Who Can Take the Lead on Media Strategy?
December 22, 2024
Mainstream media is not going to save us. We know this by now. They failed to raise the alarm bells to warn of the looming threat of authoritarianism. They sane-washed Trump and glossed over the historic scale of his crimes against the United States in the interest of both-siderism. And so Trump won. And since then ABC has capitulated in the most cowardly way, and it seems like most major media outlets are also planning on obeying in advance.
The oligarchy that’s about to take control of the entire government in January is led by a rapidly deteriorating mollycoddled billionaire who has spent his entire life enriching himself via a system that lets him funnel money from the bottom 99% to himself via tax evasion, multiple bankruptcies, bullying small businesses in the courts, fraud, scams, and sleazy snake-oil salesmanship. His co-ruler is an Apartheid-loving South African neo-Nazi sympathizer whose vast wealth can be described as being at a genocidal level. And yet somehow these sociopaths have successfully portrayed themselves as heroes of the working man. It’s completely Orwellian. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
We can’t keep expecting corporate media to point out this incongruity simply because it’s the right thing to do. They won’t. Most of them are led by billionaires and billion-dollar corporations themselves, so they’re part of the problem. It’s obvious that we need to take the media narrative into our own hands if we have a chance of regaining democracy in the United States. I’ve read many other opinion pieces making similar points, asserting that Democrats need to have a robust media ecosystem including social media, podcasts, etc.
One thing I don’t see mentioned very often in this mix of recommendations is regular old-school TV ads. I do agree that online media outlets, podcasts, etc. are important. I follow liberal media accounts like the Meidas Touch, David Pakman, Bryan Tyler Cohen, etc. I appreciate the online work of the Never-Trumpers at The Lincoln Project. But post-election analyses have indicated that many Trump voters are low-information consumers of news who presumably don’t follow political podcasts one way or another. And I’m not sure that many MAGA voters who listen to Joe Rogan are likely to migrate over to the Meidas Touch. I know that as an old Gen-X’er, my emphasis on TV may be old fashioned, but I still really don’t understand why TV isn’t more of component of our media strategy to reach voters where they are.
If regular TV ads weren’t so important, there wouldn’t be a nonstop glut of political ads prior to every election, right? I’ve thought for a long time that Democrats are missing a valuable opportunity to get general messaging through to potential voters before the election-season inundation of ads for specific candidates makes many people tune out altogether. We keep expecting mainstream news outlets to provide the context and analysis that shows how dangerous the extreme billionaire right wing is, and they keep failing. And then we criticize the media, as if that criticism will shame them into reporting properly on the next Trump/MAGA corruption, which they never do. Rinse, repeat.
Heading into 2025, we KNOW that the Trump/Musk regime is going to inflict unnecessary hardship. We also know that the mainstream media is going to minimize coverage of that and/or not correctly assign blame to this regime. We need to find a way to get the information that the media won’t tell them in front of people. As far as I can tell, the only hope for democracy right now is if the arrogant stupidity of Trump/Musk regime gets in the way of its insatiably greedy malevolence. And we need to be ready to broadcast the message about their cruelty and/or incompetence whenever it manifests itself. Because the corporate media won’t. We’ll need to buy the ad time on their networks ourselves.
Republicans across the board have started seig-heiling to Trump and MAGA extremism—mostly enthusiastically, but some begrudgingly. They’re not going to change, unless their own voters make it politically expedient for them to do so. With the continuing resolution funding fiasco, we’ve already seen that the Musk/Trump grip on the Republican party isn’t iron-clad. With the slim Republican majority in the House, it may be possible to peel off a few Republicans to stop some of the most harmful MAGA propositions, but only if Republican voters hold them accountable, and that’s only possible if they KNOW to hold them accountable.
I’d feel more proactive and less helpless if I could contribute to some organization that could put the right messaging on the air—during commercial breaks for network news, NFL games, other sporting events, etc. I’d love to be part of a multi-pronged messaging strategy that included TV ads and corresponding, longer videos that people like myself could post on social media. (I’ve un-friended my most vocal MAGA “friends” since the election, but I assume there are many other Trump voters who might be reachable on my friends list.)
Right now when corporate media minimizes news that’s critical of Trump/Musk, low-information voters don’t pay attention and/or don’t think it’s important. And then they tune out the information posted by their liberal friends like me on social media as “liberal propaganda.” After all, they must think, if the regular networks can’t be bothered to report on it and I don’t see it on TV, liberals must be blowing things out of proportion in their social media posts. But I think a one-two punch of messaging, in ads on TV, followed by longer/more detailed videos/ads posted online, maybe something will get through to some of these voters.
While the major media outlets are capitulating, I’d like us to go on the offensive. We need to borrow a page from vile slimeball Steven Bannon’s playbook, but instead of flooding the zone with shit, flood the zone with truth. I’d like our strategy to be like media guerilla warfare. Give Trump/Musk something to try to censor. And call out the un-American censorship—make that the story. Trump won, but not with a mandate, and with virtually the lowest popular support possible. Maybe an offensive media approach will draw out the dictator in him to the point that even low-information voters see it, and even the cowed corporate media has to cover it.
I’d love to find an organization that could start doing this, and I’d happily smash the Act Blue donate button. But right now, I just don’t know who that would be. The DNC? A Super PAC? Why do we seem to have endless piles of money for ads during election season, but then absolutely nothing now?
Trump hasn’t even been sworn in yet, but the media has already failed to appropriately cover some things that should be scandals. Trump has already gone back on his campaign promise of lowering grocery costs, which led to a collective shrug from the mainstream media. I would’ve liked to have seen a media campaign response pointing out that people who claim to have voted for Trump because of grocery prices and not because of racism/sexism should be furious, because he just made a liar out of them.
