Deconstructing The Structure

Perhaps my running theme has either not been very well expressed or is too abstract. Either way, I hope to change that. I’d like to see this seriously considered as the way Democrats think, talk and act. Perhaps it requires a kind of effort to view the structure of the debate and see how it naturally shapes the content of the debate.

My argument is that Democrats cannot win the debate in its existing structure. It was, in fact, designed specifically for them to fail – as a Republican in the early 90s (subject for a later post), I observed with glee its beginnings. It was revolutionary.

To change this and win, we must first examine the structure and learn everything about it. Then we can start the task of changing the structure to more fairly allow our collective voice to be heard.

Think of it as a house. The structure of the house – foundation, walls, roof, etc. – is the structure of the public debate. The interior of the house – floor covering, paint, furniture, pictures, etc. – is the content of the debate. In both cases, the shape of the structure has bearing on its content.

Presidential debates are a perfect example. Rather than engaging in a formal debate, the two sides negotiate the format to best suit the candidate. The Bush and Clinton teams favored less formal debate settings and structure because they wanted to show their candidates as being more casual and conversational, like the average voter. They negotiated to change the structure, the better to control the content.

The only way I can think to grasp the existing structure is to take it apart and examine it brick-by-brick. I necessarily must use examples to illustrate my points. Interestingly, the examples I used were controversial enough to spark a spirited yet civil discussion in the commentary following the post. Which, in a sideways sort of way, advanced my thesis.

(Please note that I am not referring to all of the comments – or even complete comments – posted. There was also a more important and genuine exchange of ideas, which I hope to get to later.)

The commentary continued the discussion within the frame of the current debate structure. That structure, in blog format, is to constantly one-up one another with a series of rat-a-tat postings. It’s natural – it’s been the debate structure for most of the last ten years. I even saw some “Gotchas!” and “Everybody Does It” in the commentary.

Happily, some comments added to my thesis. Thinkindependent (sorry Think, but I have to type and read acronyms all day long in my professional life. As a result, I cannot bear all caps and must type you out as a proper noun) adds this:

… you have to reframe the Democratic message. Make it more concise, more articulate, and package it in a way that the public will buy it. Then you have to get the right salesman, as Ronald Reagan was on the Republican side.

I hadn’t figured the right salesman in the mix. What I wanted was to divorce the Democratic Party from the dominating influence that one person – a president or a presidential candidate – can have on the party’s ideology. The way to accomplish this is to create a bold Democratic message that articulates our ideas independent of any one person. But we certainly will need a standard bearer.

As it is now, the American public already knows what the Republican candidate for 2008 will stand for. We’ll be waiting to hear from the Democrat until after the primaries.

How To Bang A Drum

I find it interesting that much of the feedback I get from my posts – intentional or otherwise – bolsters a primary thematic argument I have been attempting to advance on this site.

One of the most commonly heard responses is that I am tinkering with cosmetics, while the Democrats need a whole idea overhaul. The argument here is certainly not that the Party should move further left to find new ideas (although I am certain many on the far left would argue they should).

The clear implication is that because Republicans hold the majority, their ideas have been successful. Democrats, therefore, must acknowledge that their own ideas are failures and then develop ideas more like the Republicans’.

To some degree, Democrats do need to effectively articulate ideas that address current political reality; for example, the Republicans have become an institutionally corrupt machine and Democrats are the reformers (to steal a Republican idea from the 80s).

Having said that, I do believe Democrats’ core ideas are sound. But Republicans have worked long and hard to pull the debate onto their own ground, and in so doing, have effectively neutralized an already disorganized Democratic message.

As RBMan has written in the comments:

...the problem is related to Wordcruncher's theme of message discipline. As far as I can see there is no real message to exercise discipline around as opposed to the conservative side which consistently bangs the drum over and over again about "faith", "taxes", "regulatory burden", "defense", "abortion", and "family values".

What drum do the Democrats bang?

This may be a semantic argument, but I do believe it is significant: Rather than banging the ideas we already have, we are responding to Republican drum-banging, which puts Democrats consistently one beat behind the Republicans.

The first step in seizing the idea offensive is to evaluate the debate and understand how it is being conducted before developing a strategy. Following are some of the methods the Republicans successfully deploy to neutralize the Democratic ideas (which are not effectively articulated).

Everybody Does It: I will use as an example a comment I’ve heard and received more than once. It goes like this: One cannot denounce the rhetoric of the right without also condemning the left. In other words, this argument goes, my point is ineffective because Everybody Does It.

However, please note that I am pointing out specific rhetoric emanating from the right. I do not wish to censor, but a reasonable person would acknowledge the difference between calling the president a deserter or saying he betrayed his country, versus stating that an entire group of Americans are traitors or must be eliminated (except for one, which apparently would be placed in a museum).

These very clear differences in rhetoric turn the Everybody Does It dismissal into an excuse – and a justification – for further extremist attacks. As noted in my "This Is War, Dammit" post, Democrats need to recognize and counter this attitude on a national level.

The Republicans have used this strategy to neutralize the Democratic message by neutering the media. At one time the public watchdog with investigative powers that threatened any crooked politician, the press has been defanged. Instead of true reportage and journalism, we now have stenography, as I described in an earlier post:

The current method of reporting goes something like this: "The Republicans say this. The Democrats say that. We don’t know who’s right, but one thing’s certain: It sure is complicated."

Here’s an example of how Republicans have used this tactic. Sen. Kerry’s war hero status and Mr. Bush’s spotty National Guard duty had to be neutralized. So they trotted out the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, who demonstrably and profusely lied and misrepresented Sen. Kerry’s war record.

With the waters muddied, the mainstream press offered little in the way of investigative journalism into either sides’ charges. They simply resigned themselves to the stenography described above: "Everybody Does It, and we can’t sort it out."

Gotcha!: The Gotcha! strategy goes like this: "You say A now. But sometime in the past, you said B. Gotcha!" Note that either A or B could be taken entirely out of context.

