people are completely feared out these days.

And thats what seems to be motivating voters to turn out this cycle.

Theres a reason we deter people from smoking cigarettes using the fear of cancer and not the hope that you'll live a longer life if you don't smoke a pack a day. Incidentally, you can have both fear and hope. In the cigarette example we use fear of cancer to convince someone that by not smoking a pack a day we hope it prevents them from ever developing lung cancer or other lung aliments and they'll live longer.

My original point is this: in 2016 we were told Hillary was going to win with a 98% certainty so lots of people didn't go vote or voted for a 3rd party (there was lots of animosity towards the DNC that year but funny thing is after Trump lost a bunch of those people really regretted their decision that was motivated by apathy or spite.)

In 2024 we were again told with a high certainty that Kamala would win. We even had famous pollsters claiming she'd win Iowa by a landslide. Again, lots of people didn't turn out to vote. The day after Trump won we saw the google search term "how do I vote after election day" skyrocket. Obviously some people had regrets about their decision to not vote.

I'm not convinced the "they go low, we go high" is really a sound strategy. Sure, it's a lovely soundbite but we're literally at war with faction trying to overthrow our government. You want hope? Let's address the fear by talking about incessantly (right not) since we're approaching a brief time period where we can actually do something constructive about it (voting.)

All these "blue wave forecast" articles are just fueling the apathy. We should be talking about how close every race is (most races are usually within 5-10% which most people would consider close.) You need to ensure people who can vote do vote and history proves that fear of consequences motivates better than hope of consequences, thought as I pointed out the two can be interlinked. I'd much rather be seeing articles about how Senator GOP is planning to kill your grandma if reelected or how Congressman GOP is going to draft your kids for a war with Israel. That'll get people to turn out, but the DNC is kind of inept at messaging as a whole.