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It’s the information environment, stupid.
Same conclusion as everyone. If Democrats want to survive, they have got to start pushing these online information siloes shamelessly like Republicans do instead of rambling on about issues, door to door, like it’s 1950. It’s like they’re fighting drones with swords.
It sucks. But if they aren’t going to reign in big tech and literally criminal media, well, they better join the mess they're complicit in.
I'm not sure that's possible because the Democratic platform doesn't have the sort of populist appeal that Trump's Republican platform does. Moderation can't compete with extremism in this domain. I suppose that the Democrats could try to pivot to their own (presumably class-based) form of populism but, at least from my point of view, one very strong reason to support the Democrats is because they aren't populist. Having one populist party versus another would be a lose/lose situation.
I don't have an alternate proposal. It may actually be the case that social media will eventually force every serious political movement to pivot towards populism and create its own truth in order to be competitive, but then who would make the policy decisions in a world of meme warfare?
My proposal is that Democrats start lying.
Go on Tiktok, claim you're gonna pass a law capping rent at $500/mo.
Go on MSNBC and say "clearly we can't do that, it will cause severe economic shock, but we'll look at expanding rent control and increasing housing stock"
There's no consequences anymore. Just tell people what they want to hear. Say crazy populist shit. Have your donors purchase media outlets and juice the algorithm. Have botnets spread misinfo and disinfo. Then when you're in power enact reasonable policy.
Voters don't like boring, reasonable policy. That's not enough drama. Start saying wild shit.
Simple, obliterate engagement obsessed social media. Or rein it in.
Failing that (and it already failed in the US, seeing how we basically crowned Big Tech), well… Two populist parties is better than a monoparty. And maybe a party can get someone "cynical" who will say absolutely anything but, behind closed doors, doesn’t drink so much of their own Kool Aid.