A single thing that I miss about being a leftist is being on the side of the people who know how to squeeze propagandistic advantage out of everything.
Now I’m on the side that can’t make the point that Pete Buttigieg is an incompetent stooge without attacking parental leave and antagonizing half the electorate completely unnecessarily. Just as suburban moms started rethinking their Dem allegiance, we absolutely had to go and make sure they know we are completely opposed to dads taking time off work when a baby is born.
The first rule of marketing: show cute babies and kittens for people to like your product. Attack babies and their parents if you want your product to be hated. Maybe on the eve of the next election we should go kick some kitties for good measure.
Clarissa's Blog 
When my first was born, my job was completely unimportant and could be done by a brainless slug, and even with a preemie and the need to recover from major surgery, I barely was able to eek out 30 days of leave. My husband had to take his regular vacation time (at the time he only had 5 paid days per year outside the five company-wide paid holidays) and had no “paternity leave” options (most dads still don’t). Buttigieg did not give birth, his kids have another parent at home full time, and he’s in charge of a part of the country that is literally falling apart, yet somehow manages to take MONTHS?
It’s a no-brainer to attack this situation without attacking parental leave. Here we have yet another elite taking advantage of a perk the unwashed masses have no access to. But you’re absolutely correct that the right utterly fails at using these situations to their advantage, so instead of showing those on the fence yet another elitist taking advantage, you get a bunch of people who come across as anti-family leave.
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It doesn’t really matter and will probably go in your favour anyway since artful or persistent persuasion is mostly useful when everyone lives in relative luxury and is making political decisions based on non-essential-to-survival reasons.
The worse the world gets, though, the fewer things can actually persuade people – a bit like the beginning of the pandemic when everyones world collapsed into avoiding infection, and no one cared about gender pronouns for a while.
Anyway just wait for the populists to show up in earnest and show everyone how bipartisan persuasion works. You’ll see 🙂
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