What do Democrats do under Biden? What is the future of this party?!

[ProgressiveModerate]

The media environment is just abysmal for the Democrats right now.  The media decided it hated Biden after he decided to pull out of Afghanistan and it's just been history ever since, ruthless non-stop brutalizing of the man and zero credit for any accomplishments.

Crisis after crisis after crisis, emergency after emergency after emergency, the media demands Biden solve it at noon, and if he hasn't solved it by 6 PM they declare him a failure.  Then when he actually does solve the crisis, nobody cares.  They just talk about how bad the crisis was and how awful Biden was for not solving it faster.

Biden does dozens of excellent things every day, and they get no coverage.  No coverage at all.  I bet most people on this board can't even name three of the good things Biden has done.  The American people trip all over themselves to make excuses for Trump and discuss the few "good" things they give him credit for.  But they'll never acknowledge a single good thing Biden has done.

Meanwhile the media just normalizes and apologizes for Trump at every opportunity.  The both-sides-ing is off the charts.  They absolutely devour everything the right throws at them and let the Republican Party control the narrative 24/7.  People complain about Democratic "messaging failures" but the media won't cover anything we say.  They just ask the RNC for talking points and then present those as "bad news for the Democrats."  Just sheer garbage.  Look at the recent Peter Alexander.  Literally just dumping talking points sent directly to his inbox from right-wing operatives, totally uncritically.  Imagine if Democrats had that kind of power!

Then Democrats need to do a better job at controlling the media narrative.

The reason why the Republicans are so successful at it for both the better and the worse in this sort of spontaneous news cycle is because they say a lot of crazy things and through out a lot of garbage that makes good headlines and ignites culture wars.

If the media just covered Biden's Presidency as "today Biden signed x, y, and z" or whatever, they would lose a lot of coverage because unfortunately to a lot of people that's boring.

Biden himself is a pretty humble, respectful, and "boring" speaker, which I also think doesn't help the situation. Trump got to control much the media because he was loud and bashful.

Long terms, Dems needs to do some more explosive things to call out the GOP for what they are doing on issues such as abortion and also blame them as the reason for a lot of the perceived failures of Biden. This doesn't necessarily mean becoming more radical, but just having Biden give a monotone speech in front of a podium every now and then doesn't cut it. If Biden himself can't do it, try to find other folks who are good communicators to participate in the effort.

Also generally, Democrats need younger, though again not necessarily more progressive, blood. Generally someone who is younger is able to be more engaging and also better be able to tap into a large chunk of voters Dems heavily rely on (young people).

I think a good example of this would be Mallory McMorrow who got quite a bit of media a while back for calling out the GOP for parental rights; her speech came across as powerful, serious, without feeling radical, and by the end of it I both felt mad at the GOP and also felt hopeful about the future.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The dooming and "defeatist attitude" from some Dems gets kind of tiresome, imho. You would never hear a GOPer say stuff like that, even if their prez was at low 30s approvals. They always act and talk like winners and fighters, and that's what most people like.

Sure, things are not exactly going the way they should because (a) we lack a clear governing majority in congress to get stuff done while the GOP is unwilling to actually govern and (b) Biden is not a particularly charismatic politician, although he has his strengths such as personal engagement with voters and a ton of experience.

Just because Biden has medicore approvals at this point in time doesn't mean he - or any D candidate - is DOA in 2024. The previous presidents back to Clinton, and even some before, looked more vulnerable than they were in the end. The election won't take place for another 2.5 years, which is a lifetime in politics.

What Dems generally need to do, and what I'm kind of mad about, is get better in messaging, talk more kitchentable issues and call out Republican extremism more forcefully. And with that I mean how their agenda would hurt average Joe types, not just repeat the "orange man bad" stuff. Leave Trump alone with his legal problems and revelations; there's a reason he was voted out of office; simply because many Americans were tired of him.

I largely agree with this, but one thing I think we must call out as fellow Dems if we want to support the larger party is when the party isn't being reactive enough.

A prime example of this was during 2020 when the party was awfully slow to respond to defund the police rather than trying to put it in the bottle right away.

Another example would be how they literally didn't fund Flore's challenger in the GE and just gave up/sat out than trying to address their recent problems in the RGV.

Also, just going relatively silent on issues such as voting rights/election reform and climate change which matter to a lot of young people. Even if you face defeat, you still need to talk about it to encourage folks who care about these issues to vote. It has felt very much in this administration that there has been a specific topic of the month; last month was guns, this month was abortion, and then next month it feels like we never hear anything about them again.

Finally, the fact that House leadership is 3 80 year olds. I personally respect Pelosi, Hoyer, and Clyburn, but all 3 are not great messagers anymore and are relatively disengaging with younger folks. Why couldn't at least 1 of them be replaced by a newer more inspiring face, though one that generally supports the same policies?

None of these are things that change my support for the party but could impact how other less reliable folks see the party and could be the difference between them voting or not come 2022.