大象传媒

There鈥檚 a common complaint in politics: . President , despite a number of successes on the policy front and today鈥檚 record-low unemployment numbers and record-high job gains. Sure, he鈥檚 not getting everything he鈥檚 promised passed.

That鈥檚 a pretty obvious conclusion, and maybe it will work, if by 鈥渨ork鈥� we mean 鈥渂arely squeeze out a victory that should be a cakewalk.鈥� But it sidesteps the issue of why the party is flailing on the message front.

Quite simply, Democrats have forgotten how to tell a good story.

There鈥檚 something to the power of a well-told story that grabs the attention鈥攎ost of us can point to a book, movie, podcast, or other narrative that 鈥渃hanged our life.鈥�

I put those words in quotes because they鈥檙e so commonly used as to be clich茅, but they point to what is really happening inside our brains: We take new information and adjust our knowledge and opinions to incorporate it. Classics of any genre tend to do this to large numbers of people: George Orwell鈥檚 1984 and Animal Farm changed the way millions of people thought about totalitarianism, for example.

Stories always have a stronger grip on people than rote facts.

Often, political conflicts are not just bids for power, but also competing narratives. This was painfully apparent during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, when she was subjected to a constant stream of invective from Republican senators focused on (to be charitable) an extremely bad-faith interpretation of her judicial record. We heard her slandered about , her , being and .

The charges are completely bogus, and the Democrats responded by largely ignoring them, as if refusing to address a fabricated charge would make it vanish in its own puff of absurdity. (The .) Instead, they again touted Jackson鈥檚 multitudinous qualifications for the job.

The truth may be on Jackson鈥檚 side, but most Americans tuning in to the hearings without having paid attention beforehand would conclude that, even allowing for political grandstanding, there must be at least something sketchy about her that maybe should be looked into鈥�

Simply put: Republicans were telling a story, Democrats were making a list. And .

Stories, myths, and legends can serve as a binding societal glue that gives people a sense of purpose and belonging. They explained the unexplainable in pre-scientific societies鈥攖hunder and lightning can be explained as , for example, or the nurturing rains in the dry summers of Mesoamerica as a response to . After the Enlightenment, these stories still can convey a society鈥檚 desired virtues: strength, bravery, fertility, loyalty, hard work, and so forth. Even if a myth contains a grain of truth鈥斺�攊t鈥檚 the larger legendary narrative that persists, because it speaks to how we make sense of the world.

Not all myths are benign, however, and some are inimical. Canny operators throughout history have worked to create myths to support their political, moral, or religious positions.

We need look no further back than the myth of the : the belief that the Confederacy鈥檚 rebellion against the Union was noble, its loss of the war a tragic defeat, and slavery was certainly not the barbaric practice those Northern carpetbaggers made it out to be. This was a gross rewriting of history by the South, often facilitated by the U.S. as a whole in the interest of post-Civil War 鈥渞econciliation鈥濃�攁mong White Americans, that is; very few people asked the formerly enslaved Black Americans what they would need in order to reconcile with their former enslavers.

The Lost Cause myth became a cancer on U.S. society that quickly metastasized. Reconstruction was brought to an ignoble end (over a , no less), freeing the Southern states to reimpose a racial hierarchy. Social-political groups, such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy, seized on the myth of the Lost Cause and erected statues and monuments to Confederate 鈥渉eroes鈥� across the entire nation, not just the South. The Confederacy lives on in , , , , and . Its echoes can be heard when former President Donald Trump said, after a White supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned to deadly violence, that there were 鈥渇ine people on both sides,鈥� or whenever a right-wing politician responds to a Black Lives Matter protest with 鈥渁ll lives matter.鈥�

We鈥檙e seeing a lot of mythmaking taking place in front of our eyes in the U.S. today. It鈥檚 not just the 鈥淢ake America Great Again鈥� basket of baloney Trump was selling. Modern conservative nostalgia in general is often rooted in the fiction that there was a period when things were 鈥渂etter,鈥� explicitly overlooking inconvenient facts like slavery, genocide, segregation, state violence against labor, and so on.

There has been a lot of criticism about the non-factual basis of the talking points on the Right, from the 鈥淏ig Lie鈥� of a stolen election to 鈥�.鈥� But that critique misses the fact that the lies are the point: The Right is creating its own myths to justify its own means (and ends). These narratives can then be used to provide an explanation for events that adhere to their followers鈥� beliefs鈥�, if you will.

That gets back to messaging and how Democrats often fail at it, allowing bills that probably would be quite popular to fail, and allowing our national politics to be dominated by blatantly false narratives from Republicans, such as the to make innocent White children hate themselves.

To put it simply, the belief among Democrats seems to be that . That increasingly looks woefully na茂ve in the face of the Republican war on facts.

Thing is, it鈥檚 a lot easier to understand a story about a hero fighting a climactic battle against evil than the economic impacts of the expiration of the . If your story is believable and triggers strong emotions, 鈥攚hether it鈥檚 an attempt to recast the Civil War in less 鈥淣orthern鈥� terms, or the story of a stolen election, or the story of a mythic, idyllic national past. If your narrative fails to grab the imagination, doesn鈥檛 tug at the heartstrings, is hard to follow, leaves people uneasy, or is just plain boring, then people will look for a better story.

The real struggle for the future of the U.S. and the world is one between myths in the making. If American Liberals in general, and Democrats in particular, want to make sure Trump not only doesn鈥檛 return to power, but also doesn鈥檛 become his own Lost Cause to poison us for generations, they need to make sure they鈥檙e telling a better story than he is.

We may think QAnon鈥檚 tale of a spray-tanned action hero battling satanic forces is ridiculous. That doesn鈥檛 change the story鈥檚 hold on its fans; it only casts Liberals as elitist snobs who look down on the rubes who consume such garbage entertainment鈥攚hich reinforces the toxic 鈥渦s versus them鈥� narrative.

This is a difficult request to make of a political party that has become the epitome of policy wonkishness, grounded in the often-boring minutia of lawmaking. Excitement (as in, drama, engagement, story) has historically come from outside the party mainstream. But those narrative elements can still capture the popular imagination, and they helped change history (and public opinion): John Brown raiding Harper鈥檚 Ferry, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marching to Montgomery, Cesar Chavez leading the Delano Grape Strike. Even President Barack Obama鈥檚 election had elements of a heroic narrative鈥攂orn to a single mother, attending Harvard Law School, cutting his teeth as a community activist, then rising to the highest office of the land. Scandal couldn鈥檛 touch him, because not only did Obama conduct himself with dignity, but we all knew his story, and the Republicans could only fling mud (death panels? The tan suit? ?) and hope in vain that something would stick.

Even today, myths still have the power to capture the attention of our post-Enlightenment brains and take us into the realm of adventure and epic struggle. John Ford, the Hollywood director who more than anyone helped bring the myths of the Wild West to the big screen, emphasized this point in his 1962 movie . In the final scene, a journalist (Maxwell Scott, played by Carleton Young) who has been interviewing a senator (Ransom Stoddard, played by James Stewart), comes to realize that the politician鈥檚 entire life story, his heroic arc from frontiersman to senator of a new state in the Union, is built on the foundation of a single event in his past that turns out to have been an invention. The journalist then destroys his notes. 鈥淵ou鈥檙e not going to use the story, Mr. Scott?鈥� Stoddard asks. 鈥淣o, sir,鈥� Scott answers. 鈥淭his is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, .鈥�

That is considered one of the classic lines of Hollywood, and not just because it was good writing. It鈥檚 because there are no truer words that convey the power that comes from telling a good story.