Co-president Musk and VP JD Vance just posted their support for Germany’s far-right, neo-Nazi party. And again, this support—which should be alarming—was met by another corporate media shrug. I think we desperately need a well-funded media group nimble enough to respond to the continuing corruption, fascism, and undermining of norms that we KNOW is going to continue even more once the MAGA-nazi party assumes full power.
Trump is already threatening to weaponize the justice system against his critics like Liz Cheney and the other House committee members who investigated him. As others have noted on social media, this shouldn’t be framed as Trump’s “retribution.” “Retribution” implies that Trump was wronged by the investigation of his crimes and there’s some justification for him making an authoritarian power grab. Instead, this should be framed as an authoritarian assault on our democracy and fully placed in the correct historical and political context. Because it IS an alarming assault on our democracy.
Once the billionaire MAGA oligarchy formally takes power, the corruption and racism and authoritarianism are likely to come at us at an even more dizzying pace—we won’t be able to respond to it all. But it would be great if a group could just focus on one horrible action/policy committed by the regime per week and amplify and publicize what it is and what its ramifications are. Maybe a panel of historians like Heather Cox Richardson along with political strategists could help identify the most important issue and/or the issue that might be the most likely to resonate with low-information voters.
In addition to highlighting the underreported news horror of the week, I think there are a few messages we should ALREADY be ready to amplify. We should have a lineup of leopard/face ads ready to go. In a non-judgmental way, we should be ready to point out how the policies of megalomaniacal billionaires hurt middle- and lower-income Trump voters. When people start losing their jobs, and tariffs start driving prices UP, we should have ads ready to highlight the cause and effect. We need to show how the suffering of farmers, factory workers, and other blue-collar employees is all to help make Elon the world’s first trillionaire.
The Republican meme-machine has historically gone into overdrive with its “bUt WhAt aBOuT tHE veTeRaNs???” any time any government benefit is potentially going to help any groups other than wealthy white men. We need to flip the script. The Veterans Administration is in Project 2025's crosshairs. The minute that ONE veteran loses ONE benefit, we should have a multi-pronged response ready with TV ads, memes, and “Democrats for Veterans” protests across the country. We will need to make it clear that, in his depraved, insatiable quest for even more wealth, South African bazillionaire Elon Musk is advocating siphoning off funds that would help the brave men and women who put their lives on the line for this country. The minute that any Veterans who work in government are sent to the unemployment line because of the “efficiency” of Musk and billionaire Vivek Ramasmarmy’s DOGE, we need to have commercials on the air to highlight the harm done to real American patriots.
We also should queue up an ad showing the inevitable tragedy of innocent children killed during the “bloody” deportation raids that Trump and Josef Mengele reincarnate Steven Miller have promised. These ads can conclude with a line directed at Republican voters to the effect of, “You voted Republican because they promised to improve your quality of life. Tell them to concentrate on helping you, and not hurting others. It’s not the same thing. You gave them a mandate to improve your cost of living, not to commit violence in your name. That’s not the American way.”
And maybe it would be a good idea to queue up an ad to be broadcast near military bases reminding service men and women that they took an oath to the Constitution, not a dictator. Or maybe there could be an ad showing how Hitler's generals fared during the Nuremberg trials for “following orders” and let members of the military draw their own conclusions.
Some ads could forego direct criticism of Trump and concentrate instead on Musk, Thiel, and the parasitic and criminal billionaires who make up the MAGA Cabinet. Ads like this might needle Trump if he feels like he’s not being recognized as all-powerful, while also potentially making it more challenging/unappealing for him to try to censor the ads. To be effective, I think this tactic should be issues-based and not just come across as trolling. The sooner we can expedite the end of the Trump/Musk megalomanic bromance, the better it’ll be for the world.
I could go on and on and on about messages I’d like to see on mainstream TV…ads during the inauguration going through Trump’s history of crimes…ads offsetting ABC’s capitulation to Trump by describing in detail the exact rape-like behaviors that a jury found Trump guilty of committing…visceral gut-wrenching ads highlighting the kid-killing pro-gun agenda of the Republican party…ads that could make abortion more of a trigger issue by depicting the horror of a pregnant woman dying of sepsis in a hospital parking lot while her MAGA-voting mom tries to find a Republican politician to bribe to let her daughter have what should be standard healthcare. But I understand that for now, we should probably stick with a few core messages that would have the maximum impact.
I’d like to be part of a targeted media strategy. I like BlueSky and think it IS very important to block MAGA trolls who suck the oxygen out of any comment thread, but sharing memes and videos within our own online echo chamber isn’t going to move the needle anywhere. Don’t get me wrong—I think it’s good to have a place to vent, and gallows humor can be a good way to cope with the oncoming shitshow regime. And I love me a good Randy Rainbow song parody, so there’s definitely a place for that. But that can’t be ALL that our opposition is. If our opposition ends up just consisting of us passing around snarky memes and congratulating ourselves for our own cleverness, I’m afraid we’re doomed.
So what organization can take the lead? Anyone? I imagine that there are millions of frustrated Act Blue donors like myself who would be eager to chip in. But right now I just don’t have a clue who that could be. If any pro-democracy organization will rise to the occasion, I’ll enthusiastically and financially (to the best of my means) support it. We’ve had over a month now to get over the shock of the election results. Now I’d just like a productive way to channel our outrage to curtail some of the horrors that the Trump/Musk regime has promised.
