I think a big part of this is that there's a really powerful right-wing media ecosystem that just corrupts Dem messaging through repetition. For instance... https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1324771830301921280

Here's coverage of the Green New Deal in the first 4 days after it was introduced. Fox is effectively an arm of the GOP, so it covered it non-stop... inaccurately. MSNBC and CNN covered it like news outlets would be expected to. https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/fox-news-dominated-prime-time-cable-coverage-green-new-deal

Fox and the broader right-wing media apparatus went on total attack against the resolution, spreading all sorts of lies, half-truths, distortions, etc. It's the "flood the zone"/Gish Gallop strategy. https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/green-new-deal-drives-conservatives-nuts-so-right-wing-media-going-attack

And so for months and months and months Fox would bring this up constantly. I lost it, but I used to have a super cut of all the times Hannity said "farting cows" on his show. It was a lot. Other channels didn't really cover it because it was just a resolution, there wasn't ...

... really any *news* about it to report on. So the whole time, while Fox, OANN, right-wing blogs, etc., lie over and over and over about this plan (it's why you had Trump saying insane things like "Biden wants to abolish windows" which made no sense to anyone who doesn't...

... stay plugged into the Fox News-iverse), it's not really getting talked about in other contexts, in accurate contexts in other media. So over time, Fox is able to poison the entire discussion of it. I wrote about how they do that here: https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/lies-damn-lies-and-media-right-wing-repetition-debunked-narratives-reshapes-reality

How do you fix this? Man, I don't know. It's bad. I really don't think it can be overstated just how advanced and influential right-wing media is as an electoral tool. There's really nothing comparable on the left, and it makes it hard to get ideas to break through.

It's also how they create the impression that Dems are obsessed with culture war issues: they create local news broadcasts from hell and cherry-pick examples of things that sound like liberal excess and frame them as the official position of the Democratic Party.

Tucker Carlson is a huge example of that. Again, as I wrote: https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/tucker-carlson-tonight-local-news-broadcast-hell

This is obviously something I'm very invested in both personally and professionally. If it weren't for how unbelievably dangerous this type of propaganda system is, I'd find it fascinating. Unfortunately, it *is* dangerous. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.