Opinion: The Way Out of DOGE for Democrats | Blog#42

We need Hasbara. Now.

The Muskian Shop of Horrors

It’s been a month filled with daily outright lies, the usurpation of power by an unelected oligarch of dubious nationality and character with his band of teen hackers (one of whom is the grandson of a Soviet spy), Friday night massacres, blunders, curious rapprochement with Putin, and the flagrant and unabashed blackmail of allies - even ones who have been vulnerable and downtrodden. All this, done in the open, for all to see. I should know. I’ve been publishing a news post every day since the month of December.

It has been a well-publicized fact and always the plan (Project 2025, Steve Bannon’s strategy) to “flood the zone” with actions so as to cut the oxygen from those who would criticize or act against the new administration. Bannon, Trump, and even Musk told us all along.

So, why hasn’t Democratic leadership been out front as a true opposition, ready with working groups, a coterie of spokespeople assigned by skill and topic, in the media, social media, in the states, etc,?

The Democrats, those who are effective enough speakers to be out front, have not done that, instead, choosing to comment on this or that legal constitutional issue at hand, but not the fundamental problem we are now faced with and what alternative the party is ready to offer.

All we’ve had, for the most part, is silence interspersed with the occasional appearances on various MSNBC and CNN news shows and not much else. Bernie Sanders - not a Democrat - has been among the few who’ve been addressing the problem with the oligarchy we are now, in a teach-in sort of way when appearing on TV.

Jasmine Crockett of Texas is another member of Congress who has been a north star when it comes to addressing what we are confronting and opposing it vehemently. AOC? She’s been a star and is a fighter. Joe Neguse of Colorado is yet another congressperson who’s distinguished himself for his great eloquence and ability to explain the salient issues. There are others.

That’s good, but it is nowhere near enough. There have been reports that Sanders has committed to traveling to the states to, essentially, do teach-ins. That is excellent and truly what is needed. That said, Sanders alone isn’t going to get the job done, not because of his age or any lack of vigor, but because the outreach that needs to be done is so fundamental and wide reaching that it is going to take an entire village of congresscritters to achieve.

We need the best, most eloquent, courageous and persuasive of them to go out there and preach to a public that may not be willing to hear the truth, may be entirely disinformed on many levels and even may be asking for conciliation in the hope of some abatement from Trump and Musk.

I bring up conciliation because I listened in on a district-wide constituent call with my own member of Congress. When some of the constituents expressed the view that there is too much division and that she and her colleagues should work to calm things down, my representative didn’t try to educate the caller by pointing out what was being done. Instead, she rattled off a number of bills she was working on with Republican co-sponsors. Clearly, Linda Sanchez wasn’t in a mood to inform the caller and all of us listeners about the ghastly things Trump, Musk, and a majority of Republicans in the House have in store for us, and had no problem telling the caller she was willing to work with the other side.

Sanchez is hardly the only Democrat who talks like that.

That, in essence, has been the problem throughout our common experience from 2008 through the present day, from the rise (and assimilation) of the Tea Party, to the rise of Bernie Sanders’ progressive movement and through Donald Trump’s first term and then the last four years with Biden.

If the voters, for whatever reason, voted for Trump out of anger at Biden, an intense dislike of Kamala Harris, or abstained from voting, even with the known risks posed by re-electing Trump, they all quite clearly shared a case of amnesia of Trump Part 1. We all experienced his handling of COVID, incidents like throwing paper towels at constituents in Puerto Rico, blundering like a blushing schoolgirl next to Putin in Finland and scores more examples over his first term.

But, apparently, in all too many voters’ minds none of that ever happened and instead the shared, or likely preferred, memory is of COVID relief checks with Trump’s signature on them, forgetting that they only received them thanks to Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell who, in 2020, were House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader.

To be fair, the defensiveness over rising inflation (price gouging, really), lack of energy and general sense of detachment from the Biden White House contributed a great deal to the souring of Democratic and independent voters’ opinion, as I lay out on my look back at the Biden administration (linked below). Gaza, not only the protests but how they were ignored, hurt a great deal.

Fast-forward to February, 2025, and we find ourselves in an oddly Wall-E’ish dystopia, in which we all find ourselves in a reality that is being rewound as we watch helplessly and in which, Democratic leadership is no less feeble.

As you reacquaint yourself with the characters of Wall-E, see what metaphors you recognize? The constant chatter as the characters are shuffled about, the streaming data on the tablets in front of the moving people, the character who falls out of his vehicle, helpless, the unseen hand managing everyone on board the ship as they mindlessly go about their broken lives… Then, there is the story of how they got on the ship in the first place.

Here is an informative video on algorithms:

Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves, we need to push Democrats in the House and Senate to come out of the heavy fog they’re in and resolve to operate differently than they have. That means taking the entire playbook of the Sanders 2015 campaign and, instead of fearing voters, go out and engage them, inform them, teach them about money in politics leading us to the oligarchy we are now in. If Sanders was able to achieve the near-win he had, without a formal party apparatus, small individual donations and an army of volunteers, imagine what Democrats can do?

