Senator Murphy's larger message is the one being put out there by saner Dems. It's that just obsessively hating and trying to destroy Trump is not a campaign strategy. And it will backfire.
But Democrats running in the 2018 midterm elections would do well, Murphy said, to turn away from the “distraction” of the ongoing Russia investigations and campaign on an economic message.
“Democrats have to be hyperfocused on an economic message that tells people that the Republican Party is all about economic growth for millionaires and billionaires and the Democratic Party is about economic growth for everybody,” Murphy (D-Conn.) told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday. “The fact that we have spent so much time talking about Russia, you know, has been a distraction from what should be the clear contrast between Democrats and the Trump agenda, which is on economics.”
Pivot from the coup to class warfare.
Sadly this would actually be a step up. It would be healthier for our democracy than an ongoing plot to reverse the last election with a media coup. But don't expect saner voices to be heard.
The Dems are running on emotion, not reason. The left has taken control of the party and it's mad as hell over the election results. The more the media dangles the prospect of Watergate II in front of their salivating maws, the harder it is for Dems to talk about anything else.
Dems in safe districts know that they can bring in cash by promising impeachment. The New York Times and the Washington Post are making a fortune with impeachment fake news.
The Washington Post has racked up viral hit fake news stories backed by anonymous sources. And it’s paying off. The Post claimed a traffic increase of 50% at the end of last year with a 75% increase in new subscribers. The official line is that Jeff Bezos has transformed the Post’s digital strategy. The reality was conveyed by its new anti-Trump slogan. “Democracy dies in darkness.” The silly slogan was an exercise in branding. It announced that this was the paper of choice for “researched” attacks on Trump.
Now the Post has hit $100 million in digital revenues and added hundreds of thousands of digital subscribers. All of this is quite a change from a few years ago when the Post was losing $50 million a year and Baron was talking about shrinking the newsroom.
So they're not going to stop. They can't stop.
Everything is being thrown into the coup. And that cripples messaging.
Republican messaging is badly broken. But right now the only thing that Dems can do is fulminate.