A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics
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A Weblog of Centrist Voices in American Politics | |
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April 28, 2005Won't the Democrats Ever Learn?It's hard to believe that a group of people could deceive themselves so thoroughly about their problems--or maybe it isn't. This article by Joshua Green in The Atlantic just illustrates why we are likely to have continuing Republican rule. The article discusses how the idea of "messaging" is taking over the Democratic Party. This is the idea formulated by George Lakoff that the language you use to frame an issue determines how people will respond to it. This makes sense to a limited extent, but the Democrats have persuaded themselves that ALL they have to do is reformulate the isssues to win. This leads to some pretty whacky stuff. For example, Lakoff offers no new policy ideas. Instead he suggests that the Democrats reposition the ones they already have, and spruce up some unpopular terminology while they're at it. He advocates referring to "trial lawyers" as "public-protection attorneys," replacing "taxes" with "membership fees," and generally couching the entire Democratic message in palatable—even deceptive—language in order to simplify large ideas and disguise them behind innocent but powerful-sounding phrases. That's really going to do it. And that's not all--the Democrats have a host of crackpots involved in what Green calls their "messaging efforts. Along with the usual pollsters and strategists it includes the internationally best-selling mystery writer Harlan Coben, creator of the Myron Bolitar series, about the adventures of "a hotheaded, tenderhearted sports agent" (as Amazon.com describes it). Another member is R. J. Cutler, the reality-TV impresario behind last summer's Showtime series American Candidate (modeled after American Idol), which put the lie to H.L.Mencken's maxim that you can never go broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. At some point, the Democrats are going to have to realize that their problems go deeper than simple marketing. But anyone who has read any of the liberal blogs realizes that this is going to take a long time. Posted by Marc W. Schneider at April 28, 2005 08:20 PMComments
All the clever advertising in the world will not save a poor product from declining sales. Posted by: Tully at April 28, 2005 08:35 PMI may have to dispute your supposition on the basis of the messaging that the GOP has done over the past 30 years. I think the Democrat ideals are for the most part good ones. The GOP has been very good at changing the public perception of the Democrats stands with their messaging. Senator Frist on March 1: but then...... The latest bit of GOP messaging may start unravelling soon. Trent Lott last year coined the term 'nuclear option'. Said option was NOT polling well for the GOP and they've changed it to the 'constitutional option' and, boy does this take chutzpah, trying to foist the nuclear option terminology on the democrats. In fact they did the job so well that a number of newspapers and magazines coined it as a democratic term. OY! From what I heard this morning was that the editors have twigged on this and are back to a more truthful presentation of the nuclear option idea. Speaking of revisionism wasn't it Hatch on C-SPAN the other day that all but accused the democrats of starting with the term 'nuclear option'? The upshot is that it may not be the Democrats failing to come up with a good message as Lakoff posits but that the Democrats fail to push back the GOP misinformation. Posted by: Marcus at April 28, 2005 08:48 PMMarc, You know, my Grandmother always says back when she was growing up on the ranch, when the meat started going bad you just spiced it. It went down easier, but it still made you sick. You can call trial lawyers "pumpkin pie" but they're still going to smell like weasels. Posted by: Alan at April 28, 2005 10:15 PMI caught Al Gore's latest meltdown speach and then listened to Alan Colmes(a pretty sensible liberal) defend the speach. It is becoming clearer to me that the republicans worst enemy is themselves the Dems are actually helping them. Posted by: tallan at April 28, 2005 10:27 PM"Nuclear option" has been attributed to Lott, but that's not confirmed. The term's been in usage for a bit over two years. It originated among the Senate Republicans, but does not appear to have been deliberate framing. More like Good Ol' Boy backroom backslappin' slang that backfired when it started looking like smirkin' hubris. The "Constitutional option" term has been around since 1917, and was first proposed and so named by Senator Thomas Walsh, whom I note for the record was a Democrat. I mention that because much of the leftie blogosphere is trying to claim that it was a recent GOP invention. Just a point of historicity. tallan--yep. Posted by: Tully at April 28, 2005 10:54 PMI found this item from Jeffrey Toobin's piece in March 7th issue of The New Yorker "Changing the Senate's rules on judicial filibustering was first addressed in 2003, during the successful Democratic filibuster against Miguel Estrada, whom Bush had nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Ted Stevens, a Republican Senate veteran from Alaska, was complaining in the cloakroom that the Democratic tactic should simply be declared out of order, and, soon enough, a group of Republican aides began to talk about changing the rules. It was understood at once that such a change would be explosive; Senator Trent Lott, the former Majority Leader, came up with "nuclear option," and the term stuck." So probably was some good ol boy backslapping but as I pointed out above - I'm having a hilarious time trying to follow the GOP damage control after their internal polling must have shown that most Americans want the filibuster retained. As Howard Baker said in '68, "Sometimes teh majority is wrong"
Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of the back and forth as to which party is stupider, more dishonest, etc. It only re-inforces the sense that this is just one elaborate game and adds to that perception by suggesteing the players are all crooks, liars etc. I thin the public looks at the discussion concerning the nuclear option and says "what the hell is going on in WAshington". If we don't trust our elected official to deal with disagreement on the small stuff, why would we trust them with the big stuff (i.e. Social Security, Health Care) Posted by: c3 at April 29, 2005 08:37 AMImproved messaging may help at the margins, but the basic problem is that the ideological momentum is with the Republicans. Contrary to history, the Republicans are the party of change, and the Democrats are the conservative party, bereft of ideas, but capable of performing the function of critic, blocking or undoing the Republican's worst ideas. Thus, the Democrats may win in 2008, but only because the Republicans have grown corrupt and arrogant in government. A Democratic Administratin would likely not have a major positive agenda of its own, but rather have the job of undoing the mistakes the Republicans made, while institutionalizing their successes. For the Democrats to actually gain the ideological initiative, they're going to have to come up with new ideas, not just new marketing strategies. Posted by: rickheller at April 29, 2005 09:13 AMThe need for new ideas is why George Soros wants to increase funding to liberal think-tanks. http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Frontpage/042005/soros.html While the term "Nuclear Option" may be new, the idea behind it is not. This idea has been brought up periodicaly by BOTH parties for over 100 years.... whenever they happaned to be in the majority. Note, that the fillibuster itself HAS changed alot over the years. Before some time in the 40's it was not even possible to fillibuster judicial nominees. Before the 70's (I believe) use of the fillibuster carried a hefty price tag since it caused ALL Senate business to be stalled until it was resolved..... that rule was changed by the Democrats (under Mike Mansfield, in collusion with then Majority Whip Robert Byrd) in the same maner that Republicans would change the current rule. Furtheremore, while the use of the fillibuster against judicial nominees isn't brand spanking new (it was done TWICE before, I believe) the use of it against Lower Court appointees is....and certainly the scale of it use is. In the first 5 years of the 21st century...the Democrats have used or threatened the fillibuster more times then ALL parties combined during he ENTIRE 19th century. Posted by: cengel at April 29, 2005 10:22 AMThanks, Marcus, that gives me a handle on the origins. Used by Lott in public at the start of the last Congress. I also just found a use of the phrase by Bill Frist in May 2003. Toobin's wrong on the 2003 date about changing the Senate rules on judicial nomination filibustering, though. The Wherry Amendment of 1949 broadened cloture applications for ending filibusters, and made the filibuster of nominations possible. Since then there's been quite a bit of debate about cloture and filibuster, and to say that none of it related to judicial nominees is simplistic at best. I found a few other neat facts, though, like an 1890 Constitutional option usage. And it isn't so much that the GOP is trying to shift the term origin itself over to the Dems--they're trying to change the term's meaning entirely from their usage into a new label for the Dem's current obstructionism. That is kind of funny--as if the GOP didn't hold up any nominations in the Clinton years! (This is the point where a good Republican would start finger-pointing at the pocket filibusters of the Reagan/Bush years and chanting "They did it first!" So what? It's only nuclear when the Dems do it? LOL.) Despite all the Senate "pocket filibusters" through sheer foot-dragging by both Dems and GOP over the last 25 years, I also found out there's apparently only ever been two filibuster/cloture votes on nominees. Fortas in 1968 and Richard Paez in 2000. Fortas pulled out when it became obvious he would badly lose a Senate vote if cloture were ever managed, and it was Trent Lott himself who shepherded Paez past a mini-revolt filibuster by conservative GOP'ers. Paez was confirmed to the 9th Circuit. Politics. Never simple, always byzantine. Posted by: Tully at April 29, 2005 10:46 AMUsing euphemisms won't change the substantive result. The Dems could win a presidential election if they favored using military force. Lackoff would probably suggest something like, "we're in favor of a strong military" instead of "we're scared to death using one." No one is fooled- voters understand the difference. Posted by: kreiz at April 29, 2005 11:37 AMThere is nothing wrong with packaging your message in a way that appeals to voters. But the Democrats seems to assume that voters are idiots or small children. Sometimes euphemisms may work, but everyone knowns what taxes are and they are not "subscriber fees." I personally think the basic Democratic package is ok and they have not been great at presenting it. But to pretend that the ONLY reason Republicans are winning is that they are better at packing the product is simply self-deception on a massive scale. Posted by: MWS at April 29, 2005 11:52 AMHere's an example of failed democratic messaging. Do you hear ANY messaging in that regard? Where's the fucking messaging?
