3d ago

Democrats slam Trump for not making good on promise to ‘immediately’ lower food prices

www.nbcnews.com Democrats slam Trump for not making good on promise to ‘immediately’ lower food prices

“During your first week of office you have instead focused on mass deportations and pardoning January 6 attackers,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren and 19 other lawmakers told the president in a letter.

Summary

Democratic lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, criticized Trump for failing to address rising food costs despite campaign promises to lower prices "immediately."

In a letter, they accused Trump of focusing on mass deportations and January 6 pardons instead of tackling grocery inflation, which rose 1.8% in 2024, with egg prices up 36.8%.

Trump’s administration defended its actions, citing efforts to reduce inflation by cutting energy costs.

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Honestly, it’s almost embarrassing. Democrats continue to fight using Queensberry whilst Trump et al are, again, acting with impunity. They’ve got to smell the coffee and take the gloves off.
- Take the gloves off right now and do what?
  Use harsh language? Encourage Democrats to engage in acts of violence?
  I understand your frustration of feeling helpless while the tangerine terror fucks everything and everyone up, but without control of the house and/or senate, there isn't that much they can do right now.
  
  I think they need to be aggressive, publicly, with their highlighting of Trump’s “shortcomings”. Like billboards. Or interviews on TV. Or (ab)using privilege in the House. Etc. Just say stuff that’s true that they wouldn’t normally want to say. “Trump finger raped a woman”, “Putin’s lapdog”, “Pornstar fucker”, “Friend to pedophiles”.
  In your face shit that’s inappropriate. Or was inappropriate until Trump changed the rules.
  Just keep repeating it day after day, and like Trump, it’ll become part of the narrative through repetition.
  
  They first need to admit that running as corporatists, ignoring people who are suffering in this economy, and funding a far right genocide were wrong, and the genocide was a war crime that people should go to jail for. They will never admit to that stuff though, theyd sooner disolve the party.
  
  This is the same playbook they've been using since Trump first appeared and it doesn't work. People don't care that much about Trump's scandals, they need to focus on economic messaging. Besides, he's ineligible to run again so they need to have a strategy aimed at countering the right more broadly, not just one specific person.
  
  Saying he's a "sexual predator" and that he "finger-raped a woman" are far from the same thing. One is dry and intellectual, the other conjures up memorable mental imagery. It's the same way that "damp" and "moist" can be synonyms, but only one of them squicks a lot of people.
  
  That's ridiculous. You're thinking way too small, you can't just use the same line of attack over and over again with slightly different phrasing and expect it to suddenly start working.
  Trump repeatedly crossed lines that were supposed to tank his campaign. You can't just chalk that up to some people using slightly less visceral language than you think they should have. The reason nothing sticks to him is because people have decided, "We don't care how much of a dirtbag he is, because he's our dirtbag." The only thing that can challenge that is to attack him on economics and demonstrate how he isn't actually working towards people's interests, and in order to do that convincingly, it's necessary to adopt a platform that does benefit people in a direct, material way.
  For all the words that have been spilled about things like finger-raping a woman or January 6th or any of the other shitty things he's done, how much of it directly impacts the average voter? The best way to reach people is by appealing to their own material interests. Instead of, "Donald Trump fucked a pornstar" how about, "Donald Trump is fucking you, right now."
  The only time Trump lost an election was when his botched handling of COVID directly impacted people's lives. I'm not sure what would have to happen for liberals to understand that the electorate does not give a shit about Trump's character. And even if they did, as I pointed out, he's not eligible to run again, so the whole thing's moot. Maybe next time they'll run someone clean as a whistle with the exact same policies, although, I suppose if they're smart, they'll run another dirtbag so liberals get distracted focusing on that.
  
  It's not just slightly different phrasing, it's phrasing that packs an emotional/visceral punch. The economic angle has been tried to death, and a constant refrain I hear is, "how can people vote against their own self-interests?!" It's because the other side speaks to the animal brain, not the frontal lobes. The murder of a pretty, young nursing student activates strong emotions and has a lot more cognitive stickiness than economic arguments about who gets paid how much to pick our strawberries. Guarantee that if voters picture his grubby, little fingers sliding into a vagina in a department store dressing room, they'll remember it.
  
  The economic angle has been tried to death
  It really, really hasn't lol.
  and a constant refrain I hear is, “how can people vote against their own self-interests?!” It’s because the other side speaks to the animal brain, not the frontal lobes.
  Yeah, and the animal brain wants stuff. And so do the frontal lobes, so it doesn't really matter what part of their brain they're using. Of course, you can't just maintain the status quo and talk about how the other guy would be worse. The status quo sucks and is getting worse and even if it didn't our brains aren't wired to be satisfied with it. That messaging, sure, it's been tried and failed, because it's basically just lecturing people on how they're not smart enough to understand economics and should be satisfied with what they've got. When I say economic messaging, I mean promising people new stuff beyond maintenance of the status quo.
  The murder of a pretty, young nursing student activates strong emotions and has a lot more cognitive stickiness than economic arguments about who gets paid how much to pick our strawberries. Guarantee that if voters picture his grubby, little fingers sliding into a vagina in a department store dressing room, they’ll remember it.
  Ok, I would like to collect on that guarantee, right now. Because you tried it already, over and over again, and it didn't fucking work. I guarantee you that it won't work if you keep trying it. If your position was at all true, Trump would've lost in 2016 when it first came out, when they could hear it straight from the horse's mouth! No matter how you phrase it, it'll never be more compelling than that moment when it first came out.
  I repeat this for the third time since you seem to have missed it the first two times I said it: even if you were right, which you're absolutely not, Trump isn't even eligible to run again. Even if you've finally hit on the exact right phrasing that'll definitely get through to people, this time I swear (you didn't), you're too late.
  
  The economic angle has been tried to death
  It really, really hasn’t lol.
  Price of eggs.
  I'd love to make good on that guarantee, but we would've needed somebody with a national media platform to phrase it that way, not some nobody on Lemmy like me. The past is the past, but the time to figure out how to frame the issues with the next fascist in line is now.
  
  Price of eggs.
  THE PRICE OF EGGS ANGLE WORKED WHAT ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT??
  
  Hard to do when conservatives have cornered the media market.
  
  The media gets high on sensationalism. If a Democratic politician came out and said that the President was "deep-throating Putin's cock," oh believe me, that'd get coverage right quick!
  
  Wrong type of coverage though. Sinclaire group would spin that so hard it would cost bigtime.
  
  I dunno man, your stance comes across as defeated, like nothing is worth doing. I disagree with that take.
  
  Wounded but not defeated.
  There certainly is lots that can be done. Just aware that there is an uphill battle to be fought, and the number of allies is limited.
  
  Same thing I've wished Democrats would do for years and years: Learn from psychology and neuroscience that language and how you use it matters, then learn how to use language to improve their messaging.
  And then do it.
  Politics in a big country like this is like an arena show, and Democrats treat it like a university lecture hall. Play to the cheap seats! For example, compare how I read that Harris would "address health care disparities which disproportionately affect Black men" versus "death tax." Which one is more likely to reach Joe Six-Pack? Which one has more visceral impact? Which one is more, as they say, cognitively sticky?
  
  The one that showed tits while making the announcement would get engagement.
  
  This is often my point. There's a major problem with the statement "Democrats need to do something in the house". And that problem is not with the second half of the sentence, but the first. "VOTERS needed to do something in the election." America is not just the DNC no matter how much we love finding scapegoats.
  Very very very tired of the circular logic used to blame them for losing an election to an imbecile, against promises two brain cells could have realized would never ever be delivered.

226 comments