READING TIME: 4 minutes
SUMMARY: Democrats have been criticized for bringing a teddy bear to the knife fight that Republicans brought tanks and drones to. Other than fight, what should Democrats actually do? One thing that helps people win at the Prisoner’s Dilemma is for them to remember who did them wrong and who helped them in past games. The same strategy can be used here: help voters understand which policies are actually hurting them and which politicians are responsible for enacting those policies. Simplify the message and use it on repeat, just like the Republicans do.
KEY WORDS: Democrats, Messaging, Voting, Work Harder, Fight Harder, Chuck Schumer, Prisoner’s Dilemma, Connect the Dots, Great Paradox
COMMENTS: How should the Democrats approach the November elections?
Working Harder
“He needs to work harder,” my English teacher told my mother during one of our infrequent high school parent-teacher meetings.
My grades were okay. I was a middle of the pack B-student, and the teacher rightly sensed that I could do better. But, the prescription was not going improve my grades because for the most part, I didn’t do anything outside of class. I did assignments that I had to. I remember writing an essay on the humor in Chaucer, emphasizing the naughtier bits — “Woman hath not beard!” — but other than that, I pretty much spent my time watching the TV, playing some ball games in the street, and hanging out with friends.
Working harder presumably meant doing more of what I was already doing. Well, zero times zero is zero, so there was nothing to be gained there.
The problem with the advice to work harder is that by doing more of the same, you’ll improve. That rarely is the case. What I needed from my teachers were explicit study techniques and some structure in my time outside of class. But, I didn’t get that. I just got the vague imploration to work harder.
Democrats should Fight Harder!
Since the re-election of La Gran Jefa Estúpida, people from all walks of life — pundits to pedants to the voting public — have implored Democrats to fight harder. And, I suppose they should, but what does that mean? An even more strongly worded letter from Chuck Schumer?
Such criticism buggers the question: what does fighting look like when you don’t have majorities in either house of Congress, don’t have a majority of justices on the Supreme Court, and the states are either solidly red or blue? I needed study techniques and structure. What do Democrats need besides vague implorations?
Fight like Republicans
Esteemed political commentator, Rachel Bitecofer, thinks Democrats need to fight like Republicans, but Republicans lie, cheat, and steal, literally. Is that what she means? Should Democrats jump on the corruption train? Start using alternative facts? Stuff ballot boxes and hijack voting machines?
Fortunately, that’s not what Bitecofer or any of the other “fight harder” critics mean, but Democrats can adapt some Republican techniques without sacrificing their integrity or stooping to Republican lows. Luckily, psychology offers some suggestions.
Populist rhetoric often reduces complex problems to simplistic black-and-white answers. Housing prices too high? It must be because immigrants are eating your cats and dogs! Wages not keeping up with inflation? The ding dang dumb liberals are giving all of your hard-earned money to lazy takers who don’t deserve it! Republicans have perfected the divide and conquer technique. They separate us into polarized camps with emotional divisive cultural issues and then offer solutions that feed the worst instincts of their supporters. They fan the flames of racial animosity, misogyny, and class warfare by blaming all of our problems on Blacks, Browns, women, non-Christians, and elites, especially coastal elites. Then, promise that all will be well if we return to a time of whites-only Christian affirming policies.
The Prisoner’s Dilemma: Throw them Under the Bus to Save Us
They paint a picture of a country in decline with shrinking resources that if white people don’t hurry up and take ’em by any means necessary, then their children will be left starving in the streets and shivering in the cold while the Other — fake Americans — use our freedoms and rights against us.
You know what that sounds like? It sounds like the Prisoner’s Dilemma that game theorists have assured us means cheaters eventually always win and society devolves to a Hobbesian hellscape in which life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short unless we surrender our rights and freedoms to a Leviathan who will ensure that the right people get the things they need to be happy and prosperous and that everyone else gets what they deserve!
This leaves us with what Arlie Hochschild called the Great Paradox, rural Christian white conservatives voting against the liberal policies they need to improve their lives. Instead, they vote in the conservative politicians that continue the policies that keep them living in Cancer Alley, drinking Flint water, using Texas utilities, going to Florida schools and dying quickly and quietly when they can no longer contribute more to the one percent than they cost.
