Yes, Democrats – there’s a problem. A party which can haul out voters during presidential elections is having an obvious problem getting the citizens out during the off-year elections. The GOP, which did an “autopsy” of its 2012 efforts and then proceeded to ignore the results, did quite well. It probably did so by offering the ideologues what they wanted —
The Philosophical Knot
At the risk of getting a bit philosophical, “political zealots are people who are over-indulging their emotional need of hatred.” And, “men adopt ideas, not because it seems to them that those ideas are true, or because it seems to them that those ideas are expedient, but because those ideas satisfy a basic emotional need of their nature.” (Bruce Montgomery)
If one’s “basic emotional need” is to have someone or something to blame for one’s anxiety then the GOP offered up a veritable gourmand’s banquet of targets. The Appetizer: Demonized Democratic leadership – Don’t you want to hate those people like Senator Harry Reid? Representative Nancy Pelosi? President Barack Obama? The Soup: A Beltway Press club which once having determined its preferred narrative is loathe to give it up even in the face of stark evidence to the contrary. “The President won’t work with the Congress,” for example, as if the Republican congressional leaders didn’t meet in a D.C. restaurant in 2009 and determine that theirs would be a strategy of obstruction throughout the President’s term. The Fish or Chicken: Well publicized Republican whines when their positions weren’t adopted completely, re-defining what the term “compromise” initially meant. The GOP got nearly everything it wanted in the Affordable Care Act, including the adoption of a proposal originating with the Heritage Foundation, and then voted solidly against it, after which they whined to the gates of glory about the provisions. The Palate Cleanser: The careful packaging of otherwise radical Tea Party candidates so that their rough edges were camouflaged, see incoming Senator Joni Ernst. The Main Course: Fear! Ebola! — all one case of it. ISIS! Some 33,000 terrorists who would really like to kill Americans – the U.S. population is about 317 million. The Salad/Fine Vegetable: A lovely diversion from real issues and a delicate scattering of pure inventions such as the Democrats are going to take your guns, or Democrats are going to promote abortions. And finally, the Hot or Cold Dessert: The Republican assumption that they’ve worked the refs sufficiently, and ginned up the base enough to make Democrats run away from their own leadership, see Grimes in Kentucky. There are ways to make this dinner come to an end.
The Structural Knot
There’s the predictable grousing about the efforts of DNC chair Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. However, few have commented on the structural issues about her position. She’s wearing two hats and both of them represent full time jobs. Did she not “do enough” in the last election – or was running her own campaign, running the DNC, and trying to represent her constituents just a bit too much to ask. One way to untangle the leadership thread of the structural knot would be for the Democrats to employ a full time chairman.
Independent leadership is fine in concept, however there must be something to lead. A national party which allows state and local organizations to wither won’t be national for long. [DB]
The Media Knot
How where the Republicans able to keep their seven course gourmand banquet going well into election night? This strand has been long entangled in American politics. The corporate media represented by the beltway journalists have used the cable news outlets to broadcast some well known and recognizable narratives. There must be two sides. Not when we’re talking about the implications of global climate change. Not when we’re talking about the decimation of the American middle class. Not when we’re speaking of the need to fund infrastructure elements in America. Not when we’re addressing the need to adequately fund taking care of our veterans.
The national media has not served this nation well. This frustration is altogether too common:
“Finding clear information about issues and candidates in this midterm was difficult, and I certainly didn’t find it on cable television. Lots of times I went and dug it out myself. Sometimes I relied on alternatives. It was often frustrating to have to dig around in the universe of silos that exist today on the Internet, particularly when those siloes are loaded with hate talk on the right side of things.”
To adopt the notion that there are two sides to every question means that both sides should be presented. However, the cable news outlets are content to state the Democratic position, and then allow Republican/Libertarian critics air time for commentary after commentary after commentary to present their talking points. This isn’t “both” sides – it’s purely corporate sponsored, corporate presented propaganda. It’s especially not “news” when there is little attention paid to issues.
65% of what the viewing public got was “political speculation,” and they’d have to be lucky to turn on the set when the 35% appeared, to inform them of related issues. Untying the media knot will require coordinated effort, based on an intelligent analysis of the current situation.
Little wonder the author of the excerpt above on media news is frustrated with the silos. The sources are drying up. The number of black journalists working for daily newspapers has dropped by 40% since 1985, and the number of white journalists working for daily papers is down 34%, the number of Hispanic journalists is off 16%, and the number of Asian-American journalists is down 2%. [Pew] What do they all have in common? Down. How about the number of reporters covering state politics and governance? Since 2003 the number of persons employed to cover state governance has declined by 35%. [WaPo] In the interest of “shareholder value” we have accepted a diminished press corps from one end of this country to the other. It is almost as it we’ve decided that the “product” created by the press should be “share value” and not “news.” There’s always been tension between the business side and the production side in journalism, and it appears the business side has won.
What makes the problem a double whammy for American citizens is that while the number of people employed to cover state and national news is declining, the cable TV system still provides most of the national coverage of major national and international issues. The American Press Institute explains, including the chart below:
Note: People are going to the cable news outlets for an explication of news about foreign, international, national government, social, business and the economic issues, and they aren’t getting it!