Both sides are certainly guilty of applying this tiresome strategy. While it doesn’t seem particularly effective at advancing a point, it is effective at muddying the waters. Consider these two examples, one from each side:

"Sen. Kerry says the U.S. should always defend itself. But in the 70s, he made the statement that we should not go to war without U.N. authority. Gotcha!"

"Mr. Bush says the objective of going into Iraq is to remove a brutal government and build democracy in its place. But during the 2000 campaign, Gov. Bush said he was against nation-building. Gotcha!"

A tactic used media-wide, Gotcha! is the life force of the cable talking head holler-thons. Their very omnipresence has distracted the public from more substantial discourse. Republicans understood this, and it became a primary strategy when they began promoting "character" as a crucial issue.

The ultimate game of Gotcha! was Mr. Clinton’s oval office peccadilloes. I am not justifying Mr. Clinton’s actions, but clearly the special prosecutor was assigned with a well-financed fishing expedition for a Gotcha!

And how better to explain Republican success with Gotcha! than the example of Rep. Bob Barr, the House Manager in the impeachment trial, who had peccadilloes of his own that received relatively little attention? Granted, Rep. Barr’s peccadilloes are not as significant as the president’s, but wouldn’t that have been a good story? Both the House prosecutor and the accused president are adulterers! Think of the ratings!

Perhaps the Democratic response should have been to sigh, shrug, and say, "Everybody does it."

Windham Studios

I have thus far not strayed far from the overarching theme of my blog. But I do want to take a moment and thank Windham Studios (a commenter here) for giving me a shout-out.

Please visit his blog, EcLECTIC RAMBLINGS. Not because we’re having a lovefest here, but because he’s doing some very interesting things with the blog as medium. This is what happens when blogging falls into the hands of a talented artist. Not only is he writing fine posts (all-original essays, lists and poetry), he also posts his own art. He’s plenty creative and he’s just getting started, so it will be fun to watch how it evolves as he continues to master the medium.

I wonder if we could ever get him to post Egbert and Dolie?*

(* – a critically-acclaimed newspaper comic from Windham Studios in the 70’s.)

The Image Game

For non-sports fans, please bear with me through this. Forgive me for sounding patronizing, but you, perhaps more substantially than most, could benefit from understanding a certain phenomenon in American life that is critical to many people’s worldview. In pursuit of this, I am not making a gratuitous sports analogy; rather, I am illustrating a prism through which many rank-and-file, red-state Republicans filter their view of politics.

I will dare to venture a guess that most red-state males are football fans – much more so than NASCAR fans. Football in the South and Midwest is a kind of rite of passage for males. It is presumed to create the Ideal American Man: tough, strong, disciplined, determined. Only watching his son play could warm the heart of a red-state Dad more than watching his daughter date a football player. It’s an instant resume for life.

It is what the draft once meant to red-state Dads (send ‘em to the military, that’ll straighten ‘em out). And indeed, it’d be no coincidence that high numbers of men in the military played football. Most, but not all, of the friends I can recall joining the military had played football (I grew up and reside in a red state).

And if football becomes a standard right of passage for red-state males, it stands to follow that this right of passage is preparing the male to succeed in larger struggles in courtrooms, on executive boards, at war, in politics – and in the very struggle of good vs. evil. In other words, football prepares men to succeed in larger games that will require the same skills and leadership lessons developed in football. Larger games played like football.

I don’t see indications that blue-state urbanites understand this. Democrats in general, I believe, take politics much more literally than Republicans, failing to realize how the Republicans are playing defense, creating turnovers, advancing their field position and driving for touchdowns.

This is the way Republicans control the tempo of politics.

Allow me to interpose a more specific analogy into my argument. In the South, the kind of football to consider is the poke-you-in-the-eye college football of the pre-integration period variety. In those days, college football coaches wielded political power through (if nothing else) sheer community influence. Many were encouraged to run for office after retiring. Many were closely affiliated with state government officials, both fair and corrupt.

As a whole, southern head college football coaches were untouchable. Slipping players money under the table was not only encouraged, it was considered the cost of doing business. This kind of wink-wink rule breaking became a symbol of virtue. Coaches did whatever they could to advance the cause. And as long as the refs don’t catch you, it ain’t cheating.

Even if they do, it’s considered a minor setback. In football, if a player intentionally hurts the opposition’s star player, causing him to miss a few plays, the offending player gets a 15-yard penalty, but he benefited the team and thus becomes a de facto hero.

Even though the attack was unfair. Even if it was, to us, flagrantly brutal and personal.

The Republicans understand this, and so one of the images they would use to cast Mr. Bush is that of a football coach (and don’t forget, House Speaker Denny Hastert was also a coach). From years of covering high school sports, I have a pretty good ear for recognizing coachspeak, and there’s plenty of coded coachspeak in Mr. Bush’s rhetoric.

His campaign speeches had the ring of locker-room speeches. They didn’t need Democrats or “neutral” ralliers present; these were pep-rally speeches for players and coaches only, not an opportunity to “see the president” or make one’s voice heard.

When he spoke of questioning his generals before the invasion of Iraq, he mentioned that he looked in their eyes and asked if they had the right plan. Exactly what a head football coach would be expected to do; call a timeout, ask the assistant coaches for play suggestions, then as the time-out expired, look his coaches in the eye and make the call. I’ve heard many a coach describe this scenario after a tight game.

The “steady leadership” and Iraq issue didn’t hurt the president as much as we Democrats thought it would. That’s partly because a coach who doesn’t stick to his game plan (you make the players adapt to it), especially late in the game, will be seen as indecisive and quickly terminated. If, for example, your team is designed to run the ball and play defense, you never stop running and playing defense. Period.

How do we neutralize or counter this image? In the beginning of the Democratic primaries, I supported Gen. Wesley Clark in part because I thought he fit that rock-jawed, general/coach archetype.

For a while during the presidential campaign, Sen. Kerry would be photographed tossing a football. While it hardly meant anything substantive, I would have liked to see more of that. It may have connected symbolically with some red-staters, however insignificantly. And it may have helped us to create a quarterback archetype that could have advanced the cause in the red states without compromising our message and ideas.

