Ed. Note: As I was writing this, all major media outlets called the election for Joe Biden. Congratulations to he and Kamala Harris. Now the real work begins.
While the news agencies are still wringing their hands over the inevitable call to project Joe Biden as the next President, House Democrats are already engaged in scapegoating over the election.
The preferred folks to blame? Progressives, the squad, and anyone else that might have a national platform.
It started the night after the election, with this bangup convo from Claire McCaskill of Missouri:
It was followed up with this profanity laced call to Democrats by Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) a former CIA analyst.
Spanberger definitely has some points, but thereâs a lot more going on here she only partially acknowledges.
Message or Messengers
No Democratic member who lost on Tuesday ran on âdefunding the policeâ or âsocialismâ.
Their opponents spent a ton of money painting them as âthose peopleâ, just as they did in a State House race right here in Shelby County.
One of the companies that produced this garbage is so proud of it, they feature it on their website.
This is a feature, not a bug of the right wing political machine. Theyâve been doing it since before the 1994 GOP Contract on America, and have continued unabated.
Why do they do it? Because it works.
It works in vulnerable districts with members who donât spend a lot of time brand building. It is particularly effective for first term members, who have to spend an inordinate amount of time fundraising just to stay viable.
The âotheringâ is part of a culture thatâs been a feature of America for all of the nearly 49 years of my life.
That âotheringâ is predicated on the lie that fuels the outrage fire.
Outrage Culture
Outrage culture has become a feature of our society. People are trained thanks to social media and politically motivated âjournalistic endeavoursâ to act reflexively to information. Facebook and Twitter didnât cause this problem. They just move that outrage faster.
The GOP understood beginning in the 1980âs (and maybe before) that using outrage to drive decisions works in their favor. This formula has continued on in the form of Fox News and now a ton of other copycat organizations that use the word ânewsâ to hid their real purpose: political propaganda.
GOP political organizations have consistently used dog whistle language to portray their opponents as something they are not.
They âflood the zoneâ with shit then leave it up to the member to clear their name, which is impossible because another attack is right around the corner.
The answer isnât to become a captive to this problem (which has been the democratic strategy since the Willie Horton Ad of 1988).
The answer is to flood the zone with your brand long before the campaign even starts. Like, starting right now. So in 2022, when many Democrats are running in new districts, people know you better. This strategy makes suspect attack ads less effective.
Knowing is the whole battle
Thatâs right: knowing your district. Knowing the people in your district. Talking to people who donât vote regularly (easy targets for misleading ads). Talking to young voters. All of these things are simple. Be present in the communityâŚnot just the community you support, but the whole community, and it makes it much harder for outsiders to paint you as the problem.
I recognize, this is much harder in rural districts, where distance may be not only real, but real culturally as well. But thereâs a funny thing that happens when you talk to someone face to face. When you listen to them. Most of them start to like you (unless youâre a total piece of shit, then maybe you need a new career anyway).
In 2012, I talked to thousands of voters. A ton of them were âindependentsâ. Most of those independents were actually white Republicans who didnât vote in primaries. I talked to them anyway. I put signs in some of their yards. I periodically still check in with a few of them.
There is power in knowing the people in your district.
Of course, no one can know everyone. Thatâs where community ambassadors are helpful. They know their neighborhoods better than anyone. You get a network of these folks, and it makes your field operation much easier in the run up to the General.
This works whether youâre a member or not. City Council, County Commission, State House and Senate. Knowing your people, and them feeling like they know you, is the surest path to some immunity from false attack ads.
Socialism is only a bad word if we allow it to be
Iâm not sure why the Democratic Party hasnât put together an ad with the face of some GOP leader on the body of the Queen of Hearts. Instead of saying âOff with their headsâ, the character would say âYouâre a socialist!â.
It would show just how ridiculous this whole socialist name calling gambit is.
If youâre running for office and worried about being called a socialist, then maybe you donât have the stones to be an elected official. Being called a socialist is one of the nicer things people will call you.
If you are called a Socialist, turn that shit around on the GOP.
If youâre asking:
Do I care about access to affordable healthcare? YES!
Do I care that people have an opportunity to make a decent living? YES!
Do I believe that every child is due a quality education? YES!
And youâre done. Youâre a socialist. You care about people.
Own that shit.
You donât have to say youâre a socialist. But if everyone knows you care about the way big problems are solved, they wonât care if you are.
The Elephant In the Room
Thereâs a multi-billion dollar industry in right wing propaganda.
If you have a cable package, youâre helping fund it.
Itâs called Fox News.
Nearly 91% of households in the US have Fox News on their TV dials.
And even if only 30% of that 91% (27% of households) watch that rotten garbage, thatâs more daily message penetration than ANY person running for US House can overcome.
If youâre a Democrat, and Fucker Carlson or Shithead Sean gets wind of your vulnerability, they will target you. They will start the socialist attacks, then the GOPâs text message discipline will get the nut jobs and gun toting thugs out to your next event.
Thatâs how its working.
Thereâs a coordinated effort between Fox and the GOP campaign establishment.
If you donât see it, youâre not paying attentionâŚor benefitting from it.
You have to be more disciplined than they are. Discipline is something Democrats arenât good at.
But through that discipline, both with outreach, message, and policy, you can sustain your brand despite the attacks.
Go Left
The funny thing is, when people donât know who wrote the policy, they like Democratic policy better.
The thing that hampers Democrats from a marketing perspective, is we all have an opinion on how to do things.
That fractures the message.
So when someone says âMedicare for Allâ and another person says âsocialized medicineâ, theyâre saying the same thing, but one is talking about a program, and the other is using a right wing talking point.
On this, we are our own worst enemy. This is where I break from Rep Spanberger.
Just get in a room and decide how youâre going to say shit.
Its really that simple.
New things come up like âdefund the policeâ? Sit down and agree on how to talk about it in no more than two or three sentences.
âWe need to rethink public safety in America. Police, like so many public institutions, have become a catch all solution for problems that are far outside their wheelhouse.â
Or, as Kamala Harris said it on âThe Viewâ:
Noting that many cities spend âmore than one thirdâ of their budgets on police, Harris said she thought the actual task was âreimagining how we do public safety in America, which I support.â
Via The Nation
Incidentally, thatâs also squad member Iilhan Omarâs view.
Not so radical, huh?
Conclusion
You donât have to be a master storyteller to be an elected official and tell people who you are and what you stand for. You just have to do itâŚregularly.
Waiting until the Labor Day before the General is too late.
You have to do it, like every week.
Make a habit of not only BEING present, but presenting YOUR VIEW, YOUR STORY, AND YOUR MESSAGE consistently on every channel available.
Which, coincidentally, is exactly what AOC talks about in this thread.
The DCCC, which is an incumbency protection racket as much as anything, hamstrung its own candidates by keeping qualified digital buying orgs out of the loop.
The DCCC has been making boneheaded moves like this for 4 decades.
Theyâre not protecting incumbency, theyâre imperiling it by being petty.
But thatâs a story for another time.
The bigger point is, this whole âblame the libsâ argument rests on angsty privilege these very same whiners most likely deny exists.
If youâre losing because of right wing talking points, you have no one but yourself to blame for not building your brand into something strong enough to withstand the attacks.
IF youâre a first term Rep., thatâs a serious challenge. Its what has to be done to hold on in a competitive district in a Presidential year. Iâm sorry no one bothered to tell you that until after the election.
Maybe this time weâll learn from our mistakes.
But I wonât count on it.
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