A version of this article appeared at Forward Kentucky.

Dear Democratic National Committee,

As the analyses of the election have come in, you can see that:

• ŸWe The People were the boots on the ground, knocking on doors, phone banking, registering and assisting voters.
• ŸDemocrats and never-Trump Republicans learned and shared what we knew.
• ŸHundreds of experts, journalists, college professors, and ordinary citizens did the research and broadcasted podcasts and videos and wrote books and articles and blogs warning of the dangers Trump posed to our capital-D Democracy.  For 10 years.
• ŸHundreds of Trump’s ex-staffers, former and present government officials, and defense experts banded together to sound the alarm.
• ŸLegitimate fact-based news outlets exposed every Trump lie, scandal, failure, conviction, attack, and ignorant misstep, as well as every unconstitutional, unethical, authoritarian, undemocratic action. (These links are just a sampling.)

The magnitude of the outcry was astounding.  It was The People’s brute force attempt to amplify the Truth.  We gave you money, DNC—lots of it—hoping you would magnify our efforts.

Somehow, it wasn’t enough.

Then there’s the “messaging,” now being interrogated.

You, DNC, should have:

• ŸDone better at reaching rural, working-class, non-white, and young voters.
• ŸLet Harris separate herself more from Biden.
• ŸExtolled the Biden-Harris team accomplishments, like increasing oil drilling to lower gas prices, lowering drug costs, deporting thousands of undocumented immigrants, and passing legislation to pump $1.2 trillion into the economy, adding tens of thousands of projects and hundreds of thousands of jobs into local communities.
• ŸNixed “talking points” and let Harris detail specific plans for lowering the cost of everyday goods, increasing affordable housing, and alleviating border issues.

And so on.

Furthermore, you should have done more to indict not just Trump’s character (which Trumpers apparently don’t give a whit about) but also his impact on everyday Americans, such as:

• ŸCombating Trump’s lies about immigrants with truth, like that:  Non-citizen immigrants contribute  billions of dollars in property, sales, and income taxes;  non-citizens can’t vote; immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S. citizens; immigrants’ impact on housing is less than 1%; non-citizen immigrants most often take labor-intensive jobs unable to be filled by citizens;  and that Trump submarined the bipartisan immigration bill.
• ŸShowing that Trump’s former tariffs caused American farmers to lose $27 billion in revenue—requiring a corresponding bailout with taxpayers dollars.
• ŸArticulating why Trumponomics would increase the cost of American goods and cause a recession—and more bailouts.
• ŸIn all fairness, you did sound the alarm about Project 2025.

You coulda, shoulda.  Then again, that still wouldn’t have been enough.

I’m not a PoliSci expert.  But I can analyze the data.

I can see that 112.5 million eligible voters didn’t vote, and that Harris lost by less than 3 million; that Trump received less than a third of eligible votes—thus he doesn’t have a Mandate.  You could target counties where Democrats should have performed well, determine how many votes they lost by, and register double that number to vote in the next election, and so forth.

But going forward, that won’t be enough.

That’s because you, DNC, aren’t addressing the behemoth in the room:  The Fox-Faux-News Propaganda Machine, and the Truth Divide Silo it created.

The Truth-In-Media Divide.  Michael Tomasky of The New Republic articulates it well:  “Today, the right-wing media sets the news agenda in this country...And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.”

They were so successful, in fact, that even Democrats believed the lies, and few people (of any political persuasion) knew about Biden’s accomplishments.

Now right-wing media is continuing to serve the Kool-Aid to their audience, who sit back in their stupor, oblivious as Trump executes in rapid-fire succession one illegal, inhumane, unconstitutional action after another; as he ticks the boxes on the Authoritarian-Takeover Checklist; as hundreds of thousands take to the streets across the country in protest.

The Truth Divide Silo has grown wider and taller over the past 30 years, ever since the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and subsequent launch of Fox “News” in 1996.  Every message that We The People try to put out, every scrap of Truth, rarely reaches the eyes and ears of the people in the silo.

Every scrap of Truth rarely reaches the eyes and ears of the people in the silo.

And when it does, Trumpers don’t believe it, because the Propaganda mill is stronger than the Truth mill.  When we can’t agree on facts, there’s no hope that we can heal the divide.  None.

DNC, what is your plan?  

Our Democracy, the longest running, is experiencing a crisis of seismic proportions, an Uncivil Truth War, and we can’t wait four—nor one—more year for solutions.  This should be Priority Number 1.  We must see evidence, DNC, of a unique strategy to break through the front lines—NOW.  Autocracies thrive by manipulating facts; democracies die in the absence of them.

Autocracies thrive by manipulating facts; democracies die in the absence of them.

So I ask you, DNC, what is your plan to break through the silo’s wall?  Because, We The People can’t scream any louder.

I suggest a plan in Part 2 here.

Follow @Fox Faux News on Facebook, and share Truth!

Contact the DNC and let them know your thoughts on combating the Fox-Faux-News Propaganda Machine:

ACT