What exactly is the Democrats' “communication” problem?

There have been a lot of arguments since the election about what the left in general, and Democrats specifically should do. Some have said they should go left on economics. Some have said they should go right on culture. But one thing has emerged as a near-universal consensus, so much so that it is now a cliché; They have a communication problem. People will say this and everyone will just nod their head in agreement. But it has seemed to me underexplained exactly what this problem is. I think that people on the left have this idea in their heads of what the problem is, but that isn’t quite accurate.

I think that most people on the left when they talk about the communication problem, are thinking of it in marketing terms. Like in the same way you would sell breakfast cereal. That Democrats need to have flashier ads and be more bombastic in their speech. Married to this is a deep cynicism about the average American. They think that the average American is, in a word, stupid. They are easily scared by big words or complex issues and therefore in order to make themselves palatable to their tiny minds, Democrats should speak in plain blunt slogans.

I don’t agree with this assessment. I think that the problem with Democrats' communication is that they are illegible. It took me a while to figure it out, but this is what rubbed me the wrong way about Kamala Harris. She was a person that took the world completely at face value. She took things as they were, as presented to her face. She was for things that were good, and against things that were bad. This narrowness of focus probably helped her as a prosecutor but I think it hurt her as a presidential candidate. She was illegible.

What I mean by legibility is a basic understanding of the directionality of what someone is trying to achieve. A big-picture idea of their diagnosis of the world, what is wrong with it, and what needs to be done to fix those problems. It is the intermediate part of an ideology between marketing and policy. Like Trump's policies are inconsistent and stupid, but it is easy to understand what he is “about” on some level;” The world is a zero-sum struggle for power, and I will fight those battles against the global elites.” I think this same legibility is why the far left has become so popular in recent years as well. I suspect that a lot of casual Bernie Fans, probably don’t know what half his policies are. But they know the proposition that he stands for;  “The millionaires and billionaires have rigged the system in their favor and are screwing you over.”

I think that more centrist liberals have struggled with legibility recently because their old fundamental goals were undermined, and in their zeal for technocracy and “pragmatism” they haven't been able to synthesize new ones. If I were to sum up the sort of basic pitch of Obamaism, it would have been neoliberal economics combined with “wokeness.” He was a poor black kid who climbed to the top of the meritocracy. It was poptimism. It was Girlbosses and Hamilton. People soured on these things for a number of reasons and I don’t think Democrats have discovered a new guiding ideal yet apart from anti-Trumpism.

I think that this legibility is important for a political movement for several reasons.

First is that it gives a politician credibility. If you ever hear people talk about some of these controversial figures that seem to cut across traditional party lines like Trump or Bernie or Fetterman, you hear the same sentiment “I don’t agree with everything he says, but I respect him.” They are willing to extend people more credit and to be more willing to believe a politician is actually trying to do something if they think it is part of some larger mission that they can get behind. I think this is the source of the leniency Trump gets from voters that is so vexing to Democrats.

The second advantage of having legibility is that it makes your ideas easier to grock. You can communicate a complicated and nuanced idea more easily if you position it as part of a larger ideological project. People may or may not grasp the complexities of zoning regulation, but they understand the idea “we don’t build in this country anymore!”

The final advantage is that it is closer to where Americans are right now. The percentage of people who think we are on the wrong track right now is extraordinary. Whether it’s justified or not, whether you like it or not, Americans just don’t think that tweaking things here or there is good enough. Generally, they think our society is broken, in a deep, systemic way. They want a more programmatic solution.

What do you think?