Subject: Re: Schumer's book tour postponed
I think this misses the mark. When people rely on social media for their news, and that "news" can be written by anyone with a social media account without a requirement (or expectation) for fact-checking and verifying sources, then you can't expect people to be grounded in reality. Couple that with the social media algorithms that present you with stuff that will make you happy -keeping in mind that it is not vetted for truth or facts-, and you have an easily-manipulated and uninformed populace.

Right - but how is that missing the mark?

If the populace is no longer consuming "news" that has been written by a person (whether with a social media account or not), but is just getting their information about the world from watching unscripted videos or livestreams or podcasts, then the Democrats are going to do poorly using their traditional communication channels. Holding up some little paddles during the President's speech will get you covered on the nightly news, but that's no longer as important a communication medium today. It's not going to get you talked about on a podcast or livestream, except if you get derided through people memeing you to death.

If you're trying to get back support among the working class, and the working class isn't watching scripted news (whether sourced or not, whether labeled as news or opinion or not), then you can't rely on scripted news as your way back to them. Democrats are losing support among the people who don't make their political decisions based on "news" - they're doing fine with people who consume news, but getting hammered among people who don't. Again, from Schor:

The most important thing is that we saw incredible polarization on political engagement itself. There’s a bunch of different ways to measure this: There’s how many elections you vote in, or how important politics is to your identity. There’s how closely you follow the news. But across all of these, there’s a consistent story: The most engaged people swung toward Democrats between 2020 and 2024, despite the fact that Democrats did worse overall.

Meanwhile, people who are the least politically engaged swung enormously against Democrats. They’re a group that Biden either narrowly won or narrowly lost four years ago. But this time, they voted for Trump by double digits.
And I think this is just analytically important.

People have a lot of complaints about how the mainstream media covered things. But I think it’s important to note that the people who watch the news the most actually became more Democratic. And the problem was basically this large group of people who really don’t follow the news at all becoming more conservative.

You can't win back those voters by gaining news coverage of the stuff you do - because they're not consuming news. You have to work hard to meet them where they are, to show up in the stuff they do consume. Ground game politics, showing up in non-news, unconventional media channels that aren't aimed at the folks that are already all voting for you.