Apology

I’d like to apologize for the recent dearth of posts. Life interferes with hobbies far too often, and so my postings will be somewhat sporadic until after the holiday season. I’ll still post infrequently until then, so please check back periodically.

Voting: Fix The Glitches

One thing continues to sadden me in the aftermath of the election. Considering that there are three sides to every issue– Democratic, Republican and the media (if only by determining issues that merit coverage) – why does only one side clearly care about voting irregularities (potential, actual or otherwise)? I’ve heard many conspiracy theories, and even cooked up one or two myself.

It is a shame that caring about voting irregularities and fraud, voter rights and vote counting are shunted aside as the rantings of losers from the left’s lunatic fringe. Or they’re dismissed with shrugs of the “elections have always been unfair” variety.

But given that the Republican candidate won almost four million more votes than the Democratic challenger, one would think protecting their own successful Get-Out-The-Vote operations would cause the Republicans to at least give it lip service. The media still likes to occasionally consider itself a public watchdog (though sadly, less and less these days). This concerns justice and fairness, which are definitely American values but which do not merit national consideration.

Only the Democrats – those with the least amount of power in our democracy – seem even a little concerned about the integrity of our democracy. And it is no less than our democracy's integrity at risk.

Why is it that no one appears able to hold e-voting machine vendors to security audits or to some other kind of publicly-held standards? If the opposition to this is based on too much federal regulation, then make it a corporate self-regulating process by putting the auditing contracts out to competitive bid. Bill the voting machine vendors for the audit. Why should they not be expected to pay the price of protecting the public interest, since they're profiting on this trust?

Consult with top security and programming executives and experts while constructing the requirements a bidding auditor should be expected to pursue. The rules and standards should be strict. Benchmark results should be made public.

The names of the programmers who wrote the codes should be a matter of public record (I’m willing to realize this may be harsh, but I am looking for some form of public accountability). I’m not suggesting that any company’s programmers are necessarily crooked; rather, I am suggesting that precautionary measures be taken because it is not difficult for a programmer to, for example, code “if” statements into a program that can compromise the system unnoticed. (Thanks, Rik.)

A whip will be required; make one out of the very reason the vendors do business with the government in the first place. Withhold the percentage of money the vendor would be counting on for its profit if it does not pass audits and meet specific security requirements. Hit ‘em in the checkbook, the mightiest regulator there is.

Please note that my thesis is not about whether the election was stolen or whether intentional, systemic fraud was committed to secure a specific result. For two election cycles now, we’ve seen evidence of electronic voting system failures. Why do so few care whether anything gets done? Why won't we fix the glitches?

There may be hope for forcing reform onto the congressional agenda. Stories seem to be drip, drip, dripping out there in various precincts. It’ll take at least one story to make a splash before anyone notices.

Response to Comments

A couple of commenters have raised questions concerning whether “greed and materialism” could be a winning issue for the Democrats. I realize I wasn’t being very clear. I was intending to use this as more a hypothetical example, one suggesting how we may begin the search for the key issues to frame a constant and consistent message.

In the grand scheme, it appears that the Democrats’ message consists largely of defensive reactions to Republican wedge issues, which the Republicans use very effectively to dominate the national debate. The overarching objective should be to bring the debate to our turf.

And that’s what I meant about changing the subject. If the debate is about values, then we shift it to a debate about Democratic values, rather than craft responses to their issue frames (frankly, I think this gives them an edge when voters begin considering an issue). Do as they do: knock down the opponent’s message quickly and succinctly, then hammer home yours.

As you can no doubt tell from my ramblings, I am not at all clever with packaging complex ideas into two- or three-word, soundbite-ready phrases. If I were, I could no doubt present a more effective argument. I am hoping that out of this debate -- and there's no shortage of debate -- will come some phrases we can use as weapons, rather than shields, in the rhetorical war.

That said, I do think greed and materialism could be effective as a populist message of reform. Think corporate welfare, job outsourcing, tax loopholes. Mr. Bush even handed the Democrats an example when he dismissed Sen. Kerry’s tax plan by claiming that those making $200,000 and up will always figure out how cheat on their taxes. That’s greed and materialism. Environmental destruction can be woven into this theme, with a message that unites environmentally-minded urbanites as well as hunters and fishermen.

I’ve said I think the Democratic National Committee chair must be responsible for distributing the party’s message by arming candidates with the Democratic message and forcing the narrative into the media. I do realize the party chair’s most critical role may be fundraising.

But there needs to be a transitional “bridge” to advance the Democratic message when we are between candidates and to keep the party’s message from being hijacked by the latest presidential candidate's image. Why shouldn't that be the DNC chair's role? Shift some of the fundraising burden, perhaps with co-chairs.

I’m seeing a lot of discussion about Democratic identity and messaging. Once I’ve been able to sort through it all, I’ll lend my thoughts.

Busy Weekend Ahead

Mrs. Wordcruncher and I have a busy weekend ahead, so there may be light posting until Sunday night or Monday (although I hope to squeeze in a post or two in the meantime). I want to take a minute to thank everyone for the comments. They're very thoughtful, and I greatly appreciate that. You've indeed given me food for thought. There are three or four of you that I haven't been able to respond to yet in the threads, but believe me, I'm planning to post on some of your comments soon. Till then, keep 'em coming and have a great weekend!

Sshh! You’ll Frighten the Moderates!

As long as this period of Democratic introspective analysis continues, I’ll take the opportunity to comment on the “don’t frighten the moderates” cowardice. My best guess is we’re talking about southern Democrats here.

My reasoning: Just as “liberal” has become a label of derision in the Republican Party ever since Sen. Barry Goldwater lost in 1964 (when’s the last time you met a “Rockefeller Republican”?), so has the term “conservative” been stigmatized in the Democratic Party.

