With or without impeachment, activating the growing number of Americans disgusted with today’s Washington will require a pragmatic strategic communication plan… one that leads with bold themes and slogans.
Many analysts think that in 2016 Mr. Trump simply stumbled into a new media environment created by a game-changing digital technology revolution. Surprisingly, he discovered that the more outrageous his remarks the more headlines news organizations would just hand him. And it also allowed him to make outrageous promises to people who felt angry and ignored.
Today “populism” and “nationalism” are gaining influence around the world in much the same way. Populism favors ordinary people over power elites, and nationalism favors citizens over foreigners. So extremists propose to redistribute wealth and limit immigration…. and they also use outrageous language to produce daily headlines, and eventually gain support from citizens who feel ignored.
So how can this apply to winning back a mostly invisible American majority?
First, replace the misunderstood “democratic socialism” term with “democratic capitalism,” and repeat it incessantly. Second, propose easy to describe pragmatic solutions to real world problems, including immigration. Third, invite input from everyone… and use digital media to collect it. Fourth, referencing this input, formulate, a bold vision for a whole new values-based America, drowning out social media noise with bold slogans and themes that command big headlines every day.
I believe a strong strategic communication plan with bold themes and slogans can win in 2020. Otherwise, both political parties will soon destroy each other and put an autocrat in charge for a very long time.
Larry D. Lauer 
Leave a Reply