In February, I wrote a column poking fun at the excuse Democrats use when losing, facing losses, or having trouble advancing their agenda: that it’s all a “messaging problem.” Former President Barack Obama’s onetime Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer, for example, laughingly attempted to blame the “media environment” that is “stacked against them” for getting their message out.
As it turns out, it was a test run for his forthcoming book, Battling the Big Lie: How Fox, Facebook, and the MAGA Media Are Destroying America.
Vanity Fair has an excerpt of the book titled “Why Do Democrats Suck At Messaging?” It reads like a parody. Pfeiffer starts with the idea that part of the Democratic Party’s problem is that it is too successful. It is so diverse in its ideology, demographics, and geography that it is challenging to present a cohesive message on issues, ones that Pfeiffer says favor Democrats over Republicans by a wide margin. The party is so damned fantastic that it’s difficult for them to sell a winning message to such a broad coalition.
It takes some moxie to sell the notion the Democratic Party lacks success because of its astounding success. As Pfeiffer points out, Republicans have won the popular vote only once since 1988. And by the time the 2024 election comes around, Democrats will have occupied the White House 20 of the 36 years in that stretch. Democrats held total control of Congress from 1989 to 1994. They had it again from 2007 to 2010. Democrats controlled the Senate from 2011 to 2014. Democrats took over the House again in 2018 and took hold of the Senate in 2021 thanks to a vice presidential tiebreaker. So, why haven’t they successfully sold their message despite all the success?
It’s at that point we get to the real reason. Pfeiffer writes, “These facts help explain why Republicans and their billionaire supporters invest so much time and energy in building a disinformation apparatus that can overcome the opinions of the majority of Americans.” I read that and pictured Pfeiffer as a Scooby-Doo villain. “We’d have gotten away with it if not for those meddling billionaire supporters!”
Pfeiffer goes on to liken the two parties to combatants in a war. On one side, the Democrats, armed with pocket knives. On the other, Republicans with their tanks and stealth bombers. Pfeiffer’s explanation of this boils down to an eye-popping claim. He writes, “The bulk of the media on the right is an adjunct of the party apparatus … Much of the media on the left is focused on holding Democrats accountable and/or moving the party’s agenda in a more progressive direction.”
Pfeiffer has made the rounds on cable news lately, claiming the Daily Wire has more influence than the New York Times because of the level of engagement the site gets on Facebook, which is a “problem for democracy.” It is a preposterous allegation in that Pfeiffer purposely conflates engagement with reach. Yes, the Daily Wire Facebook posts get a lot more interaction than the New York Times, but that doesn’t mean more people see the Daily Wire’s content.
The New York Times has 53 million Twitter followers. Combined, Ben Shapiro and the Daily Wire account have 5 million. The New York Times has over 18 million followers on Facebook. The Daily Wire has 3.5 million. Additionally, the New York Times has 5.9 million digital subscribers to its news service, 800,000 newspaper subscribers, and the flagship podcast, The Daily, consistently ranks among the top five podcasts (in every genre) every week. One would have to be stupid or dishonest to make the case that the Daily Wire has more influence in national politics than the New York Times.
And while it is true that media outlets such as Vox, the Nation, and Mother Jones are attempting to push the Democrats to mount up a more liberal agenda, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, CBS, ABC, Gannett, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Associated Press, Reuters, etc., play the role of the fullback for Democrats. They’ll block, protect, and do whatever else is necessary.
A recent example comes from the murder plot against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The story broke in the middle of the afternoon on June 8, with plenty of time for the June 9 print edition. The New York Times buried the story on page A20. The Washington Post had it on its front page but with the mundane headline devoid of any context that said, “Man near justice’s home is arrested.”
People don’t like the “if it was so and so” routine, but there is truth to that. Does anyone, including Dan Pfeiffer, believe the New York Times would have buried the story if Sonia Sotomayor was the target and the perp was upset about her potential ruling on a case? Of course not. It would have been the top story the entire day. Then, within minutes of it breaking, CNN or MSNBC would have had a supercut of any criticism of Sotomayor by every Fox News personality and Republican politician highlighted as “proof” of their complicity.
But in the case of a Trump appointee, it barely lasted a news cycle.
Pfeiffer’s theory is twaddle, and if the rest of the book is as ridiculous as that chapter, it deserves whatever mockery it gets.