Ken Martin of Minnesota was just chosen as DNC chair. David Hogg of Florida was just chosen as vice chair. Hogg, as young as he is, is motivated to effect change due to his tragic experience at Marjorie Stoneman high school. He’s eloquent, well-spoken, well-read and passionate. He had a hand in helping Florida Representative Maxwell Frost, who is yet another well-spoken, passionate Democrat. There is a whole slew of young Democrats already in office who would be a fantastic choice to reach both their peers and those their parents’ and grandparents’ age.

As for the others? Those who cannot be made to change for fear of the donor or misinformed voter, they just need to be given the choice of changing or being primaried. As the old saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over again with the expectation of a different result.

One must now also account for the very different media environment today, as opposed to all throughout Trump’s first term. Between the weasel-worded writing and editing at the New York Times, the open editorial and newsdesk interference by LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, the shenanigans and subsequent exodus of journalists from the Washington post, what’s been happening with regional media outlets and the downward spiral of broadcast news, Democrats have their work more than cut out for them when it comes to getting the word out. The answer doesn’t lie in sending more breathless fundraising emails about being underwater or under attack by MAGA. Oh, and, please, no more texts from the congresscritter’s dog, either.

The emails from House members and senators alike need to be substantive and customized by population type to provide information that directly impacts the communities that need them.

There will be a dearth of information on programs that have been terminated, cessation of services, delays due to the mass-firings, advisories about food, drug, and consumer good recalls, the spread of communicable disease, etc. Then, there will the manipulation of data we’ve trusted and depended on. Will the monthly employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics continue to be reliable? How about all the data we used to get from the CDC? Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? EPA?

The list of agencies whose data and advisories we’ve depended on is very long. Members of Congress and the Senate must step in and, to the best of their ability, coordinate amongst themselves and put out that information through as many public means as exist, directly to the voter, in addition to assigning specific members to be the spokespeople of the party. That can only be done with an organized opposition, and not with a party that is still split among those who are fighting the good fight, those who remain quiet for fear of big donor backlash, and those who choose to cooperate with the oligarchy.

Sitting on the sidelines to “wait it out” is no longer an option.

So… where do we even begin?

What do we need? Hasbara! When do we need it? Now!

Hasbara was formally introduced to the Zionist vocabulary by Nahum Sokolow. Hasbara (Hebrew: הַסְבָּרָה) has no direct English translation, but roughly means "explaining". It is a communicative strategy that "seeks to explain actions, whether or not they are justified". As it focuses on providing explanations about one's actions, hasbara has been called a "reactive and event-driven approach". Most early practitioners of what became known as hasbara were Arabic-speaking Jews who published papers in Arabic to explain Zionism's goals to Arabs. These efforts were led by Arabic-speaking Jews like Nissim Malul, Shimon Moyal, Esther Moyal, Avraham Elmalih, and Yehuda Burla. In 2003, Ron Schleifer called hasbara "a positive-sounding synonym for 'propaganda'"

So, as you can see, the Hasbara job ahead for Democrats is a monumental one, requiring only the best to come forward, snatch the mantle, and carry a cohesive, combattant message forward. This means organization, organization, organization.

Marrying the Obama and Sanders’ style of community outreach is the way to go. Eschewing big donor money, a very hard thing to do when our nation is awash in political speech funding, is an absolute must. Most of all, the most impactful thing will be looking the voter in the eye and unflinchingly telling them the truth about our situation as a nation and explaining why bipartisanship, in this Musk-Trump era, is tantamount to national suicide.

On the campaign side of things, what needs to change, immediately, is listening to think tank operatives that are keeping the party circa the year 2000. Those days are long gone. Tacking to the right to attract voters is not an option. Voters who are attracted to Trump will not vote for a Democrat. The tack needs to be one in which the voter’s mind is changed through outreach. There will not be any reversing of tides without a concerted effort to reeducate vast swaths of the voter base that has been lost. This means Democrats have got to unify internally, institute strict party discipline and, in the event that any legislator is tempted to take up the mantle of Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, immediately shun them and put forth a primary candidate to replace them. There can no longer by any mercy for such Democrats.

What can we individually do?

What we each can do is push them, hard, by calling, emailing, leaving our congresscritters public messages on social media, especially when they start publicly speaking about working with DOGE. We can point to Musk giving Trump a quarter billion dollars to get him elected. We can tell them that taking corporate money turns them into Trump. We can also remind them of what James Baldwin wrote:

This is how the other side has managed to take over our world. Now, as the remaining truly liberal democratic party, the strictest of discipline and a well-defined mission are the only way to survive.

Onward!

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Supplemental reading

Jared Bernstein, former Chief economic adviser, Biden White House

No delusions: Bidenomics wasn't perfect, but it did many great things

Furman's Bidenomics Critique: Update

For balance, here is another perspective.

Economist Brad DeLong

Whether the Biden administration & the congress made a major mistake in 2021 with the American Rescue Plan and thus dealing the Fed a more difficult hand—that is a closer question, but I still come down on the side of no ex ante, although clearly yes ex post.

There remain two big questions:

First Principles of Fiscal Policy, with Some of Their Practical Applications

Some inspiration for how democracy could be