btw thanks tully for the historical info. Here's a great site for anyone looking up stuff and finding a 404 in your way. also...I just noted that my above comment sounds like a contradiction to my criticism of Lakoff. It's not. Lakoff talks about making the dem message saleable. I'm talking about pushback as in what moveon.org did with that commercial I linked above. I'm talking about holding the GOP RESPONSIBLE for it's massive shortcomings ( does anyone know that they no longer do audits at the Pentagon because everything is so corrupt and fubar'd?)and the democrats have done a piss poor job of doing that. That's why Condi get's promoted even tho she failed us on 9/11, that's why George 'slam dunk' Tenet gets a medal of freedom....and so on. It's so crazy out there I feel like Wonko the Sane. Posted by: Marcus at April 29, 2005 12:53 PMBut the Democrats seems to assume that voters are idiots or small children.You mean there not!? Have we informed the press? This revelation could mean a dramatic difference in our national dialogue. Think of all of the potential informed and involved citizens who are now trapped in an endless cycle of NASCAR, country music, pick up trucks and church on Sunday. Posted by: c3 at April 29, 2005 01:10 PM I would love to vote with my heart, but I can’t because all I see in the Democratic Party is an opposition party with no other purpose than to reelect each other and create new dependent groups to support their reelection. I guess I’m just not open minded enough to be both for and against nearly every important issue. I’m very well traveled and it seems to me that the non-European worlds biggest fear is not our military but our infectious culture of drugs, crime, and irresponsibility. The Right may not always be right, but they rightfully have the power because they have a clearer and consistent message. Posted by: norgeman at April 29, 2005 04:39 PMBack to Lackoff, you can laugh about the utter futility of trying to repackage bad ideas in clever language, but that doesen't mean that careful language itself doesen't matter. If it didn't, Republicans wouldn't routinely engage in their own Lakoffian language and rehetoric strategies and apply/discard different wording depending on how the public reacts to it. But the Left-Wing of the Democratic party is clearly bereft of ideas. New DNC chairman Howard Dean has even said that the party is idealogically sound, all they need to do is speak in a language that more voters will relate too. Pathetic. Posted by: Epitome at April 30, 2005 01:01 AMbereft of ideas? Here's the ideas I've heard for a while. So all I can figure is that you're in outer space...
Increase CAFE standard on all cars. Remove SUV exemptions from the tax code. Increase and or restore tax breaks for renewable energy - wind, solar, biomass, etc. After all we've been giving billions in tax breaks to nuke, oil and coal to the point that our energy mix is heavily skewed the wrong way. Increase funding to the VA system that takes into account the growth in numbers of vets that need to be treated, espcially mental health facilities. Repeal portions of the Patriot Act or allow them to expire. Make abortion safe, legal and rare. Under Clinton the number of abortions fell. Under Bush, they're up again. Oops. Oh yeah, crap like forcing the 13 year old statutory rape victim in Florida to carry a pregnancy to term would be put to a stop. Get the FDA back on track to more closely monitor the safety of drugs. Get rid of non-competitive procurement of drugs for medicare and put it out to open bid. Base environmental rules on real science rather than what industry wants. Does not exclude industry from the prcess but for the past 4 years industry has been basically writing the rules.
