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The Democratic Strategist

Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Many Americans are in a clinical state of denial about the systematic GOP attack now underway against the American system of government

Every serious democratic strategist is aware of the systematic GOP attack that is now underway against the American system of government. It is being prosecuted at every level – from threats of violence against individual vote counters to new laws that give the GOP control over the entire process. 

Third Way has published a vivid, easy to read summary of the threat at the presidential level.1
As they say:

This isn’t Rudy Giuliani and his clown car full of “lawyers” holding a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping…It’s not Sidney Powell threatening to “release the Kraken”…

This time the threat is coming from the core of the Republican Party. It is a systematic,
sophisticated, and serious plot to execute a coup. Their plan? To steal the 2024 presidential election – and it is well underway. 

Their plot has five distinct parts

  1. Suppressing the Vote 
  2. Installing Big Lie Vote Counters 
  3. Threatening Election Officials
  4. Seizing Legislative Control 
  5. Sabotaging the Electoral College

Read the rest of the memo.

Erica Etelson, author of Beyond Contempt – How Liberals Can Communicate Across the Great Divide provides an extended analysis of this issue:

As for those who are in some degree of factual denial, I don’t have a fleshed-out strategy for how to prompt people to embrace reality, but I think there are some lessons to be drawn from the worlds of cult deprogramming and from public health education campaigns. What I see as key here is defusing conflict, building trust and meeting people where they’re at, not where we wish they were at.

Public health educators ask people what their concerns are about getting vaccinated, acknowledge that it can be a hard decision especially when there’s a lot of conflicting information out there and they don’t know who to trust. After the vaccine skeptic has had their say, the educator then offers to give them information and leaves it to the person to make their choice. They know that, as soon as they start strong-arming the person into getting vaccinated, using fear, shame or social pressure, the trust will be broken.

Cult deprogrammers, from what I understand, take a similar approach of trying to build trust and to demonstrate that their motivation stems from their caring about the person’s well-being rather than a desire to control or coerce them. Cult followers are getting something out of being in the cult — a feeling of belonging and/or a sense of being “in-the-know”, the satisfaction and sense of superiority in seeing the reality the “sheeple” are blind to. Those who deny the Trumpist coup may be coming from a place of distrust of the mainstream media sources and partisans who are sounding the alarm. Or, as you note, they may feel like they have too much to lose by acknowledging reality.

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