Democrats have usually won the war of ideas but not always the war of words with our opponents, the Republican Spin Machine. Our opposition has far too often been successful in spinning us into some kind of parody of who were really are in the eyes of far too many voters. We have been less than effective in connecting emotionally with the language in which we present our ideas, programs and candidates. We have not built the kind of organized Spin Machine found on the Corporate Republican Right. Politically, we have failed to block the media concentration fostered by the largest corporations with active assistance of the Republican Right that makes it difficult for Democrats to reach the public with our message.
There are solutions. We can define both ourselves and the Republican opposition using many of the same tactics as our opposition. We can reframe our ideas, programs and public images of our candidates in more effective emotive terms. We can build more effective mechanisms of reaching the public that bypass the Corporate Republican bias of the broadcast media and many newspaper chains. The Internet can be a great tool for presenting the Democratic message. We can build a national network of local, regional and national talk radio programs. We can pass legislation that will restore local media ownership, the Fairness Doctrine and Equal Time Protection in broadcasting and demand the return of anti-monopoly regulations for all media outlets.
Democrats can start publishing local community newsletters. We can organize Letter to the Editor campaigns and talk radio call-in campaigns in every community. Democrats should complain to radio stations, TV stations and newspapers about unfair articles, stories and editorials. Demand balance. If you have to petition or picket a media outlet, do it and contact competitors to publicize your efforts. Seek allies from the union movement and reform organizations.
Our most important way of restoring balance in the battle for public opinion is outside media issues. We can breathe new life into grassroots organizing. The most effective way of reaching voters is one to one organizing. Talk politics everywhere you go regardless of the initial reaction you receive. You will here over and over again Republican talking points, Republican slogans and spin. Respond each and every time with facts and ideas. Do not be afraid to counter-attack. In fact, I encourage it.
Frequently, I start off with a little humor by saying something like "you have been listening to Rush Limbaugh too much" or "you really need to turn off Fox News." I follow that up by saying something like "you are repeating Republican propaganda (nonsense, BS)." Then I present our position and make a point or two on another issue highly critical of the opposition. I almost always close with a comment like "I have a lot of respect for the average Republican voter but the top national leaders are doing a real disservice to the nation."
If I am talking to a self-identified conservative, I point out that the Republican leadership is not really presenting a real conservative agenda. Real conservatives want balanced budgets. Real conservatives want to protect the rule of law. Real Conservatives want to preserve all the freedoms in the Bill of Rights and the American Constitution. Real conservatives want fair taxations shared by all elements of the American citizenry. Real conservatives do not want government interfering with individual, personal freedom. Real conservatives want competent government.
You do not have to be a Corporate Clown to be a Conservative. You do not have to be tolerant of political corruption to be a conservative. The national Republican leadership and their echo chambers like Right Wing talk radio and Fox News are not really conservative. They are Right Wing Corporatists really representing only the wealthiest of the wealthy and international corporation. I close by stating that "the Republican Party does not really represent conservative voters like you. They are using and deceiving good conservatives like you to seize power.
I often point out that real conservatives are more at home in the modern Democratic Party than in what the Republican Party has become in the era of George W. Bush. Democrats are now the Party of Liberals, Moderates and Conservatives. All three groups have more in common with each other realistically than they do with the Republican Corporatist Right.
Democrats should not surrender the term conservative or self-identified conservative voters to Republicans. We should not corrupt our basic values or abandon our basic ideas to become "Republican-lite" but instead redefine what "conservative" really means. We have a good argument to make.
Essentially, we have a similar job to do in reclaiming the term "Christian." Democrats pursue an agenda more in line with the teachings of Jesus Christ than do the Republicans. We care more about the poor. We have much more compassion. We show more love for our fellow man than do Republicans if you look at the impact of the policies we support.
The "so-called Christian Right" does not represent the values of most Christians. They seem to think that politics can play a role in personal salvation. Christ taught that salvation is internal and personal and cannot be found by following a set of external moral laws. Christianity teaches that salvation comes only thru the direct intervention of Jesus Christ with his Father, God. This is the essence of the Jesus revolution that broke with the ancient Jewish religious code in force before this revelation. The "so-called Christian Right" seems to ignore this basic fact of Christian theology.