Thus, Democrats formerly known as conservative – in other words, southerners – are now embracing the more appealing “moderate” label. And many Democrats likewise run away from the term liberal, for fear that, as in the 80s, merely calling a candidate liberal could be considered certain doom.

Yes, I am aware that Mr. Clinton ran as a centrist and instituted the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) to drive party philosophy through Sen. Al Gore’s campaign and up to the ’04 primaries. And I know that Mr. Clinton succeeded and Sen. Gore won the popular vote.

And that’s it. There is no “Clinton legacy” in the Party today. The DLC made fools of themselves with their hysterical attacks on Governor Dean in the primaries and rendered themselves obsolete among rank-and-file Democrats.

The biggest reason for the failure of moderate Democrats is that it’s a position created to fight against the public perception of Democrats (that, and presenting a moderate Democrat as a presidential candidate is as bland to the American public as plain rice and toast). In other words, moderate Democrats do not run as Democrats; they run against the Republican stereotype of Democrats.

And that’s a Republican’s dream. Running against a moderate Democrat – a Republican Lite – is a slam dunk. Democrats know this now; witness Sen. Joe Lieberman, who despite instant name recognition continually polled below 5% all over the country in the primaries. A moderate Democrat runs defensively right out of the gate, making it easy for a Republican candidate to launch withering offensive attacks. There’s a reason Mr. Bush said he’d prefer to run against Sen. Lieberman (who oddly touted this statement as though it were an endorsement).

The task before us is not to run to the center – nor is it necessarily to run as liberals. It is to stop running against Republicans’ image of Democrats. To do that, I say again: We need to articulate a standard package of core beliefs that every Democrat everywhere can run on.

The Steve Soto post regarding the Democracy Corps poll I referenced yesterday is a good place to start. We should be able to boil "greed and materialism" and "poverty and economic justice" into six or seven core issues that Democratic candidates of all stripes – African-Americans, women, pro-laborites – can run on. These are simple, high-level issues, with no need to drill down to the specific interest group level. And there’s clearly an audience for them.

Create a frame into which any candidate can step.

Sen. Kerry burned a great deal of time and momentum fighting against the image Republicans painted of him. Coming out of the primaries, the American people waited for him to articulate his beliefs and positions. He had to “go dark” in those critical post-primary months to raise cash. By the time he was ready to stump, his first task was to dismantle two or three months of Republican advertisements portraying him as an unprincipled “flip-flopper.” Once he’d navigated through those waters to the Democratic convention, then came the false Swift Boat accusations portraying him as a coward.

Clearly articulated values that surrogate Democrats could hammer on his behalf would have gone a long way toward neutralizing the instant Republican advantage. But more importantly, it would help bring an end to Democrats running against Republican caricatures of Democrats.

DNC Musical Chairs

Some items of interest are popping up regarding the new DNC chair, to likely be elected in February of next year. By way of Kos, ABC News has the best rundown I’ve seen on the behind-the-scenes goings-on.

First, Harold Ickes doesn’t want the job. Being a former staffer for President Clinton, he was thought to be promoted as a way to advance Sen. Hillary Clinton’s ’08 presidential candidacy. Many Republicans I talk to seem to think her ’08 candidacy is a done deal. I’m not so sure, although I think she’d be wise to keep her options open.

She hasn’t made any kind of public announcement of the sort, and I’m not sure she has the party muscle so many think she has. Yes, she was Bill Clinton’s First Lady, but otherwise she’s a one-term senator.

I read a personal profile of her some time back in The New Yorker. She’s building a reputation for working with key GOP senators to enact legislation. She’s taken lessons in freshman humility from Sen. Robert Byrd. She’s earned respect and high approval ratings from her constituents. And by all accounts, she seems to be truly enjoying herself in the Senate. But I’m straying off the topic. I’ll write more about Sen. Clinton in coming days. It’s a sure way to get readers to fire up some comments.

Former Georgia Governor Roy Barnes is also mentioned (I’ve seen his name in other sources besides the ABC News piece). That, in my opinion, would be unwise. Whatever his accomplishments, his lasting legacy will be that of the last Democratic Governor before a historical, sweeping tide of Republicans into the Big House in Buckhead.

It will be a long time before there’s another Democratic Governor of Georgia. That will primarily be attributed to surging Republican strength outside the urban areas. But it will also be because the Georgia Democratic Party lacks, for whatever reason, the organization and infrastructure to be a viable power.

He’s understandably out of politics now, and that’s fine. But if he were truly interested in the DNC chairmanship, shouldn’t he have practiced it first on the Georgia Democratic Party?

And looking at this within the context of my last few posts, I am most concerned about Gov. Barnes because he could not effectively combat the confederate battle flag issue in the last gubernatorial campaign (for non-Georgian readers, the Republican candidate promised a statewide referendum on whether we should include the confederate flag on our state flag).

How could he possibly be effective against Republican wedge issues on the national level? And there’s this from the ABC News article:

Roy Barnes, the former governor of Georgia who is now a lawyer in Atlanta, "would have the ear and the awareness of key Democrats all over the county," said Joe Erwin, the chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party.

"He's not going to get pulled into one camp or another or offend one camp or another," Erwin said of Barnes.

Since when should a DNC chairman’s job be to walk on eggshells?

This is all based on the misconception that Democrats are still the fractured bunch of special-interest groups that pulled the party apart in the 80s. Don’t fall for that. It’s a Republican media plant, and so were the rumors during the campaign that Sen. Kerry wasn’t doing well among his base. Divide and conquer.

It was the Democratic base that got Sen. Kerry the second-highest presidential vote total in U.S. history. Democrats were united as never before in 2004 – at least, not in my lifetime. The time is past to create an apparatus to heal fissures and placate groups.

The DNC chair will need to recognize the new reality: Democrats are united in the wilderness, huddled together for survival. We’re waiting for someone to lead, not appease.

