Political Resonance

Winning Elections Require Messages that Resonate; Both Parties are Finding it Difficult to Resonate Outside Their Base Groups

When something resonates, it’s impacts are felt beyond the initial location. It spreads out like waves across space and can be sensed by objects untouched by it. Hit a tuning fork and hold it 2 feet from another tuning fork, and the 2nd will vibrate at the same frequency as the original—that’s resonance.

In politics, we look at what resonates with the overall population and assess their impact. As a general rule, events resonate more than rhetoric, so “doing” is much more impactful than “talking.” Sometimes, the events are unplanned and all we have to do is witness it; watching the George Floyd video for instance, everyone who saw it recognized the impact without saying a word and knew that the subsequent messages and sentiment would resonate far and wide. Within days, marches and protests occurred and race relations/dynamics became the biggest issue in America practically overnight. Normally, we measure an issue’s impact by polling, but the video resonated so loudly, within weeks, 18 of the top 20 books on the New York Times Best Seller list focused on this issue. Few issues resonate that largely that fast, across that broad a sector of society.

I bring this issue of resonance up because I’m looking at the issues offered by each party at the moment and the general groups they are catering to, and I don’t see much resonance outside of their typical base groups. Let’s take a look one party at a time, starting with Republicans (because they’re the easiest to distill at the moment).

Republican Messaging

Republican messaging is all about Trump. Trump himself is all over the map on what he says and does, but the general overall messaging is:

• Trade Wars with China and other countries who have “ripped us off for years.”

• Going to war with liberal academia and the press who have been supporting Democrats for far too long.

• Tough on immigration; tough on crime.

• Democrats can’t be trusted.

• Gutting the Federal Bureaucracy and cutting taxes.

For the most part, four of those five have been the standard operating procedure for GOP messaging since Nixon.¹ The thing with Trump is the sheer extent he is willing to go to accomplish these things; many of the proposals and actions by the administration have been unconstitutional on it’s face but that hasn’t constrained Trump at all yet. Nixon had a sense of shame after getting caught during Watergate and understood America was bigger than he was; Trump has no shame whatsoever and thinks he is the state.

Cutting government and taxes always resonates, but the more often it’s said, the more it just sounds like empty rhetoric. Trump’s certainly demonstrated toughness on immigration, and whether you like or dislike what he is doing depends almost entirely on how you feel about that issue in itself. Distrust of academia, the press and Democrats generally has been around for a long time now. The only issue that is currently resonating outside of the GOP camp is the trade war with China, and it does so negatively. As the economy feels the impact of these huge swings in policy, the results are very likely detrimental and everyday consumers are going to get pinched, hard. Since announcing these tarriffs, Trump’s approval has plummeted, along with Americans’ views of how he handles the economy.

How bad is it? Republicans are actually floating the idea of impeachment in the hopes Democrats actually start impeaching Trump; they think that electorally they will benefit if impeachment starts and Republicans rally around Democratic overreach.

Democratic Messaging

Collectively, one of the reasons Democrats’ approval ratings are even lower than Trump’s right now is that there is no real message coming out of leadership. There is a minor civil war going on inside the caucus over which direction to go; do they work to court moderates in purple areas and broaden the tent, or do they primary less ideologically pure candidates in favor of more progressive ones? This is likely to continue until the primary season begins in earnest. Until then, there’ll be a hesitancy to go one way or the other; you’ll likely see individual officeholders take sides one way or the other, but the overall Democratic Party message will be more neutral to those two options, trying to have their cake and eat it to by appealing to both groups.

That being said, there are some messages that all the Democrats can agree on:

• Trump is a risk to American democracy

• Trump is clearly overstepping his Constitutionally mandated powers

• Trump is wrecking our Government from the inside, hiring utterly incompetent people and unilaterally dissecting important pieces of the federal bureaucracy on whims

• Trump is an authoritarian dictator and America is no longer a liberal democracy because of it

• We are a weaker nation, strategically and economically, because of what Trump is doing.