But, this is the salvation of the Democratic Party!
Connecting the Dots: The Salvation of the Democratic Party
As it turns out the Prisoner’s Dilemma has a very human escape hatch: memory. When players can track how their partners treated them in previous rounds — who cooperated, who ratted them out — cooperation emerges spontaneously. The cheaters get ratted out, the cooperators get cooperated with, and the race to the bottom reverses itself. Game theorists had been modeling humans as if we had no memory and no relationships. Turns out, we do.
That’s the thread Democrats need to hand voters. Not the intricate details of 75 overlapping policy plans. A clear, repeatable line from cause to effect: these are the people you elected, these are the policies they enacted, this is what it cost you. Pound it. Repeat it in a myriad of ways. Make the connection so clear that even the most information-saturated, attention-depleted voter can trace it.
As Hochschild noted, they’ve lost the connection between their votes, the people elected, and the policies that keep them trapped in lives of misery. It is no longer clear to the average citizen the functions of government, who is really making the decisions, and how government is affecting our lives. Consequently, no one can make an informed vote. No one can vote in their own best interest.
The 2026 election makes the assignment almost embarrassingly straightforward: draw the line, pound the message, repeat. Who promised that Trickle Down economics would work this time and wrecked the economy AGAIN?!? Who is responsible for sending the price of gas through the roof? Who gutted your healthcare? Who is prolonging our dependence on fossil fuels and hindering our switch to EVs and alternative energy? Who voted against the bill that just fixed your roads and bridges — and then showed up at the ribbon cutting anyway? Ask Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, who voted against Biden’s infrastructure bill and then took a bow for the $470 million it delivered to her district. That’s the thread. Pull it.
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The image was found on Sketchplanations and has a Creative Commons license.
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Real live (and articulate) Working Class Heroes and Heroines are electoral gold. That is especially true the farther down the ballot they start out. I’m thinking , for example, of AOC. There, we see a waitress and bar tender from a tough neighborhood who got to a top university and aced the whole thing there, and came back to the old hood, still hard scrabble tough, and deadly sharp and quick at deflating pompous a-holes. We need as many of those, female, male, or other, as we can find.
Deflating pompous a-holes can take a person far in politics. The target field is overpopulated.
Jack this is off topic but wanted to pass it along to you…..https://knowridge.com/2026/05/scientists-uncover-big-cause-of-autism-and-schizophrenia-before-birth/ I hope it is useful…..chuq
Howdy Chuq!
Thanks for the article. I haven’t seen anything about this study. It is very interesting just because it tells us that we don’t know what is hidden in our DNA. It is an extremely complex system. Its malleability is fascinating.
One of the most interesting things about autism is the distinction between the nonverbal and highly verbal individuals. Many of us with few other impairments outside of social awareness don’t want to change, kinda like people who are gay don’t necessarily want to be straight, but for those who are severely impaired and schizophrenic, I can imagine that if the right genes can we switched on and off to help them be more functional and participatory, they’d want that. That’s what this finding really addresses.
Huzzah!
Jack
I recently saw some similar work tracing gender dysphoria to the ratios of intrauterine testosterone and prednisone during a particular early few weeks of development.
There have also been studies suggesting that in utero exposures to various hormones and chemicals have correlated with ASD. All of these things are interesting and plausible and may explain the increase in autism that we’ve seen recently.
Jack
The tools for studying brain development and correlating brain structure and process with behavior keep getting better.
One of the things I’m grateful for is having lived long enough to see technology help us unravel the workings of the brain and its underpinning of our behaviors and mental processes. I’m also grateful that the life I lived prepared me to understand and appreciate that unraveling.
Jack
I still love the “I Think” poster….Dems have a problem they want to be everything for everybody…..it will not work in their favor….pick something to drive home their ideas….maybe then they can find a winning equation. chuq
That’s been the problem with the big tent coalition. The thing that brought the coalition together in the first place was the Great Depression. It is difficult for us to understand what a huge threat and disruption the Depression was. But, it was huge and it was everywhere. It touched ever life in America and ended quite a few. It not only ushered Roosevelt into four terms, it held the Congress until the ’80’s.
