Network Pesci posted:

In a society where a media corporation can fight a court case to lie on the air and call it "news" and win, where ignorance is considered a legitimate point of view, representative democracy cannot work. Therefore, I don't vote.

Illegal Carrot posted:

Mooseontheloose posted:

Oh well, anyways, thoughts?

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What, besides raising the minimum wage, do the Democrats propose to do about the shift in income from wages to profits, from labor to capital, from the 99 percent to the 1 percent? How do they deliver for an embattled middle class in a globalized, de-unionized, far-from-full-employment economy, where workers have lost the power they once wielded to ensure a more equitable distribution of income and wealth? What Democrat, besides Elizabeth Warren, campaigned this year to diminish the sway of the banks? Who proposed policies that would give workers the power to win more stable employment and higher incomes, not just at the level of the minimum wage but across the economic spectrum?

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Democratic Strategies Lost Big. Here’s Why and How to Fix It.
November 13, 2014
By George Lakoff
It is time to shine a light on the perpetually losing strategies used by Democrats, and particularly on the Democratic infrastructure that promotes those strategies.

I am asking whether the old strategies can be separated from the community of strategists, so that new strategies can be adopted by that community that are authentic, moral, and fully general.

The strategists form an infrastructure that all Democrats have come to depend on—candidates, elected officials, Democrats in government, and citizens who align, or might align, either morally or practically with progressive policies. This well-funded, and well-connected strategic infrastructure includes public relations firms, pollsters, consultants, researchers, trainers, communication specialists, speechwriters, and their funders.

Democrats depend on this expensive infrastructure. The strategists seem to assume that their strategies are natural and obvious, the best that can be done. It is time to look closely at these strategies and question them. The same mistakes, if they are mistakes, should not be repeated.

You probably noticed some of these strategies during the 2014 election:

• Direct your strategy to the election, rather than to changing how Americans understand what Democrats are and to changing day-to-day political discourse. In reality, it is the day-to-day discourse changes that most affect elections and move our politics over time.

• Use demographic categories to segment the electorate, categories from the census (race, gender, ethnicity, age, marital status, income, zip code), as well as publicly available party registration. This does not include segmentation for conservative and progressive moral worldviews, which can be done with the right questions..

• Assume uniformity across the demographic categories. Poll on which issues are “most important,” e.g., for women (or single women), for each minority group, for young people, and so on. This separates the issues from one another and creates “issue silos.” In reality, issues are systemically related via moral worldviews.

• Assume language is neutral and that the same poll questions will have the same meaning for everyone polled. In reality, language is defined relative to conceptual frames. And the same words can be “contested,” that is, they can have opposite meanings depending on one’s moral values.

• Assume that people vote on the basis of material self-interest. Design different messages to appeal to different demographic groups. In reality, poor conservatives, as well as rich liberals, will vote against their material interests when they identify with a candidate and his or her values. Values trump issues.

• In polling, apply statistical methods to the answers given in each demographic group. This will impose a “bell curve” in the results. The bell curve will impose a “middle” in each case. The middle may well be illusory, given the wide separation in worldviews. This is shown in biconceptualism research.

• Assume that most voters are in the middle imposed by the bell curve. Suggest that candidates and elected officials move to the middle. If their beliefs are on the left of the “middle,” they should still move to the right to be where the bell curve claims that most voters are. This will be helping conservatives, by supporting their beliefs. And your candidate may be saying things Democrats don’t believe. Your candidate will become Republican-lite. Voters at least some conservative values will go for real Republicans, not Repiblicans-lite.

• Check the polls to see how popular the present Democratic president is; if he is not popular, design your message to dissociate your candidate from the president. This will reinforce the unpopularity of the president. When members of his own party disown him, voters will come to think he should be disowned and so should the party he leads.

• Attack your opponents as being “extremists” when they hold views typical of the far right. If voters happen to share any of those views, you will be attacking those voters as extremists, even if that are partly progressive. Your opponents will be seen as courageous, standing up for what they believe. You will be helping your opponents.

• Attack your candidate’s opponent for getting money from rich corporations or individuals. This will help your opponent among Republicans (and some Democrats) who respect the values of the wealthy and successful.

• Argue against your opponents by quoting them, using their language and negating that language. In reality, negating a frame reinforces the frame, as in the sentence “Don’t think of an elephant!” This practice will mostly reinforce the views of your opponent.

Such strategies miss the opportunity to present an overriding moral stand that fits the individual issues, while saying clearly what ideals Democrats stand for as Democrats. There happens to be such an overriding ideal that most Democrats authentically believe in.

