California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) thinks Democrats have a messaging problem. The reality is that the most prominent Democrats care only about messaging and very little about whether their governance actually works.
“It’s not just a messaging problem, but a messaging problem has persisted in our party for years and years,” Newsom said on MSNBC on Tuesday. “We allow these culture wars to take shape, and we are constantly on the back end.”
Newsom used his new favorite misleading statistic as an example. Newsom likes to complain that Democrats are losing the messaging on crime even though Republican-run states are among those with the highest murder rates. Of course, the issue there is that Democratic-run cities are responsible for those murder rates. Republican governors don’t run Democratic cities — Democratic mayors (and weak Democratic district attorneys) do.
Newsom has his diagnosis backward. Democrats don’t have a messaging problem; they have an overreliance-on-messaging problem. Rather than acknowledge and address the fact that Democratic-run cities are havens for crime, Democrats would rather shrug it off and blame Republicans. Rather than address inflation, Democrats want to pass climate policies and message it as the “Inflation Reduction Act.” They fearmonger about “assault weapons” while knowing absolutely nothing about guns.
Democrats think all their policies and positions are incredibly popular and held by everyone deep down in their souls. As a result, they think all they must do is win the messaging battle, not govern more effectively or moderate their positions. This is why they now label every political attack they don’t like as “disinformation” and why they encourage social media companies to censor content that harms them politically. Messaging isn’t the one thing they are missing — it’s the only thing they are doing.
No one exemplifies this better than Newsom. Every speech and every answer he gives is about California’s great successes, whether he is talking about “progress” or “inclusion” or how California supposedly offers freedom while Republicans take it away. In reality, California is failing residents on education, energy policy, homelessness, crime in major cities, affordability, housing, and wildfires. Newsom only cares about messaging. It’s governing that he, President Joe Biden, and other prominent Democrats are neglecting.
Democrats have a political grip on the entertainment industry, establishment media, and higher education. Celebrities, athletes, and journalists proudly promote their party when summoned to. Democrats have all the messaging tools and outlets that any political party could dream of having. But, as Biden and Newsom have shown, the results of their governing failures are too big to mask with messaging.
That still won’t stop them from trying.
