mmmmmmmm this one's been on my brain lately

let's skip right past the moral issues of this, because people wanna make it all about strategy instead of Human Justice, so let's talk strategy and why this whole "don't say Defund" is dogshit https://twitter.com/fawfulfan/status/1326555245917335558

first and foremost: not a single democratic politician of note is running on or pushing "defund the police" as a message. bernie actually wanted to boost funding (the idiot). AOC also tiptoes around this one. none of this messaging comes from the top.

so, this then becomes the same democratic tradition of yelling at voters and protesters to shut up and fall in line. which, again, this is immoral for many reasons up to and including you're basically asking people to forfeit their first amendment rights to maybe placate repubs

one of the more significant reasons this is a stupid strategy is... you can't actually *control* protesters, activists - least not outside of using state violence and surveillance, which, hey, democrats in blue strongholds ALREADY use this to try to muzzle protesters.

you're basically spitting into the wind, or trying to talk down a hurricane. activists and protesters will fight for what they want, ESPECIALLY when cops continue to brutalize them without consequence on camera and leadership does nothing about it.

but even if dems could somehow get every activist and protester to bite their tongue and keep quiet and stay at home or only talk about things in terms of 'reform'...

it still won't help any. dems will still lose.

because they do not invest in media beyond TV ads.

people say "well if we do this, republicans will attack us, and the media is on their side" and instead of attacking activists and protesters, think: why do the democrats exert no pressure on the media - via laws or public pressure or etc? why are they so extremely soft?

republicans took over the talk radio airwaves in the 80s/90s and democrats had no counter strategy beyond "just try and prove we really are right wing shitheads". and this proved fruitless, because right wing talk radio would attack regardless.

fox news didn't even exist until 1996, clinton's second term, but the media strategies fox would use were already heavily in use with Limbaugh, whose media control in conservative spaces meant any attempts to reach across the aisle never would convince the actual voters.

just like democrats threw up their hands and gave up on trying to affect any sort of change in red states or states that turned red, dems gave up on having any sort of media messaging or control other than saying "no, really, we're not commies!" over and over.

democrats not only don't have any kind of media that fires up their own base, they have zero push inside of already conservative dominated bases. they can't counter any GOP message with their votes or their own messaging, cuz fox, talk radio, right wing websites will drown it.

instead you have CNN and MSNBC, which has a political spectrum largely ranging from "everything biden says is great" to "overt reactionary". their messaging can't even puncture the media that is supposedly 'on our side'. see also NYT's constant puff piecing bigots.

to make any kind of counter on this domination, democrats would have to actually *invest* in messaging. i don't mean trying to Find The Perfect Phrase That Doesn't Make Anyone Mad, i mean in creating actual material places that will broadcast and amplify *their* message.

this is where we get to see the fun of where Strategy runs into the brick wall of Class Interests. you might think "why don't dems do this? why haven't they been doing this the whole time?"

cuz then you get into the tensions between the workers, the reporters, and ownership.

one of the most blatant recent examples of this is what happened to ThinkProgress. a liberal news site, and i do mean liberal as in "not leftist", the place was unceremoniously shuttered in 2019. why?

cuz staff was unionizing, and the bosses weren't having that.

they have the money to make their own TV networks. their own radio networks. their own websites. they have for decades. they have MORE money now than they did in the clinton years. and yet they invest less in media and messaging infrastructure than they did then.

even if you want to campaign on "reform the police", regardless of what you actually even mean by that, this message will go nowhere because there is no means for the democrats to actually put that message out and amplify it other than TV ads and some rallies.

not a single goddamn thing in obama's healthcare plan involved "death panels", nobody was fucking talking about death panels, it was not something at all being mentioned by leftist activists, for sure.

and yet it completely overtook media messaging.

republicans had the media infrastructure to broadcast this message, and the corporate dominated 'liberal' MSNBC and CNN will gladly carry it, for reasons of both sides-ism, "don't want republicans to yell at us (they will anyway)", and chasing fox's ratings and profit.

dems' message to counter that - "no we're not, those aren't real" - was not only thin as a message itself, but they had no real material means to CARRY that message to people. "death panels" drowned everything out, and dems would fry themselves constantly responding to that.

one of the things the new wave of democrats have realized is that there is nothing to be gained by being baited into this. republicans will say whatever they want, and the media institutions are stacked to keep amplifying it. there's no magic words that will cut through that.

instead, they take to social media - which dems blast them for - to build their own message and profile, as well as keep firing up the base. there's no path through TV, newspapers, or radio to carry through a liberal message, never mind a leftist one.

the internet, however...

if centrist/liberal dems wanna build their own power, it's not enough to change the messaging, they actually have to have a means to carry that messaging. they can say 'reform' all they want, GOP will blast them as commie baby eating anarchists anyway.

they did it with obama, they did it with hillary, hell, they even did it with hrc's void of personality tim kaine. there is no message you can adopt that will avoid this. clinton went hard right, tough on crime and welfare, and... they called him a commie baby eater anyway.

you can't control the activists, and you certainly can't control the GOP. the constant calls to not say "defund the police" remains spitting into the wind. republicans will amplify totally made up conspiracies. no careful word choice will save you from this.

dems can try to tear out the GOP's media power through use of their own power in lawmaking or enforcement thereof, in proposing the return of anti-trust bills and heavy regulation, and/or building their own media apparatus.

they choose none of these. instead, they bash left.

one more thing, to really pile onto this: i mentioned how the internet gives people new messaging opportunities. BUT: all the algorithms at major social media right wing sites are heavily tilted to favor the far right, to the point of 'actually causes IRL genocides'.

this fact really destroys many efforts democrats might make to carry out their message. do the democrats come down hard on zuckerberg and jack and other heads of social media platforms to change that?

haha, no. they take the corp donations and let the GOP control the narrative.