Democrats have long had a messaging problem, especially at the national level. Sadly, in the past few days it’s become clear that Congressional Democrats have a brain function problem as well, one that is a lot more worrisome than mere issues with messaging, but in the off chance that they stop being afraid of their shadows and piddling all over the floor of the House of Representatives they may need to get back to messaging one day. Despite being told over and over, election after election, that they need to get a message in gear, they still haven’t done it. Maybe this time will be different, if there is a party left.
Democrats tend to view politics and elections as academic tests: voters vote for the objectively “best” party platform out there, and neither message nor personality matter much. I’m not sure why this is. Maybe it’s because they were all wonky nerds who got beat up in high school, or political science majors who focused more on what how things should be instead of how things are. I’m not convinced by this explanation, because I was one of those people and I have no problem understanding how elections really work: voters do not care much about policy. Liberals rant and rave about how poor people vote against their interests when they vote for Republicans and don’t understand why that happens, but that’s just because they don’t understand that the vast majority of people don’t vote for policies. Wonkery doesn’t win elections in this country.
What does? Values. Several years ago I was involved with a group of people called the Minnesota Values Project, which endeavored to get candidates to stop talking about policy and start talking values. Not values exclusively, of course, because that can be as hollow and pointless as yet another 17-point plan for the economy. Talking to voters about how your values drive your policy, though, is the way to connect to voters and earn their support. We worked mainly before the 2006 elections, which were good for Democrats in general, so we can’t take much credit for anything. I’d like to think we helped a bit, though.
Most of our work was on the local level, however. Nationally, Democrats don’t seem to buy into this framing, despite books by people like George Lakoff. Again, I’m not sure why Democrats are so terrible at this, and Republicans are so good. Sure, getting 200+ Congressional Democrats and more than 50 Senate Democrats to agree to, much less use, a simple values message is difficult, but seeing as how Republicans are much better at message discipline it means it’s not impossible. They need the will to do it, which appears to be lacking.
So what exactly am I talking about? Well, take health care. The current health care plan is opposed by the minority of Americans, despite many of the individual pieces having strong support. Why? Because the messaging on the Democratic side has been all over the map, while Republicans have been united in their attacks, even the stupid and inaccurate ones (how long after the first mention of “Death Panels” did just about every Republican around the country start talking about this?). Since Democrats are pushing this bill, with zero Republican support, its up to them to sell it to the public. They have so far failed.
If I were in charge, I’d stick to no more than a few bullet points about what the bill will do. The rest is details, and the details don’t matter to the average person. But I’d hammer, and I’d have everybody hammer in every speech, every interview, every press release, these few points. Say, for example, this list:
- Insurance companies would be unable to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, thereby treating everybody equally.
- Lifetime limits would be removed, giving people freedom from medical bankruptcy.
- To avoid gaming the system, consumers would have the responsibility to buy coverage in a free and open exchange. At the same time, insurance companies would have the responsibility to promptly pay for coverage consumers have paid for.
- Those who can’t afford health coverage will be given the opportunity for assistance to ensure that health issues will not prevent them from bettering themselves and their economic status.
First of all, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that these four statements are not broadly popular in the general public. More importantly, they speak directly to people’s values. Words like equality, freedom, responsibility, opportunity…these are words that resonate with voters and leave them with a positive feeling. Also, by repeatedly coming back to these statements, you can deflect attacks. Of course, for such a message to work, the bill has to actually do these things, but I’m assuming for right now it can.
Had Democrats battered a message like this into the public for the past year, the health care debate would have been much, much different. Had President Obama repeated these over and over, with every public appearance, the dialog would be much changed. But there never was a coherent message about the bill, ever.
One would think that, at the very least, Obama would understand this. What is “Hope” but an emotion? That’s what he ran on. Now, his messaging has gotten completely away from the shared values Americans have. As for people like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, I don’t think they ever thought in terms of values.
Republicans have a simple, tightly scripted message. You can argue, as I do, that their message is completely wrong in parts, but that doesn’t change the public perception of them. Democrats, on the other hand, don’t. Without a message, it’s hard to win much of anything. It’s not too late, though, to get it right.
Later, I’ll have a post about the other ways in which Democrats aren’t delivering, this time in tangible benefits for voters.