Numbers Don't Lie

This post by the always astute Steve Soto over at the Left Coaster puts hard data behind the theories I have been advancing on this site regarding the importance of taking the offensive in the national debate and framing the issues within the context of Democratic values. The money graf:

Battling the notion that "values voters" swept President Bush to victory because of opposition to gay marriage and abortion, three liberal groups released a post-election poll in which 33 percent of voters said the nation's most urgent moral problem was "greed and materialism" and 31 percent said it was "poverty and economic justice." Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage.

Recognize something about "greed and materialism" and "poverty and economic justice"? These aren't just Democratic issues; they're Christian and American issues as well. And they’re winners. Someone at the DNC – or the wonderfully creative people we have blogging – should be thinking about how we frame these issues to take the offensive against the Republicans. We need to be flogging these up and down the entire Democratic organization.

Messaging Discipline

Following up on the tease in my last post regarding how the steps we need to take to tilt the playing field in our favor are more inherently difficult for Democrats that Republicans:

We face the challenge Will Rogers explained: “I belong to no organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” (Thanks, Bob.)

It’s more difficult for Democrats because we as a party lack the message cohesiveness and discipline the Republicans deploy so well. I am hoping a new DNC chair will help with this; if not, they’ll be of limited use. For what good will organization and fundraising be if we can’t win the national debate?

Perhaps basing their model on Moses descending from the mountain, Republicans craft their message on high rapidly, arm their troops with it, then deploy troops for combat on blogs, talk radio, Op-Ed pages, the House and Senate floors, etc.

It’s an admirable and formidable operation. Their message discipline gives the press corps nothing else to talk about. Indeed, Republican talking points become seared into the brains of a lazy press corps that can’t – or won’t – deconstruct the message.

There really isn’t a true grass roots Republican organization. It’s more accurately described as a top-down structure resembling the military or corporate-style governance. To us, they appear as automatons, unable to think for themselves and capable only of parroting the party line.

I think this helped the Bush campaign in one significant and overlooked way: It creates the illusion of Mr. Bush as a leader. After all, the troops were always in line and never strayed off the reservation. If they did, they’d be publicly reprimanded. Hell, even John McCain looked like a follower. It made a profound statement that he fell in line behind Mr. Bush. And they knew it.

Democrats are exactly the opposite. Our party leadership excelled at raising money, but had little or nothing to do with message dissemination or discipline. And let’s face it: Democrats can’t discipline Democrats. Presidents Clinton and Carter consistently expended political capital fighting against their own party. For Carter, it was his downfall – he couldn’t fight the labor-led Democratic machine. That and the hostage crisis destroyed any public semblance of leadership he may have had.

This election cycle saw the birth of a new dynamic for Democrats: blogs. Howard Dean was the first to recognize the power blogs could have as a grassroots movement. Institutionalized Democrats (as well as the media and even Republicans) were clearly caught off guard by the anger of rank-and-file Democratic voters during the primary season. Governor Dean, however, tapped into this zeitgeist from the blogs; he then distilled it into his campaign (yes, he still lost, but for other reasons).

Nature abhors a vacuum, and the absence of a top-down messaging discipline created in its stead one from the ground up. It still is. If one were to consistently monitor the blogs I have blogrolled on the right side of my page, one would quickly realize some thematic unity on a consistent basis.

I am, while admittedly naïve, excited about the prospect of Governor Dean as DNC chair. His candidacy demonstrated the possibility of a Democratic messaging structure that befits our party. Rather than dictating the message from top-down, the message could flow two ways – from bottom to top in its rawest form and then from top to bottom as polished and refined talking points.

We’ll never have the advantage of a CEO-style, crack-the-whip discipline. But what we can do is create a frame into which our candidate can step for the ’08 campaign. Perhaps more significantly, we can create a frame for every Democrat, at all levels, to use.

Attack, Attack, Attack!

Yesterday, I wrote about how we need to realize, on a national level, that war is being waged against us. So now: What do we do about it?

I think the answer is simple in theory. It’s also simple in practice – for Republicans. It may be more difficult in practice for Democrats, which I will explain in a later post. But here are some of the more obvious solutions.

First: We need to actually be a true opposition, not an accommodationist, party. Begin fighting the Republicans on the Senate floor, on the House floor, on cable TV talking head shows, on op-ed pages. And also on the state levels. Everywhere possible. Make principled obstructionism a constant motivation for opposing the president’s shove-it-down-our-throats policymaking style.

Tim Ryan’s (D-OH) wonderfully fiery, passionate speech on Oct. 4 in the House should be a prototype for how to do this. It cut through the layers of political appeasement and essentially called a spade a spade (and a liar a liar). Ryan’s speech was probably the most-watched speech from the House in at least the past year. Learn from it.

We will begin to win the confidence of even red-state America if we stand up, strongly and passionately, for what we believe. To put it simply, most of the 51% elected Mr. Bush precisely because he is a bully (“he may be a bully, but he’s our bully and these times call for a bully”). Sen. Kerry could not gain their respect because he was not perceived as sufficiently standing up to the bully (and, by extension, to terrorists).

The Republican response will be to attack us as nutjobs, lefty lunatics, whatever. Let them. Republicans will counter by planting stories in the media that we are sealing our own doom by blocking the president’s and the peoples’ will. Let them. This will be a meme repeated from Rush Limbaugh to Wolf Blitzer to the New York Times. Recognize this meme for what it is: an RNC plant. Call it out and call it a smokescreen – then change the subject (see the fourth point, below).

Second: Boil our message down to easily digestible soundbites and repeat them over and over, on municipal and state and national levels. Once we do this, the media will start using our terms simply for convenience. To use an example I posted earlier, “Tax Fairness” can become shorthand for “shifting the income tax burden to those making more than $200,000 a year.”

And do not be timid with the soundbites. They need to hit hard for them to stick. I was appalled to read this in Arianna Huffington’s Salon column (you have to click through the ads):

Bolder, more passionate language that Kerry had used during the primary -- like calling companies hiding their profits in tax shelters "the Benedict Arnolds of corporate America" -- was dropped for fear of scaring off undecideds and Wall Street. Or was it Wall Street undecideds? ("This was very unfortunate language," Roger Altman, Clinton's deputy treasury secretary told me during the campaign. "We've buried it." And indeed, the phrase was quickly and quietly deleted from the Kerry Web site.)