What can I say, nothing unites a discordant group better than a villain. The thing is everything above is quantifiably true, but given the extent and ramifications, it feels almost “Chicken Little-ish” to point it out. People have been so numbed by the hyperbole in politics over 30 years that here you have an existential threat, doing shit that is absolutely insane and unconstitutional, and pointing it out sounds like just the typical rhetoric that has been spewed for decades. Not to mention, Democrats and Democratic activists have a problem with “over-messaging”; they don’t just protest, they protest dozens of times. They don’t just speak about an issue, they rant for 25 hours about it as a stunt. That volume of screaming at people trying to get your point across has diminishing returns; they see and hear you just fine, but reiterating your point to them only serves to piss them off further. That’s why it doesn’t resonate as much as it should. People hear it, and say “I’ve heard that before; same old, same old.” If you think I’m kidding, every one of the bullet points above were leveled at George W. Bush and/or Dick Cheney as well, and most independents I know view what Democrats say as repeating the same hyperbolic schtick.²

So you essentially have two parties whose messaging doesn’t extend very far or deep into the moderate and independent swing voters of the country. Economic issues will hit them and they’ll develop opinions about them, but other than that, it’s a lot of he said/she said, one side vs. one side they’ll look at and be turned off by. What messages WILL resonate?

For Democrats, the issues that seem to resonate best at getting their points across are the anecdotal ones demonstrating the very issues they want to address. Abrego Garcia was a great issue, demonstrating Trump overrreach.³ Interviews with people arbitrarily fired by DOGE had impact; Elon Musk is even a bigger villain than Trump is.⁴ Business men who are going to be hurt by Trump’s terrible tarriffs will have impact; in fact, one of the strongest voices in opposition to Trump was Trump supporter David Portnoy of Barstool Sports, who not only has business interests hurt by them, he has a very visible platform to shout from. The more those stories come out, the better they will resonate with more and more Americans.

As for Republicans, there really is no helping them. They made their bed with Trump and are now wedded to him for good or bad, ‘til death (or impeachment, or the 25th Amendment, or the end of his term) do they part. The narrative will always be on Trump, and there is no way to counter that. People’s opinions on Trump are just going to be one way or the other from here on out, the numbers are baked in. This opens up a huge opportunity for Democrats if they can find the right message, let’s see if they can capitalize on it and find one that truly resonates outside the typical liberal political circles.

PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner

One of my favorite bands of the late 1980s and early ‘90s was Tesla. One of the best albums of the era was “Five Man Acoustical Jam” where they started the trend of acoustic sets,⁵ playing a concert of original songs and covers to a live audience at the Trocadero Club in Philadelphia. Watch this video and you get a sense as to how the song, the music, the style and the lyrics all resonate with the crowd.⁶ Magic.

They followed up that hugely successful acoustic live album re-amping up with “Mechanical Resonance.” The biggest hit was a cover of the British New Wave Band Ph.d’s, “Little Suzi.”⁷ It’s a great cover (even if the video is cheesy trash), but the song unfortunately came out just as Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the Seattle grunge sound redefined rock music and the late ‘80s hair bands were now considered passe.

PurpleAmerica’s Obscure Fact of the Day

Pendulums, when connected or sharing a common supporting structure, will eventually synchronize their swings. This phenomenon, known as "Huygens's synchronization" or "pendulum synchronization," is due to the subtle interactions between the pendulums, primarily through vibrations or sound waves transmitted through the connecting structure.

PurpleAmerica’s Final Word on the Subject

Resonating beyond one’s circle is the key; do that, and you can win.

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Footnotes and Fun Stuff

1. Nixon did seek warmer relations with China.

2. Before I get bombarded with a bunch of pablum, let me just say that I try to point out the more egregious shit to them too. Some of it sinks in and they do mull it over, but a lot of it just results in glazed eyes and changing the subject.

3. Even moreso, the more Trump tries to explain it and gets called out on all the mistruths, the more that works in Dems’ favor.

4. He has all the characteristics of a stereotypical Bond villain, which says a lot.

5. Even though some songs included flourishes that include amped guitars, most of the concert is the band playing acoustic instruments, and/or instruments without modulations. For instance, the Paul McCartney bass IS amped up to get sound out of it, but it’s at a very basic, consistent sound setting throughout the concert, with no modulation at all. Much of the music comes right out of the instruments and into an external microphone that then amplifies the sound.

6. One of the reasons I disdain a lot of music today is that I so rarely witness the same kind of talent and sense of awe of the technical merit that you see here. Imagine Sabrina Carpenter or Billie Eilish playing in front of a crowd like this with an acoustic band and without autotune, and you’ll see my point.

7. A noteworthy trivial fact of the song is that it was the fifth video ever played on MTV, and the first by a British Band.