When they stopped acting and speaking like them. It’s not an issue of policy, but ones of community, identity, and trust.
The NDP is really bad at showing different parts of the electorate the side that speaks to them. Rural blue collar folks keep seeing talking points about urban student issues, people struggling with mortgage payments keep hearing talk about landlords. They keep talking about spending money on “everybody else”, and give working class people the feeling that they are the ones who will have to pay for it, even now as they feel more squeezed than ever.
Plus, everyone looks so damn prim and proper and lawyery.
The conservatives at least speak to their frustrations and anger. They offer a conduit for it, and a sense of catharsis, even if they have no interest in solving the problem. The conservatives feel better to side with. They don’t just tell them that they are right to feel angry, they make them feel safe to feel angry.
The NDP doesn’t do that. The NDP makes them feel judged for feeling angry, even while the party tells them that their anger makes sense.
Absolutely. The name changes are because reactionaries keep attacking those names and progressives keep on not standing up to these attacks and defending those terms.
Of course, deep-pocketed folks who want to divide the people are funding reactionary messaging but I’m getting to think more and more the bigger problem is that those on the people’s side who would best communicate these things are exactly the ones who don’t have the time and energy to be involved in communication. So instead it’s either inadvertently condescending talk-downs or wishy-washy and corporate-sounding slogans from people who might just a bit too far removed from the actual problems at hand.
When they stopped acting and speaking like them. It’s not an issue of policy, but ones of community, identity, and trust.
The NDP is really bad at showing different parts of the electorate the side that speaks to them. Rural blue collar folks keep seeing talking points about urban student issues, people struggling with mortgage payments keep hearing talk about landlords. They keep talking about spending money on “everybody else”, and give working class people the feeling that they are the ones who will have to pay for it, even now as they feel more squeezed than ever.
Plus, everyone looks so damn prim and proper and lawyery.
The conservatives at least speak to their frustrations and anger. They offer a conduit for it, and a sense of catharsis, even if they have no interest in solving the problem. The conservatives feel better to side with. They don’t just tell them that they are right to feel angry, they make them feel safe to feel angry.
The NDP doesn’t do that. The NDP makes them feel judged for feeling angry, even while the party tells them that their anger makes sense.
And so they feel unseen, and abandoned.
Basically conservatives are good at manipulation
They’re good at communication. Communication is getting your point across in a way that your audience understands.
Progressives are terrible at it - we keep changing the names of things, and use increasingly complex language for trivial stuff.
Absolutely. The name changes are because reactionaries keep attacking those names and progressives keep on not standing up to these attacks and defending those terms.
Of course, deep-pocketed folks who want to divide the people are funding reactionary messaging but I’m getting to think more and more the bigger problem is that those on the people’s side who would best communicate these things are exactly the ones who don’t have the time and energy to be involved in communication. So instead it’s either inadvertently condescending talk-downs or wishy-washy and corporate-sounding slogans from people who might just a bit too far removed from the actual problems at hand.