Strong bullet points AND it begs the original question. Why don't those ideas sell? I'm not necessarioy putting the ideas down. What upsets me is when the ideas and/or the candidates fail in the election, some explain that away by impugning the electorate. You don't sell more widgets by telling your "non-customers" "you're too stupid or deluded to appreciate my product" This really does hit on a core issue in American politics. Are Americans as conservative as the recent electoral results would suggest or does the campaign process appeal to their conservative tendencies? I bet Lakoff would say that Americans are more liberal than we think and we just need to influence the campaign process in such a way as to appeal to these tendencies. Posted by: c3 at April 30, 2005 11:23 AMAmericans ARE more liberal than most people think. They're also tired of screaming hyperbole on issues, from both right and left. Posted by: Tully at April 30, 2005 02:47 PMRick I just re-read your previous post. Contrary to history, the Republicans are the party of change, and the Democrats are the conservative party, bereft of ideas, but capable of performing the function of critic, blocking or undoing the Republican's worst ideas.Did I miss something here? Social Security, civl rights act, voting rights act, Medicare, Medicaid, American with Disabilities Act.... These are important, positive changes to the American landscape. Posted by: c3 at April 30, 2005 05:36 PM If you start going back through history trying to claim everything good for one party (or blame everything bad on one party) you'll be in for some rude surprises. It's amazing how things change over time, which I believe was part of Rick's point. I pretty much agree wholesale with his complete comment. Posted by: Tully at April 30, 2005 06:08 PMI don't think the Democratic party is bereft of ideas. They have plenty of ideas. It's just that the majority of the American populace doesn't happen to like those ideas. Bottom line, a small majority of Americans want to buy chocolate flavored ice cream.... The Dem's are selling vanilla. The democratic strategy is to re-label vanilla as "zippy-puff" and sell it.... not gonna fly. If they want to sell more ice cream they've got to change thier flavor (maybe try mocha). It is also perfectly viable for them to keep selling vanilla... if they feel ideologicaly commited to it. Afterall, there ARE plenty of people out there who like vanilla... just not enough to make a majority market right now. It's perfectly viable for them to stick with vanilla.... but in that case, they do need to stop belly-aching that they don't have a majority mareket share. It really doesn't matter whether the customer is right or wrong....the customer always has the right to choose which flavor of ice cream they like..... and yes, customers really DO know whether they like vanilla or chocolate better. Marcus, I agree that the Dem's have idea. (IMO)Some of them are good ideas, some of them are bad ideas..... same thing for the GOP. Right now a small majority of the populace likes the spectrum of Rep. ideas better then they do the Dem. ideas. What the Democrats have are policies not ideas. Everything Marcus mentioned is a specific policy and, while I agree with a lot of them, they don't really constitute ideas which are independent of specific policies. For example, Reagan's idea was to limit the size of government, stand up to the Russians, etc. FDR's idea was to expand government to help people and, eventually, to help the democracies. These ideas had a life independent of the specific policies involved. The specific New Deal policies, for example, were never particularly popular but FDR was and I think the same was true of Reagan (and GW for that matter). The point is that you have to have some overarching idea about where you want the country to go--just laying out a laundry list of policies doesn't do. For example, whatever the merits of Kerry's specific foreign policy proposals, I never felt he spelled out his vision of what America's place in the world should be. To me, that's more important than some policy wonk list of policies. Posted by: MWS at May 2, 2005 04:26 PMWell, let a Southern Democrat put his two cents in. The main problem with the emocratic Party as it stands now is that it's base is more liberal than most Americans and even more liberal than alot of democrats (me included) That means in the primary elections moderate or centrist candidates don't have a chance. An exception would be Gov warner in Virginia (I hope Gov Warner runs for President in 2008, as a moderate and a true southern [ Hillary is from the south, but not a southerner] The national party needs to understand that they need a balance, Clinton had it. We need to understand that many if not most Americans believe in the 2nd amendment. We want to protect our kids from violence and obscenity from our children while at the same time agreeing if an adult wants to view or listen to it. so be it. We, moderates, must stand up and be counted....Our Country Needs Us Posted by: Paul at May 4, 2005 09:34 AM |
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