Why is this important?

First: Because all politics is moral. Voters vote for what they see as right. Conservatives and progressives have almost opposite ideas as to what is right. In candidates, voters look for people who have what they see as the right character, people who will do, and stand up for, what they see as right.

Second: Progressive and conservatives have very different understandings of democracy. For progressives empathy is at the center of the very idea of democracy. Democracy is a governing system in which citizens care about their fellow citizens and work through their government to provide public resources for all. In short, in a democracy, the private depends on the public.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) says it out loud. If you have a business it depends on public resources: roads, bridges, the Interstate highway system, sewers, a water supply, airports and air traffic control, the Federal Reserve, a patent office, public education for your employees, public health, the electric grid, the satellite communications, the Internet, and more. You can’t run a business without these. Say it out loud: The private depends on the public.

The same holds true of individuals, who depend on public resources like clean air, clean water, safe food and products, public safety, access to education and health care, housing, employment — as well as everything listed above.

These public resources provide necessary freedoms. In fact, most progressive issues are freedom issues, such as:

• Voting: Without the ability to vote in free elections, you are not free.

• Health: If you get sick and don’t have health care, you are not free.

• Education: Without education, you lack the knowledge and skills to earn a decent living or be aware of the possibilities of life, and are therefore not free.

• Women: If you are denied control over your body, you are not free.

• Marriage: If you are in love and denied the ability to marry publicly, you are not free.

• Vast income inequality: When most economic gains go to the wealthiest of the wealthy, and not those who did the work, then most working people are not free.

• Race: When you are treated with suspicion and disdain, you are not free.

• Corporate Control: When corporations control your life for their benefit, you are not free.

• Global Warming: As the glaciers melt, the rivers go dry, the seas rise up, the fish die, and you are overwhelmed by drought, violent storms, floods, heat waves and freezes, you are not free.

And one more, which played a major role in the 2014 election:

• Fear: When you are emotionally gripped by whipped-up unreal fear, you are not free.

As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pointed out, freedom from fear is a vital freedom. In the 2014 election, conservatives played on fear—of ISIS and Ebola.

Progressives instinctively know all this, but few say it. Instead, they follow the old strategies and talk issue-by-issue, interest group by interest group, about isolated facts, policies, and programs.

Imagine if Americans understood instinctively that Democrats stand for the most basic of freedoms, that those freedoms arise from public resources provided by citizens like themselves who care about their fellow Americans as well as themselves. In my experience, that is overwhelmingly true. Why not say it? Proudly. Over and over.

And why not train ordinary progressive citizens who want to be spokespeople to speak out in their communities. The conservatives have been doing this for decades, by throughout the US and in 15 other countries, with scary success. They need to be countered.

Dr. Arbitrary posted:

I've seen some of the strategies in the first half personally and watched them fail like crazy. Specifically: "Attack your opponents as being “extremists” when they hold views typical of the far right. If voters happen to share any of those views, you will be attacking those voters as extremists, even if that are partly progressive. Your opponents will be seen as courageous, standing up for what they believe. You will be helping your opponents."

I was canvassing for the first time with an experienced volunteer and while speaking with a veteran, she started going on about how the opposing candidate was a Tea Party gun nut. Probably scored a vote for the other team with that visit.

Jackson Taus posted:

Yeah, sometimes it's hard when the campaign wants you to push a "our opponent is an extremist on immigration" line and then puts you on persuasion calls with voters who think the problem with immigration is that we don't shoot em when we catch em at the border.

Concerned Citizen posted:

This is really a problem with how persuasion is done on phones/doors. A lot of strategists think of phones/doors as the same as a TV ad - a one directional message. On TV, if you put out an ad, it will gain you votes and lose you votes. Hopefully it gains more than it loses. On the phone, you only have a limited number of quality contacts. It's not worthwhile to employ the same messaging you use on TV/radio/mail as you do on the phone. Live persuasion is a back-and-forth affair and involves actual conversation with a voter. If you attempt to use the same strategy you use on TV/radio with voters on the phone, you'll find that you will gain very few votes. Certainly, much fewer than you'd gain through actual persuasion.

Jackson Taus posted:

The problem is that the average actual volunteer has an IQ of 100 who (at best) watches MSNBC/CNN regularly. They signed up for a two-hour shift and may or may not come back. In that context, you can't really afford to take too long training then or you won't get any actual voter-contacting done. I agree with you that the current system sucks though.

Love Stole the Day posted:

If that's really true, then I'd probably stand out pretty quickly for volunteering and hopefully get to do cooler stuff.

