First: the right wing has a multi-billion dollar media infrastructure--Fox News, Sinclair radio and TV, and several thousand right wing radio programs that churn out an incessant stream of lies about Democrats and progressives. There is no equivalent on our side. A couple of cable shows, a few YouTube channels and twitter feeds don't come close to matching the impact of RW propaganda.
Second: this is bolstered by a right wing religious Evangelical infrastructure that does the same. Again, no equivalent on our side.
Third: the so-called mainstream media are more interested in pulling in eyes and dollars than repeating anything close to actual news about politics. In my feed this morning there's a headline story about President Biden scratching his head. The reporting on the current legislative logjam resembles sports casting and infotainment more than serious journalism. Which side is winning? Who's on first? Relatively little on what's actually at stake, what's in the bill, what the debate is about.
Fourth: The right appeals to the most atavistic impulses--racism being the number one motivator of many on the right. Add to this their use of over-simplification, which is another aspect of their propaganda. As Hitler said, it doesn't matter if it's true or not. Keep it simple and repeat it endlessly, and people will believe just about anything.
Fifth: on a national level, our constitutional structures favor rural voters from sparsely populated states. Both the Senate and the Electoral College are weighed in favor of conservatives. They were intentionally designed that way, a feature, not a bug.
Finally, it's important to keep in mind that, even with all this working against us, Democrats won the popular vote, and in some instances by wide margins, in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. Democrats in the Senate represent tens of millions more voters than Republicans. Every poll I've seen--even correcting for their flawed and right-leaning methodology--shows almost overwhelming support for our agenda, once it's adequately explained.
I don't know what the solution to all this is. Abolishing the Electoral College and the filibuster would be a start, but the first is politically impossible and the second may well also be off the table, at least for now. The Fairness Doctrine is long gone and wouldn't apply to cable "news" anyway. So for now at least this is what we're stuck with, depressing as that is.
Oh, one other factor, and that is the American tendency to ignore history and want to "just move on" after every catastrophe, beginning with "turning the other cheek" after the Civil War to allow southern traitor oligarchs to reclaim political and economic power, moving on through Teapot Dome, conservative support for isolationism prior to WWII, the Vietnam debacle, Watergate, Iran Contra, Iraq and "weapons of mass destruction," various Republican led economic meltdowns, and now Trumpism and January 6th. This tendency might not be limited to Americans, but we sure do indulge. Like Gore Vidal said, we live in "The United States of Amnesia."
You probably know all this, but I thought I'd lay it out anyway.
Best wishes.
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