I see this as a tremendously lost opportunity. This was the type of soundbite framing that would have resonated with all voters and would have the potential to be repeated across all the media. Wishy-washyness has no place in politics. And Wall Street wasn’t going to vote Kerry anyway.

Likewise, countering the Swift Boat attacks in August could have been so simple: Dismiss them with two or three words (something like, but more clever than, “disgruntled liars”), and have every Democrat with media access repeat these words over and over again.

Third: Play the media game. The way we need to exploit the media to our advantage is to embrace the media’s ridiculous charade of “fair and balanced” reporting. The current method of reporting goes something like this: “The Republicans say this. The Democrats say that. We don’t know who’s right, but one thing’s certain: It sure is complicated.”

We can’t fight this; we can’t successfully convince the media that this is lazy, irresponsible and reprehensible. So let’s exploit it. All throughout the campaign, Republicans used this to create the noose the Kerry campaign constantly used to hang itself. Republicans fire off an irresponsible, soundbite-ready charge (think, “flip-flopper”), a Kerry spokesperson responds with a lengthy, reasoned explanation of why this charge isn’t true.

It doesn’t matter whether the Kerry spokesperson was dead-on, absolutely right. When politicians explain things, they appear to be dissembling and equivocating – and defensive. It isn’t difficult to turn the tables. For example, Kerry spokesperson: Benedict Arnolds of Corporate America. Bush spokesperson: explanation, stock markets drive the economy, blah, blah. Game, set, match.

Fourth: Bring the fight to our turf. We keep falling for the Republican game plan. To many Americans, we appear to be suckers, played by the GOP again and again. My good friends at Angry Liberal pick up on a comment that typifies us:

We’ve become that one annoying kid that’s always sucking up to the jocks, hoping not to get beaten up this time.

It’s time we start using their favorite tactic. For example, when gay marriage comes up, we don’t need to explain why we support it or civil unions or anything else. Everyone knows our position. Instead, we claim they are creating a diversion from their own failures, and then change the subject to something like “Benedict Arnolds.”

These simple steps can start to tilt the playing field to our advantage. I’ll post more in the coming days, as I realize I need to break these posts down into more easily digestible pieces.

This Is War, Dammit!

There have been a lot of wonderful observations going on about the Democratic Party and where we need to go next. I actually find much of what I see to be quite exciting, if a little hard to absorb in its sheer abundance.

James Carville rightly says we need a narrative. Digby picks up a little on my point yesterday that negative campaigning proves successful. The Center for American Progress solicits thoughtful responses about where we need to go next. And thankfully, many people are starting to pay attention to George Lakoff regarding how framing issues is much more important than presenting facts.

This is all useful and instructive and needs to continue. It also needs to be heard and I’ve no doubt it will be. But as we consider these things, we must keep something in mind that folds into the “principled obstructionism” argument I presented yesterday.

We are at war, and we are under attack. And I am not talking about the war on terror.

A reader over at Steve Gilliard’s blog presents it perfectly:

Who do you think a good, righteous, Bush-voting fundy hates more, Osama Bin Laden or a New York City liberal?

Quite so. For the last ten years, the right has advanced the narrative that liberals must be eradicated for the good of the nation. Liberals are the reason to blame for all of the nation’s woes. And no matter whether conservative Republicans control the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and the presidency, liberals will still stand in the way of the successful advancement of the conservative agenda.

One only need listen to the right-wing talk radio demagogues to quickly discern this as the underlying message of everything they say. And lest we think otherwise, the narrative of these demagogues has thoroughly merged with the Republican Party’s. This is why gay marriage had such powerful resonance. This is why the NRC can distribute leaflets stating that John Kerry would've banned the Bible and keep a straight face.

The ongoing message is that America is constantly under attack from liberals. And good, God-fearing conservatives are the endless victims of these attacks. This “victim” strategy allows the Bush administration to blame everyone but themselves for every kind of failure. Even if it is painfully obvious to all but the completely ill-informed where responsibility may lie, it doesn’t matter. Liberals will unjustly try to bring him down – led by the “so called liberal media.”
They believe this regardless of whether it even makes sense, and they will continue to believe it even in the face of certain proof. It is an article of faith. Portraying liberals as traitors is not something that just emerged during the Iraq invasion. This has been a carefully promoted message since the 1960s.

It has become acceptable and even encouraged for right-wing demagogues to promote eliminationist fantasies on-air (all liberals need to be shot, I hope California sinks into the ocean, etc. – you’ve heard them all before). As a result, these fantasies have seeped into and poisoned the mainstream. I honestly believe it is such standard practice that conservatives don’t even realize they are doing it.

We have not directly addressed these issues on a national level. To do so would be to convey legitimacy to them (which is a big reason Mr. Bush never mentioned Sen. Kerry by name during the campaign), the unspoken theory goes. But until we do, we will continue to lose. This stuff plays very well in red-state land.

Any kind of Democratic compromise then becomes proof that they are right. To them, Democrats must accept the conservative agenda – or perish.

No matter how disgusting, how gutter-level, this kind of politics may be, we must engage it to defeat it. We must realize that waging war – countering this message and making principled obstructionist stands – is our only alternative.

Or we will certainly perish.

Message To Democrats: Obstruction, Not Compromise

It seems quite odd to me all the post-election “Why We Lost” analysis misses a very obvious point.

While much has been said from our side about the honorable campaign Sen. Kerry waged against dishonorable people, it overlooks the old Leo Durocher wisdom that we will be ill-served to ignore: Nice guys finish last.

Recall in August, when Karl Rove and his minions launched the Swift Boat attacks against Kerry’s character in an attempt to demolish his war record and, by proxy, his national security credentials. Rumor hit the streets that Kerry was incensed and wished to fight back hard. Bob Shrum, Kerry’s political advisor (and many of us have wondered why he had this position from the outset), supposedly told Kerry not to fight back because poll numbers showed Americans were sick of negative campaign tactics.