Politics has nothing to do with Christian salvation in religious terms. No political Party owns Christianity. The support of policies favoring the wealthiest of the wealthy by the Republicans is certainly not Christian. The focus on government moral compulsion is not Christian and may actually interfere with the Christian doctrine of Free Will where God gave individuals the right to choose to sin or not.
The "so-called Christian Right" attack on the Constitutional separation of Church and State is a serious threat to both. Politics, like money, can and often does corrupt the Christian Church. Pursuit of political power diverts the Church from the primary mission of saving soles. Democrats should not let Republicans claim the term Christian for a political agenda that is not really Christian. Respond to the claims with the facts I mentioned and any others you might know.
Democrats have an excellent claim to the loyalties of Christian voters. We should reach out to the Christian community with our real agenda and values instead of letting Republicans falsely define us.
You will usually not win political converts in a single conversation. The message must be repeated over and over again. My good friend, folksinger and songwriter Yikes McGee has a song that addresses Republican propaganda in which he sums up their tactic as "simply, repeat, repeat, repeat." The opposition will often use outright lies to smear or demonize things Democratic. We should not follow that path. We do not want to become them to defeat them. At times, we will need to simply the complex to present our message to a largely uninformed public but our commitment must always be to honesty and truth. We are Democrats.
You are well on your way to recognizing the need to establish a new agenda that can unite people. The hitch remains holding on to the agent of that change as the Democratic Party. See also http://www.beyondthechoir.org/wordpress/?p=23 in regards to an analysis regarding the Lancaster anti-war movement and the lessons it holds for us all.
The best advice is not to presume that the engine for change can be attached to the box cars of defending the status quo. Start from the obvious don't ignore what is apparent. Build what you need to get what you want.
by
Martin Zehr (36 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 77 comments)
on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 12:19:13 PM
Just because R's are bad doesn't mean D's are good.
Essentially, you're doing a commercial for Democrats, here. Your attacks on the R's are all quite accurate, but you're implying that this means the D's are "good" -- and it doesn't mean that at all.
For instance, you write that R's "...are Right Wing Corporatists really representing only the wealthiest of the wealthy and international corporation(s)." Okay, that's true. But the very same thing can be said of D's as well. For instance, despite their occasionally populist rhetoric, it was Clinton-Gore that pushed through NAFTA, the Telecom Act of 1996, and "welfare reform" -- all measures that greatly favored the wealthy corporatists, & harmed everybody else.
If the US was really a democracy, it would be possible to have more than 2 big-business parties to choose from. Yet D's & R's collaborate in enforcing a system that makes it impossible for serious alternatives to get a public hearing. The 2 parties insist on a system where only with mega-dollar corporate backing can one get on the ballot, afford the TV ads that make candidates "viable," and partipate in debates.
The D's are every bit as adamant about maintaining this wretched system as the R's. If they really approved of the principles of democracy (small 'd'), wouldn't they support opening up elections to more than just the 2 parties of Wall Street?
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1104 comments)
on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 1:25:27 PM
You do not know anything about being a Democrat. Your lack of understanding of our arty is almost complete. You should confine your comments to subjects you know something about whatever that may be.
The Lancaster County Democratic Party is overwhelmingly against the war and strongly supportive of economic justice issues like almost every other county level Party organization in the nation. The grassroots organizations are the engines of change pushing the officeholders everywhere.
Howard Dean is our Party leader and one of the first national political figures to come out against the Iraq War.
by
Stephen Crockett (127 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments)
on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 6:32:47 PM
I was a Democrat for 28 years, & certainly learned a thing
or two about the party in that time. I learned that while they indulge in occasional populist-sounding talk, when it comes to policy & high-level candidates, they serve the corporate oligarchy.
If I were you, I'd be careful about telling me that I "don't know anything about" this or that subject. For instance, this morning, in another thread, you told me that Kerry had attacked Bush in the '04 campaign about the non-existent WMD. Anyone who looks at that thread will probably be quite entertained by the links & quotes I provided. They show that actually, in '04, Kerry was still arguing that his vote FOR the IWR was correct, & his spokesman said Kerry would have invaded Iraq, if he were pres., even "knowing what we know now" -- ie, even knowing there were no WMD!
