"The American voter doesn't want to hear the truth" - me

I'll be honest; I had a guest lined up today and a late cancellation (no worries! We're re-booking) so today was a lot of me "winging it," but I'm not unhappy with the result. Your opinion may vary. :)

Instead, the over-arching theme for this episode: "the American voter doesn't want to hear the truth."

We can't handle reasons why student loan forgiveness triggers white working class voters - even more so when they're informed loan forgiveness assists students and graduates in marginalized subsets of the population.

We can't grapple with the real reasons immigrants are on the move to our southern border. How our economic polices (sanctions, embargoes) are part of the problem. That our cozier, first-world lifestyle impacting climate change impacts lifestyles in at-risk countries elsewhere.

We altogether avoid a true reckoning of our nation's history on bias and oppression and how it continues to impact our economy, educational outcomes and crime.

So how do Democrats work to craft their messaging to be truthful to voters when voters (to borrow from 'A Few Good Men') "can't handle the truth?

I overheard an NPR News segment yesterday featuring Paul Begala, Adrianne Shropshire and Waleed Shahid discussing this, actually. I came away particularly impressed with Shahid, a former staffer for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and DNC delegate for Bernie Sanders in 2016. He spoke of Democrats "delivering real economic results to working-class Americans and not shying away from real societal changes that are happening around us that we can't just pivot away from.." He added, "we need to humanize trans Americans. We need to contextualize trans Americans. We need to do the same thing that we did in the struggle for gay rights, which is fight these battles and persuade not just in election season but in the years before election season. And I think we lost to the oldest playbook in human history, which is divide and conquer. "

Bingo.

Ezra Klein, on 'Pod Save America' earlier this week, also provided some sobering words for the party, honing in on Democrats losing ground in America's big cities, and the Biden/Harris triangulating on immigration woes, crime in the cities, and so on. Again, there are some hard truths voters need to hear, but - I repeat - the American voter doesn't want to hear the truth.