Besides being (usually) spineless because they want to appear reasonable and empathetic, one of the Democratic Party’s biggest problems is complacency. STOP IT! Get back to work!
Democrats, it’s your job to do two things: educate the population on policies and your party, and get to work immediately to win back the House. That all starts by acting soon to squash some of the voodoo ghosts that the Republican Party created to foster polarization over the last 12 years. You have a window and need to take advantage of it while the republicans are licking their wounds and reorganizing in the wake of a changing demographic make up of the American electorate.
Everyone knows the GOP is at a cross roads (thank you Karl), THEY know that they need a new GPS to somehow get their party into the good graces of the majority of the electorate. They can always win House seats, but if they stay on the current philosophical course, the Republican Party will basically go out of business in 16-20 years. If they don’t do some major policy shifts soon, it will be over for the Republican Party as a nationally viable political force.
To all democrats: The Republican establishment KNOWS they have an electoral map problem, and you can be guaranteed they are working hard to fix it. There are a lot of very smart people in the Republican Party, and they will find creative ways to reorganize a viable base. Your job is to not let their marketing and puzzle-piecing-together of social issue voters get its footing again. You need to flank and control the truth battle before they do. How you do it is more important than simply that you do it.
When people are scared and lost (people on the right who were 100% convinced that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would win, and don’t understand why they did not), you have a small window for getting a message to them. Once the political anger starts to subside they stick in a primal fear, but some of the anger shifts to lacking a compass and are therefore barely open to influence for a short period of time. You literally have a brief moment when the scared and angry will actually listen to you. If you wait, you’ll miss that opportunity.
Teach the truth of democratic policies.
Let’s face it: pitching the Affordable Care Act was a disaster. People still don’t know what it does. Democrats: you need to start today, now – yesterday – to continue educating the American public on the truth about, behind, within, and around Democratic policies. Educate the public on the truth about how in this country we DO NOT HAVE pure capitalism – and we never did. We have a good mix of capitalism and socialism, and probably a whole slew of other “isms” which is what makes the country work: a mixture of ideas, not a strict ideology.
Democrats need to keep educating the public about what Medicare and Social Security really are; what it really means to privatize them, and teach them that empathy and success are not mutually exclusive concepts.
Here’s the problem with that, however: Most voters on the right won’t listen to you. Partially because they’re really pissed right now, but more abstractly because they think democrats are demons and don’t trust Washington further than they can through newly-minted aircraft carrier. Democrats gotta fix that “sympathy for the devil” perception problem first so that they can get a larger percentage of the electorate to actually listen to what they’re saying.
How can a political party in this day and age make voters on the other side of the aisle listen?
Process. Smart process.
Democrats need to take back the word “Freedom.”
That the Republican Party has totally annexed “Freedom!” is pathetically sad in the face of the reality of policy-making. Other than deregulation, republican policies are the exact opposite of freedom-enhancing.
If you can first win the Freedom! argument, then you can start to win pieces of their freedom-loving hearts and therefore they’ll be more likely to listen to your policy talk.
Start with fixing the voting system. Other than a sliver of the extreme voter fraud mongering right, The Right To Vote is a freedom that all Americans value. Sell that message, sell it hard, sell it fast, and bring early voting to every state, everywhere (That means you, democrats in state houses, county officials and city council members – the right to vote is a freedom you can easily win and gain traction on the other side of the aisle.)
Simultaneously (but slightly delayed in its start), in whatever way you can relay the general “freedom message” (start with civil rights since the concept trails nicely with the right to vote as a tangible example), you need to take that NASCAR guttural shout advantage away from the republicans. Couple it with fairness and opportunity for all as a starting point, then get your think tanks together to bring the message home: democrats are for all freedoms, not just freedom from regulations. There are millions of people on the right who are terrified that Democratic policies somehow destroy freedom – you need to attack that notion head on, with great vigor, and with spines like titanium to destroy that deeply embedded bias. (And you have to do it locally. Politicians in Washington can’t pull that off. It’s requires a nationally organized, locally mobilized messaging effort just like getting out the vote was in the 2012 general.)
Democrats need to win back Christmas.
The Democratic Party is not an anti-religion party, and yet the republicans have successfully branded it as such. If the Mormon Church can be running a PR campaign featuring back musicians and happy fathers who use wheel chairs to try and rebrand itself, then the Democratic Party can start telling the truth about its stance on religion. Again, starting with freedom for all, not just the few, walk that argument into religion. If you can successfully remove that total advantage from the republicans even somewhat, than a quarter to a third of their base will fall away into the middle. It’s clear that it will take decades upon decades to get religion out of politics, so your only hope is to re-balance who “owns” religion in politics so that its impact on elections becomes less dramatic.
If the Democratic Party can strategically erase at least a quarter of the belief by right-leaning voters that it is “against” freedom and/or religion, then it will have a much greater chance to educate the electorate on actual policies – rise above the ghosts created by billion dollar politics.
Vacations are not an option: educate the public about the truth behind policies – if the words are too big and hard to understand for people who don’t normally care about politics: figure out how to do it! The citizens have a right to know these things correctly. People who understand 1) policy, and 2) history, almost always vote for democrats because it’s a more inclusive philosophy.
Democratic Party: you need to start running your organization like a data-driven, super-geek, Nate Silver-style operation – and it needs to be an ongoing process. Do NOT be complacent with an Obama second term.
Side note: Voting is a responsibility.
Teach kids from the 3rd grade how to vote and the importance of voting. Voter turn-out in the United States is embarrassing. Moreover, increased turn out always helps democrats; we all know this, so make voting a part of our social fabric through good education. Even though this helps democrats, it’s a vital need in this country. Voting should never feel optional; and the more people who vote, the more balance both parties will ultimately be forced to achieve.
While finally standing up for your own policies and teaching people what they actually are – get the smartest people you can find and target the purple districts to win back the house. Start now. Don’t wait. Get ahead of the republican marketing or else you’ll have a much more difficult road to travel.
Published: by | Updated: 03-31-2014 19:09:00