Not only will Democrats have to calculate the best messages in order to reach voters they are going to have to figure out how to get those messages broadcast to the general public, in the face of business-referenced cable news decisions. If the cable news networks aren’t the answer, will social media make a difference? The answer is still a large “maybe:”
“…social media appears to be largely adding to, rather than replacing, other ways that people get news. At the same time that 4 in 10 now use social media, more than 80 percent of Americans say they also got news in the last week by going directly to a news organization in some manner—and that was consistent across generations.
Even for the youngest adults, age 18-29, social media and the web in general have hardly replaced more traditional ways of getting the news. Nearly half of the youngest adults also read news in print during the last week, 3 in 4 watched news on television, and just over half listened to it on the radio.” [API.org]
While the expressed hope that social media will help resolve messaging issues for younger voters who lean Democratic, it’s still important to incorporate a media strategy which includes a more robust use of cable television broadcasting.
The Messaging Issue
The Republicans have made a conscious decision not to play the role of a minority party in the traditional sense of the term. Where Democrats played significant roles in the adoption of “no child left behind” and the Bush tax reforms, that dinner at the Washington D.C. restaurant the night President Obama was Inaugurated in 2009 left no doubt about GOP strategy:
“If you act like you’re the minority, you’re going to stay in the minority,” said Keven McCarthy, quoted by Draper. “We’ve gotta challenge them on every single bill and challenge them on every single campaign.” [VF]
The call to Gridlock was as clear as Great Paul in London. The strategy was simplicity itself. Create gridlock, guarantee nothing important was done for Middle Class Americans, veterans, the infrastructure, employment, etc. and then blame the President “He won’t schmooze with us,” when nothing was accomplished. The DC Press Corps dutifully picked up the narrative and ran with it, ignoring the fact that Boehner and the GOP were “frequent no-shows” at White House events. Republicans refused to attend the “Lincoln Screening,” and turned down invitations to state dinners for Great Britain, South Korea, Germany, Mexico, and India. Senator McConnell even turned down an invitation to a White House event celebrating Kentucky and the UK NCAA basketball championship. [NJ] So, of course, the DC Pundits declared the President to be “aloof.”
If the analysis of the media situation demonstrates it’s difficult to get the Democratic message out, then perhaps some adjustment needs to be made in the message itself. For the sake of easy examples we might explore two possibilities.
Adjusted Messages
Democrats are for the Middle Class. This should be easy because it’s true. Democrats are for increasing the minimum wage. Democrats are for organized labor. Democrats are for limiting corporate powers and for the regulation of banking institutions. Perhaps not to the extent some on the left might require, but they are certainly more supportive of these issues than the Republicans of the Business Roundtable. If the Republicans can attach the word “feckless” to every comment about the President, then why not have Democrats attach the term “economic elitist” to every comment about the GOP agenda?
Only an “economic elitist” would oppose the increase in the minimum wage. Only an “economic elitist” would oppose regulating the banks. Only an “economic elitist” would support repealing the Affordable Care Act. Republicans have expended every energy defining the Democrats as a coalition of minorities – there’s nothing that says they can’t be defined, in turn, as supporters of a truly small minority in American life – the 1%.
Democrats aren’t afraid. Democrats elected the man who got Osama Bin Ladin. Democrats aren’t afraid of a virus which really hasn’t done much in the U.S. Democrats aren’t scared of a few fanatical terrorists in the Middle East. Democrats aren’t afraid of spending some money on veterans, on our infrastructure, and on jobs for Americans. Republicans are so busy being afraid of their own shadows – The Deficit (down) The Debt (down) The Terrorists (confined to the Middle East), Muslims (the bogeyman du jour) and every other issue – why not include “fear” in the running commentary.
Only a true Wet Pants Dancer is afraid of ISIL? Only an obvious coward would be scared into a Hazmat suit over Ebola? Only the truly squeamish would be so frightened of The Debt that he couldn’t support more services for veterans, and only one so terrified of his own shadow couldn’t vote for more funding for infrastructure – want to be afraid of a real problem – think about most of the bridges in this country that are more than 60 years old. Our parents and grandparents weren’t afraid of spending for infrastructure, what’s the matter with us?
Another element which has been commented upon by those much wiser than I is that Democrats have allowed the Republicans to create the narrative, and the Democrats have acceded to the position of playing Defense. There’s nothing wrong with going on offense, indeed, it would be helpful in sending the Not Afraid message. For example, we KNOW the deficit has been reduced. However, how many Democrats talked about deficit and debt reduction in the last election? Not enough. But why was it a major topic in the first place? Because the Republicans decided it would be.
Pew described “major” issues in the 2014 elections as: Terrorist Threat, Budget Deficit, Economy, Immigration, and Health Care. We couldn’t make a list more in tune with GOP manufactured issues. What was missed was the polling which showed 54% agreed with the statement: “The Democrats are more concerned about needs of people like me.” What was also interesting is that the news organizations which sponsored polling also selected those issues to investigate. [TPP] What would happen if some Democratic leaning organizations, not tied to the corporate media, would commission polling on the state of veterans’ services? Infrastructure projects? Civil rights? Banking reforms? In short, the Democrats need to create their issues – not merely wait for the GOP to set the public agenda.
Or, to put it less elegantly – the Democrats can stop tying themselves in Gordian Knots trying to respond to the Republican obstructionist/fear based agenda and concentrate on what George H.W. Bush once called the Vision Thing.
Desert Beacon 