superrific
Legend of ZZL
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Note: while all of these observations are my own and I solely take the blame for them, some of them were inspired by a post from nycfan a while ago about how functionally illiterate people likely hear and respond to Trump. I've referred to that post multiple times before. It had an impact on me. Anyway:
Dems have taken heat for words like Latinx and some of the new trans-inclusive language. I'm definitely in favor of scrapping Latinx if that's possible. What concerns me is a different set of word choices, which are the stuff of "statesman" politics that probably don't translate well to today's age. We need to start talking differently about this administration.
Example 1: Elissa Slotkin said in her joint address response, "But there's reckless change, and then there's responsible change"
To college grads and especially those in the professions, "reckless" sounds bad. We understand it to mean, "likely to produce bad outcomes." But to the working class, I don't know if "reckless" would have the same negative connotations. They might hear it as bold. And "responsible"? Is that a good thing? It probably sounds good to Slotkin, who was an intelligence operator and probably "responsibility" was a key touchstone of her world view. But again, to a working class voter, responsible might sound like the scolding you get from a manager.
It should have been, "there's our approach, which is to make a good system work better for everyone. Then there's Trump approach, which is to destroy in one fell swoop the business contacts that two generations of Americans have spent their lives building."
Example 2: Trump is "amoral."
It's unclear to me if amorality is really different than immorality, which is probably not a great sign for the effectiveness of this rhetoric. Maybe it was somehow appropriate during Trump v1. But again, this packs no punch. He's not just amoral. He is evil by any meaning of the term.
Example 3: Trump is "transactional," especially in foreign policy.
Again, who exactly sees this as a bad quality? College grads, probably. We recognize transactional as the opposite of principled. But to the working class voter, I'm not sure "transactional" sounds bad at all. It sounds like what Trump is selling.
A better choice would be to refer to Trump's boomerang foreign policy, which always ends up smacking us in the face in the end. Or something along these lines. Corrupt foreign policy. Self-defeating foreign policy.
Example 4: This is my own thought, and I don't know if it would be effective and it doesn't exactly function as a substitute for other stuff. But I've been thinking about pinning the label of "wrong way" on him. I wonder if someone could get Jim Marshall to be the part of an ad campaign. "I ran the wrong way because I got disoriented on a football field. Trump is running the wrong way because he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground." Wrong Way Trump sounds good to me. That advertising copy in the last sentence does not; never claimed to be an ad man.
Dems have taken heat for words like Latinx and some of the new trans-inclusive language. I'm definitely in favor of scrapping Latinx if that's possible. What concerns me is a different set of word choices, which are the stuff of "statesman" politics that probably don't translate well to today's age. We need to start talking differently about this administration.
Example 1: Elissa Slotkin said in her joint address response, "But there's reckless change, and then there's responsible change"
To college grads and especially those in the professions, "reckless" sounds bad. We understand it to mean, "likely to produce bad outcomes." But to the working class, I don't know if "reckless" would have the same negative connotations. They might hear it as bold. And "responsible"? Is that a good thing? It probably sounds good to Slotkin, who was an intelligence operator and probably "responsibility" was a key touchstone of her world view. But again, to a working class voter, responsible might sound like the scolding you get from a manager.
It should have been, "there's our approach, which is to make a good system work better for everyone. Then there's Trump approach, which is to destroy in one fell swoop the business contacts that two generations of Americans have spent their lives building."
Example 2: Trump is "amoral."
It's unclear to me if amorality is really different than immorality, which is probably not a great sign for the effectiveness of this rhetoric. Maybe it was somehow appropriate during Trump v1. But again, this packs no punch. He's not just amoral. He is evil by any meaning of the term.
Example 3: Trump is "transactional," especially in foreign policy.
Again, who exactly sees this as a bad quality? College grads, probably. We recognize transactional as the opposite of principled. But to the working class voter, I'm not sure "transactional" sounds bad at all. It sounds like what Trump is selling.
A better choice would be to refer to Trump's boomerang foreign policy, which always ends up smacking us in the face in the end. Or something along these lines. Corrupt foreign policy. Self-defeating foreign policy.
Example 4: This is my own thought, and I don't know if it would be effective and it doesn't exactly function as a substitute for other stuff. But I've been thinking about pinning the label of "wrong way" on him. I wonder if someone could get Jim Marshall to be the part of an ad campaign. "I ran the wrong way because I got disoriented on a football field. Trump is running the wrong way because he doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground." Wrong Way Trump sounds good to me. That advertising copy in the last sentence does not; never claimed to be an ad man.
