That’s right a recent poll showed that that 67% thought the Democrats were out of touch with the country, MORE than the Republicans.  Well, maybe they’re right if the real America can elect Donald Trump I guess we are, thankfully, out of touch.  But if by out of touch they mean not standing with working people, rather standing up for the wealthy and powerful, then that’s just a horrible, horrible messaging nightmare for the party of working people.

Tim Ryan called this a “wake up call for the party.”  You know, like not having the WH, Congress or Senate, or a majority in the state legislatures of fewer than 20 states.  Not even the State of New York!

Certain cadres of the Democratic Party are clearly partly to blame for this when they give 6 figure speeches to Wall Street, which dilutes the brand and feeds the confusion. Whether that’s Obama or Clinton, it’s what they call bad optics.  A whole shit load of bad optics over a couple of decades and the party of Main Street is considered less for working people than the traditional party of Wall Street!

But let’s not let the media off the hook either.  Maybe it’s that bending over backwards not to look liberal, but whatever it is, it’s harder to get neutral coverage for  Democrats. Case in point laid out by Dave Weigel in the WaPo yesterday This one Clinton quote shows why her supporters hate the media

In her discussion yesterday with Christine Amanpour she mentioned the lack of high speed internet coverage in rural areas, a shameful thing in 2017 and something that absolutely hinders those areas economically.

But the coverage from some members of the media defaulted to mischaracterizing her comments:

Elliott writes for Time, by the way.  His tweet led to this kind of response for a Republican operative, happy to use it against her:

The point: Elliott’s tweet fed a quick, afternoon round of mockery for Clinton, who as ever had been out of touch. But anyone who’s covered politics — certainly, anyone who’s done a reporting trip to rural West Virginia or Iowa or New Hampshire — could recognize what Clinton was talking about. She campaigned on a quarter-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, which, in the unappealing campaign-speak of her news release, included “giving all American households access to world-class broadband and creating connected ‘smart cities’ with infrastructure that’s part of tomorrow’s Internet of Things.”

… And Clinton may be the only politician who can talk about the need for rural broadband — at this point, an almost banal priority of rural politicians — and be accused of snobbery.

So Al Gore was stiff and a liar, John Kerry was an effete windsurfer and Obama was an elitist Muslim who went to the wrong Christian church.  The narratives are almost always bad for Democrats.  Meanwhile Trump gets articles about why his followers love him so much despite all his faults.

There’s no arguing that the policies coming from the Democratic Party are more beneficial for Main Street, working people, the middle class than those coming from the Republican Party by a country mile.  It’s not even that hard because Democrats are trying to do that and Republicans are completely captured by the culture warriors and fossil fuel industry.  But somewhere, somehow reality is not being communicated effectively to the American public.

Democrats have to make the case to the country, and even other Democrats to clean up their messaging.  I’m getting into fights with people on Twitter on why Obama getting $400,000 to give a speech to Wall Street is not the same as making money writing a book. People do not want to understand that nobody criticizes anybody getting rich writing a book and selling it to a lot of people – but many, many people look askance at making six figures giving a 45 minute speech to a Wall Street audience.

If Hillary had not given those speeches to Goldman Sachs she may well be president today.  It’s just a fact that many people find it disturbing that people who have to be our watchdogs over Wall Street get cozy with them.  It dilutes the brand. Hello!!!

But people in the media have to be smarter and less lazy about fixing what a politician says to an easily digested meme that is actually the opposite of what the politician is saying.  Once again:

And Clinton may be the only politician who can talk about the need for rural broadband — at this point, an almost banal priority of rural politicians — and be accused of snobbery.