage earner. The hourly wage hasn’t increased but the CEO’s salary and bonuses? Through the roof. Somehow wages don’t go up all by themselves. Who knew? Well, anyone who has taken basic economics or been in labor negotiations or been a boss. Same with viruses and pandemics. They don’t go away on their own. We have hundreds of years of data to show this. And people like Robert Kennedy Jr and Bill Maher who claim if you stay healthy, eat the right food, and exercise are full of it. I mean tell that to the American Indians who were 80-90% wiped out by disease. 

Sorry, went off on a tangent. It’s so annoying. Not going off on a tangent, but the utter stupidity of some of this. I mean, really? If a few people had done their jobs we wouldn’t be in this mess. But they didn’t. They read some data too and concluded – can’t live with them; can’t live without them.

There are no heroes, only nebbishes afraid of their own polls.

Ahhh. Gag me with a spoon. Explain that to Gen-Whatever.

In other bitchings:

Sam of Sam and Dave died. He got over shadowed by Peter Yarrow’s dying. I mean – really? I saw Sam and Dave perform at the Fillmore East. What a show. So much energy. They had a trumpet player, a big man, who near the end of the show called for the spot light to be put on him. 

After the show I went to a nearby restaurant to get a sub. A bunch of the guys in the band were there. I mentioned I liked the trumpet player. They called out to him, “Hey Tiny, This man liked your playing.”

It turns out the Sam and Dave weren’t friends. They got together because one of them couldn’t remember the words to a song he had to sing so the other got on stage with him to help out. They hit it off – musically. But they never developed that bond of friendship. Dave died in a car crash years ago.

Some of their songs run through my head. As does “Knock on Wood.” Not theirs but they covered it. Great showmen. Now? Now we got some fast talking guy acting angry and it’s called music. Sorry. No. It’s a fast talking guy you can’t understand.

Hey, I also learned how ZZ Top got their name. Back in the 60s and 70s their were posters put up all over a town like Baltimore announcing musical acts coming to town. These posters were in garish red, orange, and green with big letters. They’d be stuck on the plywood barriers at construction sites. One after the other. Same poster. They announced people like: BB King and Little Richard, Ray Charles and The Delphonics.

ZZ Top liked those acts and wanted to mimic something like BB KIng. They went to the other end of the alphabet and took “ZZ.” ZZ King didn’t sound right. Nor did anything else but Top. I mean you’re top of your game, etc. So it was ZZ Top.

Still can’t get over that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted John Mayall with only a mention on their show.

I remember when …

🙂