Well, sure they are. Every American asked will always tell a pollster they disapprove of personal mudslinging, especially in presidential campaigns. But guess what, Bob? Sadly, negative campaign tactics work.

Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were able to win the presidency without basing their entire campaigns on such attacks. But Reagan and Clinton are exceptions that prove the rule. To the endless frustration of the opposing side, their charismatic personalities could withstand any kind of negative attack; people just liked them. But these were rare politicians, the likes of which do not appear to be on the horizon for ’08 (Obama Barack will prove the exception with his rock-star potential, but not in ’08).

Until then, Democrats will need to get mean. No reconciliation with Mr. Bush, who trashed such attempts in the first two years of his first term in office. And don’t buy into the claptrap the press says about compromising our values. Nicholas Kristoff provides such terrible advice to the Democrats in the Saturday New York Times:

Hold your nose and work with President Bush as much as you can because it's lethal to be portrayed as obstructionists.

No it isn’t. Republicans played obstructionism to the institutionalized Democratic machine successfully throughout the 80’s and early 90’s, culminating with the ’94 Newt Gingrich-led win. Taking this kind of advice perpetuates the “nice guy” image the party needs to demolish. We need fighters, not compromisers. We need Harry Trumans and Paul Wellstones, not Tom Daschles.

Compromise in this manner will always appear weak to Americans (and where are you now, Sen. Daschle?). The lesson should be that standing strong – or at least, appearing to – on principles earns respect. We know this is a big reason 51% of Americans voted Bush. If Democrats do give in and compromise away their values, on what will we run in ’08? That we were the party that meekly worked to advance the conservative agenda? Where is strength and leadership in that? Fact is, the conservative agenda will advance with or without Democrats.

Remember the old cries of “gridlock”? The first two years of Mr. Bush’s first term saw a nearly unprecedented (in recent times) level of bipartisan compromise on issues such as No Child Left Behind, the PATRIOT act, the war on terror, support for the authority to use war against Iraq and tax cuts – to the tremendous advantage of the president’s agenda.

None of this benefited Democrats one iota; rather, it now appears that this level of historical compromise was merely a cudgel to use against the Democrats in ’02 and last week. Has Mr. Kristoff ever examined the nature of the “flip-flopper” charges? Sen. Kerry worked with the president, paving the way to his own destruction. Principled obstructionism is a better value than compromise, which is easily portrayed as political opportunism.

Now that we are in the minority for the next two, four or six years with absolutely nothing to lose, it is time to build an identity as principled leaders standing firmly on a distinctive agenda. Even if it doesn’t win us anything, it’s better than the alternative – and much better for the party’s soul.

The FMA Weapon Weasel

In response to my post on building a message machine to rival or best the GOP’s, a commenter writes:

The Dems were architects of their own destruction. If the Mass Supreme court had not legalized gay marriage by judicial fiat and/or if the mayor of San Fran. had abided by the law and not married gay couples, the issue would never have been as potent a weapon.

While this wasn’t the point of my post, it’s worth a discussion. The GOP successfully lumped the Massachusetts Supreme court and the mayor of San Francisco with “the Democrats.” Conflating two issues like this is an old political tactic, albeit a shrewd move on the GOP’s part. After the GOP’s original stand was that it should be a state – not a federal – decision, the hollow threat of amending the constitution forced it onto the national agenda.

It was an even more successful tactic because of the unfortunate coincidence that Sen. Kerry represented Massachusetts; regardless of his stand on the issue, he suffered from a “guilt by association” curse – when everyone knows the U.S. Senate has nothing to do with state Supreme Court decisions.

And if, for the sake of argument, we assume that the Democrats were the “architects of their own destruction,” this is akin to blaming gun manufacturers, not murderers, for shooting deaths. Hey, you made the gun into a potent weapon. I just shot it. It’s your fault, not mine.

But at least it alleviates a conscious which may otherwise feel some libertarian twinge of regret for introducing a divisive issue that will lead to opening a Pandora’s box of government involvement in people’s private lives.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that my headline appears to be calling the commenter a weasel, which was unintentional. I am using weasel as a form of equivocation.

Mandate Baiting

The fight in us will never allow us to give any more than the 3% we lost the election by. Thus, we on the left will resist the idea of allowing the president to claim he won a “mandate.” Earlier, I wrote that November 2 proved a mandate for the Republican party agenda. I believe that remains true, if only because when comparing the two parties’ gains and losses on the national level, we were pretty clearly pushed backward.

But to me, this is a largely irrelevant argument anyway. How will Bush and the GOP govern any differently now than over the past four years? What exactly does a mandate mean?

In yesterday’s press conference, Mr. Bush mentioned that he had the “will of the people at his back.” He also mentioned the political capital he gained. Republicans will no doubt point to this as the public’s endorsement of his policies. The charming Bill Bennett is even saying this now means, in effect, that the GOP will and should launch a culture war.

I am not sure what the GOP thinks they have gained on Nov. 2 other than perhaps some idea of political legitimacy (as opposed to 2000). Let them scream mandate all they want. We should do much better than take the bait. This plays entirely into the Republican culture of victimization and furthers their “us vs. them” tactics.

Do they think this means they can steamroll their agenda over Democrats? They’ve been doing that for the past four years. Does this mean they can now implement a conservative agenda? They’ve been doing that for the past four years.

It actually smacks of desperation, even in victory. How are they going to use the term “mandate” to bludgeon us even more than they have in the past? They can’t; they’re posturing.

Lame ducks, mandate or no, rarely are able to achieve broad political change. Indeed, this sounds to me like the brandishing of a cudgel Mr. Bush will attempt to use on Republicans who will be increasingly looking after their own interests over the next four years and on Democrats who can filibuster with absolutely nothing to lose.

The media may buy it and it may lay the groundwork for “obstructionist” cries later, but in terms of real political muscle, it seems to me there just isn’t much there.

