I’ve written several posts on Democrats and storytelling. They seem to always miss the mark, and it seems they still haven’t learned. It is marketing 101, if you don’t tell your story, someone else will. Almost always, for the Democrats, it is someone else. I still don’t understand how they never learn their lessons.
On a related note, they also need to re-examine the language and vocabulary used during press conferences and especially on the Senate floor. For example, Majority Leader Schumer spoke about the Inflation Reduction Act today. As I listened to them, I listened with the ears of the everyday person. Within a few sentences he had lost me as an audience, a voter. He spoke as if he was talking to a group of his peers, not the people he needs to reach. That is another topic for another time though.
What I don’t understand is, where are the ads? Democrats have had a pretty good couple of weeks. Jobs are still growing. The CHIPS bill passed. Gas prices are down. The PACT bill passed. Gun control bill passed. And, the Inflation Reduction Act is about to pass. Where are the ads?
Where are the ads showing in the home states of the senators who voted against the PACT bill the first time round? Where are the ads in the home states of senators and representatives who voted against the CHIPS bill? Where are the ads touting the jobs and lower gas prices. Where are the ads in the home districts and states of those who voted against the stimulus bills, who are now taking credit for all the good the bills are doing?
If the Democrats are not going to tell their stories in a political way, then elected Republicans will tell the story in their way. The Republicans will go to the airways and social media, and speak in a vocabulary and vernacular of the needed audience. Since they will make it to the podium first, and speak louder, and use the words almost all will understand, they will control the narrative.
As I’ve said so many times, unless the Democrats get their act together, and employ traditional and social media savvy millennials, and Gen X-Y-Z’rs to reach their peers they will continue to speak into the wind. Each generation knows where their peers hang out and how the message should be given. The sooner the Democrats figure this out, and use them to reach out at both the Federal level, but also the state and local levels, the sooner we can get our Democracy back.
C’mon Democrat! Do better!
Personal Reflections of a Middle-Aged Man 