Illegal Carrot posted:

It's finally been called. We lost by less than 1%.

Arnold of Soissons posted:

The tag team of first blaming apathetic voters for not volunteering, and then reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff was really funny to read, and a great microcosm of why no one wants to vote Dem

Arnold of Soissons posted:

The tag team of first blaming apathetic voters for not volunteering, and then reaming volunteers for not working harder than paid staff was really funny to read, and a great microcosm of why no one wants to vote Dem

Jackson Taus posted:

The problem is that the average actual volunteer has an IQ of 100 who (at best) watches MSNBC/CNN regularly. They signed up for a two-hour shift and may or may not come back. In that context, you can't really afford to take too long training then or you won't get any actual voter-contacting done. I agree with you that the current system sucks though.

Concerned Citizen posted:

I think we do need to review the idea that, in a world where we're spending hundreds of millions on field, we still need volunteer labor. That said, certain kinds of persuasion - centering on values, rather than specific issues - can be very effective. It also doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of the issues.

Jackson Taus posted:

Right now there's an oversupply of folks who are politically passionate enough to work lovely hours for crap pay in the field.

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But if you're talking about doubling or tripling the number of FOs, you'll have a hard time doing that and still getting folks who'll be eager to pull 80 hour weeks and passionate enough about the cause to really sell it well. FOs who are from the same region and whose passion shines through in what they do are great, but there's not enough of them and down that slope lies $10/hour paid door-knockers who don't give a poo poo. If you want to talk about connecting on values and showing their passion, you're going to find a lot more of that in volunteers than in many paid canvassers.

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Also, while it might be the case that statewides have the budget to move extra hundreds of thousands or millions into field, 95% of the races in this country don't. A state legislative race can't do that, and many Congressional races probably can't do that very easily. Not that we necessarily need to have the same campaign structure for US Senator and Board of Supervisors, but I don't think you can easily write off volunteer labor.

Jackson Taus posted:

FOs who are from the same region and whose passion shines through in what they do are great, but there's not enough of them and down that slope lies $10/hour paid door-knockers who don't give a poo poo. If you want to talk about connecting on values and showing their passion, you're going to find a lot more of that in volunteers than in many paid canvassers.

Concerned Citizen posted:

I think we do need to review the idea that, in a world where we're spending hundreds of millions on field, we still need volunteer labor. That said, certain kinds of persuasion - centering on values, rather than specific issues - can be very effective. It also doesn't require encyclopedic knowledge of the issues.

tsa posted:

No reason to pay people willing to work for free unless you need more people than there are volunteers or if paying them produces a better result than using the money towards other goals. Usually for the low skill stuff at the bottom it doesn't.

G-Hawk posted:

On what planet is this true? During off years, yeah, but in even years every campaign I know of is practically begging people to FO and will basically take warm bodies

G-Hawk posted:

I'd question the model that we currently have where people are expected to work such long hours for such low pay. Most of the hours are unneccessary at best, every fo spends a bunch of the morning and afternoon not doing much. And the money exists to pay more.

G-Hawk posted:

Volunteers may be more passionate than a typical paid canvasser, but that doesn't mean their values or the volunteer themselves neccessarily are the right ones to connect to the voters they're talking to. Democratic campaign volunteers tend to be a lot whiter, and a lot richer, than the average Democratic voter that you're trying to GOTV, or the swing voter you're trying to persuade. It is a simple matter of who can afford to volunteer their time.

G-Hawk posted:

There is no reason why someone can't care about the candidate or cause and also be paid.

Jackson Taus posted:

Maybe Virginia has a surplus of staffers living here because we've got elections every year and we're right next to DC. But an oversupply of recent college grads willing to work long hours is one of the explanations for why campaigns get away with paying jack-poo poo to staffers.

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Yeah, if it was prioritized we could definitely reduce the stress on FOs without seriously impacting campaign quality. Cutting out those hour-long nightly circlejerk-calls would probably be a good start.

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This is a good point I hadn't considered, but to a large degree paid staff has a similar problem - they're disproportionately recent college grads.

That's not what I'm saying, but I'm suggesting there aren't enough folks out there who are passionate and looking for a field job to fill 2-4x as many field slots. If right now we're "basically tak[ing] warm bodies" where are these additional passionate paid-folks gonna come from? Unless you're suggesting just mostly paid-time folks who work evenings mostly or something, that could work.

G-Hawk posted:

the current way the democratic party collectively does literally anything is incredibly short sighted, impractical, and inefficient.