We’re facing a similar existential threat now. That the Democrats can’t get their act together any better than they’re doing speaks volumes about where we’re at as a country.
As much as I fear yet another woman being the nominee in, I’m really warming to an AOC run as someone who can pull together that FDR style revamping of the country.
Huzzah!
Jack
i think, that the problem with this theory is the misbelief that if we work harder, than, we will be able to, change the outcomes of what’s already predestined. And sometimes, fighting harder against a system of government that’s already, corrupt like the Republicans are under Donald Trump, won’t work, because, the elected officials are acting like tyrants, and, the only way to OUST a tyrant from a dominating position is for everybody to rise UP, unite together, to OVERTHROW the government, but the people are always, way more, civilized, compared to the governments that ruled over them, so there’s always this, huge GAP between those who are in power, and us, ordinary nobodies, and, us ordinary citizens simply don’t have the forces to stand up against the authoritarian, because in order to OVERTHROW the authoritarian, we all need to put our differences aside, and fight for that common goal, to TAKE our country BACK, and with the political parties already splitting within themselves, that’s less than likely to occur, and so, the tyrant continues to control the people, in this whole, mess.
But, authoritarian governments have been overthrown before, usually through mass nonviolent protest. The US hasn’t gone full authoritarian yet, but our democratic institutions and norms have been weakened severely. There are definitive signs that the general public is engaged and opposed to the corruption and authoritarian moves the regime is making. We are very likely to succeed in taking our country back, now whether we’ll be able to shore up our democracy is another question.
Jack
But, the people are, getting used to, being ruled by these, authoritarians they elect into office, and, because it’s the people’s own “choice”, they’re, less than, likely to, REBEL…
Howdy Taurus!
I know you don’t live in North America, but no one is getting used to being ruled by this corrupt grifting self-serving idiot. If he were a Putin, Orban, or Erdoğan, we would be in real trouble, but we lucked out and the fascist oligarchs had to piggyback off of the Man with the Feculent Touch. There is widespread unrest in the States. It is near the point of bubbling over. Thankfully, we’ve grown accustomed to democracy and it working, so we are satisfied to wait until the next election rather than rioting in the streets.
Unless I’m mistaken, you live in Taiwan. Taiwan’s history is going from an authoritarian government to a democratic one. If people grew accustomed to living in authoritarian regimes and that made them less likely to rebel, then there would be no turn over.
Unfortunately, we’ve had since the inception of the country as British colonies about a third of the populace who prefer authoritarianism over democracy. We’ve had to contend with these folks since the beginning. So far, we’ve always succeeded in resisting their most extreme power grabs. With any luck, we will do so this time.
Huzzah!
Jack
So, there it is. How do we put a clear and easily understood expiration date on “It’s Obama’s fault.” and “It’s Biden’s fault.”? [Forget Clinton, both of them, and the Bushes. Nobody can remember them anymore.] The line from cause to effect has to be drawn directly without a bunch of economic theory or legalistic debating points.
ACTION or POLICY >>>>>PRICE YOU PAY
I think that one of the lessons that the Republican propaganda machine can teach Democrats is the old KISS. We can do it without being dishonest, though. Democrats fall into the trap of trying to over explain and believing that if you just understood this, you’d do that, so let me tell you one more time. We have political parties so we don’t have to understand all of the nuances, especially those of us who are not as attuned to the details of policy. Most of us are just too busy to care too much about it. “I’m a member of this party because our policy goals align or my parents were or I liked that one candidate that one time,” so I’ll vote for this party instead of understanding the issues. That’s the cognitive shortcut that’s happening in our politics.
Democrats just need to be careful not to be too condescending in the action and price you pay message.
Huzzah!
Jack
Democrats do get accused of talking down to people, and over-explaining is part of that. Simply stating an obvious fact is quicker and presumes that the audience already understands the connection. Getting “regular folks” to say it and repeat it works even better.
I’m liking a lot of the “working class” nominees that have won Democratic primaries. I’m liking a lot of the campaigns that I’ve seen win the primaries and byelections. If the party can get out of the way, I think we have real possibilities here.
Jack