Broad-Front Political Messaging in the Age of Trump: Kilmar Abrego Garcia & Such
Out of my lane, but Trump’s extrajudicial cruelty is not a footnote—it needs to be on the front page. The casual and cruel attempt to destroy Garcia’s life matches the casual destruction of...
Out of my lane, but Trump’s extrajudicial cruelty is not a footnote—it needs to be on the front page. The casual and cruel attempt to destroy Garcia’s life matches the casual destruction of America’s prosperity, depending as it does on the world trade network, and the casual degradation of America’s national security. Political messaging today works best when it is bold, true, and unafraid of its own values. And if that doesn’t work best, we need to learn that very quickly. Hence we need to try…
G. Elliott Morris: Should Democrats focus on immigration or the economy? <https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/should-democrats-focus-on-immigration>: ‘It is possible for parties to walk and chew gum at the same time: I have seen political analysts suggest or imply a few times now that Democrats should not be trying to fight Republicans on immigration in general, and advocate for Kilmar Abrego Garcia in particular, because the rough GOP stance on deportations is popular…. I guess the logic for these arguments is straightforward enough: The current state of the economy is a 20-ton anchor tied around Trump's neck, while his approval on immigration is net positive. Pick your battles…. However, the people advancing this argument are making at least five mistakes: 1. Overall issue popularity is not… particulars…. 2. The case implicitly assumes a party can’t do 2+ things at once…. 3. Opinion changes with new information and arguments…. 4. Problems can be tied together with broader themes…. 5. Politics is about values…
My overwhelming and instinctive reaction is this: THE CLAIM THAT BAD GUYS DO NOT DESERVE DUE PROCESS IS A CLAIM THAT NOBODY DESERVES DUE PROCESS UNLESS YOU THINK TRUMP ALWAYS TELLS THE TRUTH; AND NOBODY THINKS THAT TRUMP ALWAYS TELLS THE TRUTH. Moreover, if it is indeed the case that a majority of Americans do not care about their own due process, we had better find that out as quickly as possible, because then we are in much worse trouble than we knew. If teaching people about Trump’s kidnapping of Kilmer Abrego Garcia and subsequent lying about who he is is not a winning issue that moves minds, we need to know that now.
But, it turns out, it is a winning issue. It does move minds:
Take a moment to really process…. On the issue voters elected him to tackle, Trump has overstepped so severely/executed so poorly that the average voter now disapproves, by 5 points, of his performance…. it was, frankly, easy to see coming if you looked at opinions on immigration even a little beyond the surface…. In fact, at this point, returning Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the U.S. would rank as one of the most popular policies in America. Overall immigration approval be damned…
Now I am not an expert on effective messaging in today’s public sphere. I do not pretend to be a Svengali of the social semiotic in our modern media age.
But, then, nobody is. That is, perhaps, my central point.
The desire to think that there are, today, experts in political communication is seductive. But we do not yet live in a regime of technocratic message optimization. We live in a cacophony of conflicting impressions, attention economies, and ideological avatars. The sphere of public reason is, frankly, broken. But the breaking is new. Thus people who were experts on the old are not experts on the new. And people who claim to be experts on the new are, as of now, without an enormous empirical research base that they do not have, lying to you and probably to themselves—or, if they are not lying to themselves, running a con game on you.
Start with that: that is what I guess the terrain is. And if that is the terrain, then political messaging must be expansive, emotional, and—most of all—true.
Hence, a broad front.
The Democratic Party—or any coalition interested in democracy and dignity—must engage not just with the economy, not just with immigration, but with the totality of what Trumpism represents. The cruelty, the impunity, the erosion of norms, and, yes, the specifics of the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. Trump's goons kidnapped a man who had legal permission to live in America, who had spent years happily and peacefully among us. They sent him to rot in an El Salvadoran prison, and then defamed him as a gang member to justify the act. This is not just an injustice. It is the blueprint of a politics of spectacle and domination. It is fascism by administrative cruelty.
To focus only on “the most popular” topics—say, inflation or jobs—while avoiding cases like Garcia’s, is to make a profound category error. As Morris notes, Trump's immigration policy is not popular in its particulars, even if people positively associate the words “immigration” and “Trump”. Real stories are told—of fathers torn from families, of bureaucratic sadism justified by spurious claims—land. They matter. They move. And the democratic coalition and the Democratic coalition must not shy from them.
Still, a broad front does not mean a random front. There must be a feedback loop. If a story is not catching fire, it may be worth probing why. Was it not amplified? Did it arrive in the wrong ton? Was it the wrong medium? Did it lack the needed emotional scaffolding? Did it lack the needed factual scaffolding? Or is it—perish the thought—simply not resonating because we do not yet have the civic fabric capable of hearing it?
But even in that case, the answer is not to stop trying, but to try differently.
Messaging must therefore be both reinforcing and adaptive. When a message works—when it cuts through and captures public imagination—it should be repeated, multiplied, and echoed until it becomes part of the civic subconscious. But if a line is not moving minds—especially those of low-information voters—it may not be worth the bandwidth. This is not elitism. It is strategic triage. The cognitive real estate of voters is limited. Better to plant a few strong trees than scatter a thousand seeds on asphalt.
All this is premised on a more basic truth: we must be who we are. We must not abandon the language of dignity, of compassion, of human rights, even if we are told these do not poll well in Youngstown. The moment we contort ourselves to speak in terms that are not our own, we lose not only the moral high ground but also the ability to inspire.
Which brings us back to Kilmar Abrego Garcia. His story must be told. It is not a distraction from the economy. It reveals the power dynamics that govern who gets to live a secure, predictable life in this country. They took away his freedom, casually and callously, and are not sorry. And they are about to take away the intermediate imports the factory you work in needs in order not to close.
And we must not apologize for telling these stories. We are not sorry. We are not going to apologize for believing that cruelty is wrong. That the state should not lie about people in order to justify kidnapping them. We are not sorry for refusing to play the game of triangulation.
Retreating to focus-group our way into mushy centrism is the way to paralysis.
As I said: out of my lane. But at least I know what is the right direction on the road.
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"And we must not apologize for telling these stories. We are not sorry. We are not going to apologize for believing that cruelty is wrong. That the state should not lie about people in order to justify kidnapping them. We are not sorry for refusing to play the game of triangulation."
Why is speaking for due process and against cruelty out of anyone's "lane"?
"And we must not apologize for telling these stories. We are not sorry. We are not going to apologize for believing that cruelty is wrong. That the state should not lie about people in order to justify kidnapping them. We are not sorry for refusing to play the game of triangulation."
Amen