Facts Don't Matter

Elizabeth Warren can be forgiven for believing facts matter, but they don't. Stories matter, but only stories that "feel" true - true to the listener.

Warren released the results of the DNA test of her Native American heritage. What does this tell us?

Number 1, this tells us that she is owned by the Republicans - Trump, and before him, Scott Brown who also called her "Pocohontas". By responding with her own "fact checking", Warren is showing respect to the campaign distractions of Republican leaders. This situation is nearly identical to the demands for Obama's birth certificate. The accusations about Obama were really just a way to challenge his legitimacy as an appeal to a base that hated having an African American president.

The Republican strategy is always to distract from policy and focus on personal attacks. The more that Republican policy veers away from the preferences of large majorities of Americans, the more that winning requires showering negativity on their political opponents. And, for Republicans, lies are more powerful than facts because telling lies sends your opponents - Democrats and the purported responsible press - into fact checking mode which is a defensive posture of weakness. Members of the press express pride in fact checking, but fact checking in the current environment is a symptom of press failure. Fact checking someone like Trump who lies all the time as a tactic of distraction and confusion only adds to the confusion, especially when the fact checking includes analysis that says "Obama did it too, but when Obama did it, there was this difference...". Sorry, but when you frame the issue as "both sides" do it, the differences you invoke get lost in the shuffle.

Democrats, with their ceaseless faith in the power of truth and logic, continue to work on messages consistent with their belief that reality matters to everyone, that eventually, people will come around to the belief that reality matters. And it does, to anyone paying attention to politics. But the Trump base does not care.

More to come on this and the difference between placing focus on persons vs. policy.