Posted by
Rude One
Every once in an increasingly regular while, I just feel like someone
needs to sit Democratic leaders and members of Congress down and explain
to them How the World Works Now. See, they are approaching the
completed impeachment and the hopefully forthcoming trial of Donald
Trump as a solemn and serious occasion for reflection on one’s Oath of
Office and the Constitution, hoping that their solemnity and seriousness
will be the gravity that brings Americans to earth with the
understanding that, yes, obviously, Donald Trump has as much business
being
resident as he does doing anything other than handing out
shopping carts at Home Depot and telling customers about great deals on
paint. Even then, he’d probably be a dick about it.
So, while one might think that seriousness is the proper response to the
political turmoil and the potential removal of a
resident for the
first time in our nation’s history, that’s not How the World Works Now.
Right now, Republicans are going full dickhole on opposing Trump's
impeachment, trial, and removal. Since well before the vote yesterday,
the GOP and allied groups have been
running
ads about how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is going to use a strap-on on
Uncle Sam and the Do-Nothing Democrats are literally masturbating in the
House chamber rather than passing everything that their Lord and Savior
Trump wants. Democrats and their groups, meanwhile, are essentially
buying into the Republican narrative by releasing ads touting all the
shit they are doing on health care and other stuff, like little brothers
insisting, "We're not do-nuttin'" to their noogying older siblings.
Messaging for Democrats has never been a strong suit. When we have swept
into office in wave elections, like in 2006, 2008, and 2018, it's been
because Republicans were finally so abjectly awful that most voters
could no longer live with themselves voting for them. But the thing is
that Republicans are masterful at disinformation, and they will lie and
lie and lie some more in order to pound a lie into the brains of anyone
paying even scant attention. "Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election" and
"Joe Biden got the prosecutor fired to protect his son" will be crammed
down the same throats who eagerly swallowed the load of whatever the
fuck Hillary Clinton supposedly did in Benghazi, despite multiple
hearings exonerating her, and, of course, now and forever, her emails.
Don't fuck this up, Democrats. That's the message here. We already
fucked up on the Mueller Report, and now it's an article of faith among
the faithless that Trump did nothing wrong in the "Russia hoax," despite
the report very clearly and thoroughly explaining that he did a
shit-ton wrong and that Congress needed to get off its ass and do
something about it. Democrats let it go because it was too complicated
and because the Mueller show wasn't entertaining enough.
I cannot begin to catalog all the ways Democrats have fucked up. The
list of grievances here would be so long and so enraging that it'd make
calm heads burst and spray viscera all over their nice Christmas trees
or menorahs or cornucopias or whatever the fuck you have up. It would
include the failure of the left to fund a liberal media message delivery
system in the same way that the right has talk radio and Fox "news" and
its devolved children, OAN and others. All that shit was and still is
propped up by rich fucks like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch cocks. It
would include the failure to force the country into an electoral
reckoning over the 2000 election. It would include the failure to go to
the barricades over Merrick fucking Garland.
Time and again, Democrats have played this game like there is honor in
it instead of playing it to fucking destroy the opposition. Time and
again, we have let Republicans set the terms of the contract and just
signed along. Time and again, they dared Democrats to vary from a
pre-ordained set of responses, going full force after any Democrat that
dared to call "bullshit" on them.
The fact that Nancy Pelosi is
holding back
on sending the impeachment articles over to the Senate has enraged
Republicans because it upset the script and showed that maybe, just
maybe, this time Democrats weren't going to accept the Republican rules
in this game. It's the smart play, and they have no idea how the hell to
respond. Now, it's time to mobilize the public and market the shit out
of the removal of Donald Trump from office.
Democrats need to be gearing up for the greatest battle of our recent
lives. They need to go big, with everything from billboards on the
highways to ads out the wazoo. I mean pounding the fucking message until
it drowns out other shit. This is How the World Works Now. We are never
out of campaign mode, and nothing is so serious or important that it
can't be marketed to the hilt. To pretend otherwise is to cede the
ground on convincing everyone to the Republicans. It would once again
allow them to set the terms of the argument.
Fuck that. Create a new playing field, one where the dominant message is
this: "You are only a good American if you support removing Donald
Trump from office." It's that simple. We punish criminals, and Trump is a
criminal; ergo, get him the fuck out of there. Hell, the
column from
Christianity Today that calls for Trump's removal from office is incredible support for that stance.
This will require a massive amount of spending, as well as Democrats
sucking up their reticence to really get down in the shit pool with
Republicans and slug it out. But if you don't get dirty, the GOP will
take it as weakness and exploit that until there is nothing to
impeachment and the whole thing will have been just to put an asterisk
next to Trump's name.
Sure, it's something. But it's not enough. If you win this messaging
war, you can shift the narrative, and that's the real game changer. It
means that even if not a single GOP Senator changes their closed,
Trump-owned minds, the voters will know what the deal is.
Barring a miracle, Trump won't be removed by the Senate. But if
Democrats succeed only a bit at this war, they will finish the job in
November.