Here, you say that Howard Dean was one of the first national figures to come out against the war. However, there are different degrees & ways of being "against the war." One way is to oppose it morally, on grounds that it involves killing large numbers of innocents in the victim nation, because one desires (for example) to control their oil. Another way is to oppose it because it might harm the aggressor's reputation, or put excessive strain on its military.
Now what Dean did is much closer to the second of these. He said in '03 that invading Iraq was the "wrong war at the wrong time." That's far less than principled moral opposition. And since that time, he has not denounced the occupation. He has not said it's a war crime. He has not emphasized the highly-regarded Johns Hopkins study (which estimated that 655,000 Iraqis have died in the war), & tried to hold Bush accountable. Nor has he criticized the many Democrats who refuse to cut off funding for the war, because it would "harm the troops." A child could see that this argument holds no water, yet many Democrats, including Pelosi, use it constantly.
So on balance, Dean (far from the most reactionary Democrat on this subject) is not really a strong opponent of the war. Rather, he has some tactical criticisms of the way in which the war has been conducted. But he has always supported the Afghan war, & the (utterly bogus) "war on terror," & has never called for cuts in the military budget. He thought the invasion was unwise -- from the viewpoint of the interests of the aggressor. He deserves some credit for this, certainly more than Dems like Kerry, Edwards & Hillary, who actually voted for this disaster. But let's not confuse it with a principled opposition to unjust war, or to the US occupation.
by
Richard Mynick (2 articles, 3 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 1104 comments)
on Saturday, February 17, 2007 at 7:46:54 PM
The other thread was my article "Bush and the Iraq Blame Game" click here
You claims were refuted by myself and writer Steven Leser.
Mr. Leser said among other things, "Everything Crowd". I've tried appeals to logic with them on numerous occasions and gotten nowhere. I cited evidence (in the form of statements by Republican Senator Hagel) that agreement on IWR staved off a more broad resolution that would have given Bushco ability to go anywhere in Asia minor. In fact, that agreement came with assurances from Bush to both Republican and Democratic legislators that every possible option would be exhausted before going to war. Obviously, Bush lied. There were many other things that could have been done.
I also mentioned that in no other Democratic country do people blame the minority party for actions of the majority that simultaneously control the executive and legislative branches of government. That such blaming is intellectually dishonest at best, but none of that sinks in.
They desperately want to Blame Democrats for Everything. If you are familiar with the psy-ops campaigns that are waged by intelligence organizations of many countries, their sound-bites sound quite familiar. It really seems like they are themselves agents trained in psy-ops on the payroll of the GOP or they have been influenced by agent provocateurs for Republicans whose goal is exactly as you stated, divide the left so they cannot be an effective opposition."
I am in full agreement.
Readers should explore the link to read more content concerning the arguments and anti-Democratic bias of the critic.
by
Stephen Crockett (127 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 113 comments)
on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 4:20:36 AM
Thanks Stephen. I will repost part of a comment further down
in that thread:
.
.
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"Sometimes you have to give ground for time in the hopes that soon or someday things will be different and you can mount a counterattack. I can give you more examples than one can count. But lets look particularly at the war and the war vote. Consider these polls around the beginning of the war:
Gallup Poll and USA Today/Gallup Poll. Adults nationwide.
"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?"
Not only did the Democrats have to deal with minority status, they didnt in general have support of the people of this country and the President did. Not only that, the people supported the war in the beginning by overwhelming numbers.
I have to ask those of you in the Blame Democrats for Everything crowd exactly what you expected them to be able to do in this environment. Its like a flea attempting to hold back an avalanche. You dont have the votes in either house, you dont have the support of the people, there is a popular President in the party opposite. Checkmate."
At the time of the beginning of the war, over 70% of the American public were behind the war. A similar percent was behind George W. Bush. 60% disapproved of the Democrats in congress.
I dont know where the "Blame the Democrats for Everything" crowd was during this time. I was protesting the war on the streets of St. Petersburg, Fl working with United for Peace and Justice and enduring a very hostile reaction from most of the people on the street. During one of our protests, two of us were assaulted. People threw things at us and spit at us on a regular basis.
When are we going to get intellectually honest comments from those currently in the Blame the Democrats for Everything crowd?
by
Steven Leser (189 articles, 35 quicklinks, 32 diaries, 1291 comments)
on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at 4:49:59 PM