That’s What I’m Talking About

Atrios pops up with a good example of a Democratic soundbite response about which I wrote yesterday (and which I will keep paying attention to; collecting, if you will). To the Republicans’ charges that Democrats will “raise your taxes” and their disingenuous cries of “class warfare,” we can answer with “Tax Fairness.” It’s a good start.

Rising From the Wreckage

As I posted yesterday, some good can certainly come from Tuesday’s loss. Steve Soto scanned the dark clouds and found at least a small silver lining:

...it is true that the GOP now claims 55 seats in the Senate, and the GOP majority is already threatening the Democrats to play ball. But what is more important is that the GOP not only doesn’t have the votes to shut off filibusters, but the exit of southern, Zell Miller-type Democrats deprives Bush and Rove of finding the five necessary Democratic votes to shut off those filibusters. There is also still a moderate block of GOP Senators who can be appealed to on issue-by-issue means by the Democratic caucus. The new Democratic caucus in the Senate, with Miller and John Breaux now gone, will be far more cohesive in opposing Bush than in Bush’s first term. Furthermore, there are fewer Democrats up for reelection in 2006 from swing or border states that can be threatened by Rove to play along with Bush.

To this I will add that new leadership for the Democrats will only help – and it will energize our own base. The united support of disparate groups behind Kerry shows the base is ready to follow, just as the GOP’s has been doing for years.

Howard Dean’s name is frequently mentioned as a replacement for Terry McAuliff as DNC chair. While I love the idea, I don’t know if he’d be the party leader we need. However, I do like the way he and his organizers tapped into the Internet’s potential for fundraising, information dissemination and “meetups.”

We also need someone strong with message discipline – and someone who doesn’t mind mixing it up with Republican shouting heads on cable news channels (jeez, “Enron” Ed Gillespie is everywhere). That, it seems to me, is how the Republicans disseminate their own message to the masses. There should be a strong, telegenic Democrat who comes armed with Democratic soundbites to fight the GOP message at its source.

We Must Build A Better Message Machine Mousetrap

If there’s a good thing coming from this, it is that we are forced to examine ourselves as a party. It certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed among left thinkers that the exit polls revealed the issue that drove the election was not the economy, as we’d hoped, nor terrorism, as the media expected. It was “moral values” – which is what the Republicans had hoped.

It is instructive that the presentation of the very issue that seemed the most determinate in the election perfectly illustrates the very reason we lost. We’ve long known and conceded that the Republicans are far more experienced – and better – at framing issues.

Here’s the perfect example: We all know exactly what is meant by “moral values.” It means primarily gay marriage. Mr. Bush’s strategy was to put anti-gay marriage initiatives on as many swing state polls as possible to motivate primarily evangelical Protestants to vote. It was obviously a successful – if divisive – strategy.

Yet the exit polls as published defined the issue as “moral values.” This is a subjective label, not an objective term. It would be the same if Democrats had successfully labeled the issue as “homophobia.”

We may have the American electorate on our side when it comes to actual policy differences (I’m not going to check this because the point of this post is not to examine the results of the exit polls), but it is obvious that we lose the framing and communication war. Republicans are very good at honing their message down to meaningless and deceptive sound-bite terminology. Think “liberal media” and “culture of life.”

Whatever happens with the Democratic party as it traverses the wasteland of the 2004 election results, we must simplify our message and distribute it effectively. There needs to be a unity of message from the Democratic leadership down to the local politician level.

At times during the campaign, we effectively demonstrated that we could. I am confident that we will; the message distribution infrastructure is growing, and besides, we have no choice.

Is it Mourning or Morning?

The day after such a devastating loss, it is difficult to feel optimistic or positive. The margin of Mr. Bush’s popular vote, coupled with the devastating losses in the Senate and the House equals (and I may regret saying this someday soon) while not a landslide, at least a mandate for the Republican agenda.

Yet, somehow, I do feel optimistic and positive. I am proud of our candidate. We knew he’d be slimed, but he kept to the high road and fought admirably. I also feel good because I do believe so deeply in our cause, and no political loss will ever change that. We did fight the good fight.

Maybe this feeling also can be explained by the fact that, at long last, there’s no way Republicans can blame liberals and Clinton for things gone wrong. Or perhaps it’s a general feeling that, sooner or later, scandal and corruption will catch up to this administration.

But I think it has more to do with what liberals/progressives accomplished in so little time. It was just a few months ago that Mr. Bush was expected to win in a landslide – he had a seemingly-unassailable 70 percent approval rating.

We now have an infrastructure – through blogs, online campaign contributions, Air America Radio and sites like Salon and Media Matters – that can influence an election. It did take the republicans a long time to reach their current status. We’ve a way to go yet.

I thought about not reading or writing about politics after Election Day (regardless of outcome). But if anything, I feel the urge more strongly. We’ll see if that wanes in the coming days, but I still feel energized – even as we’ve been seemingly marginalized for the rest of our natural lives.

We’re in the wilderness. And right now – I want to be, as that infamous left-wing wacko Jerry Brown once said – “A lone, weird voice in the wilderness.”

For Cryin’ Out Loud: Let Us Cry Out Loud

I just had to react to this blog posting.

There will be more of this to come, I am sure. It seems that, having been thumped in the election, we are now supposed to be calm, civil and rational. They’re blaming us for not going against the grain of basic human nature.

What's wrong with letting the left vent? These are all postings on lefty blogs. Blogs are, at their essence, communities. After losing an election in which one invests oneself intensely and emotionally, there will naturally be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And we are doing just that, in our own forums, within our own communities. If some of the crazier comments were posted in right-wing forums, that's entirely different.

I have also seen many conservatives trolling comment threads and posting things like: "please die." "hahahaha, you all make me laugh" and "GROW UP." Both sides have extremists and Democrats say things because they are upset. Big deal.

I think we on the left will all calm down once we've vented and allowed ourselves to move on. Give us that chance, at least. Bush won and we all know it. Let us lick our wounds and heal. Posting blog quotes like this seem to me to be gloating.

And I'm self-aware enough to know I'm equally venting.