Please all, please none
by digby
I’ve been saying that “you can’t be all things to all people” for years out of frustration at the Democratic Party’s insistence that politicians use language designed to put anyone who listens into a coma, especially in an off year election. Here’s evidence that this is true from language expert Anat Shenker-Osorio and pollster Celinda Lake:
The objective in November for every party is turnout — not persuasion. There are very few mid-term voters who don’t already feel strongly about their party; no pithy phrase is going to make them change teams at the end of the season. Politics is tribal — if you show up in the off-season you’re here to root for the home team, not to assess the field.
Further, sophisticated analyses of voter turnout indicate that messages that rile up the base — that get them passionate about a politician — are required, no matter what side of the political aisle. Not a toothless appeal to the greatest number, no matter their political leanings. Republicans have long understood and employed this approach. Democrats need to catch up. This means that even if “economic growth for all” rated most highly with everyone asked, this still wouldn’t necessarily make it the go-to message for engaging a partisan base.
In fact, it’s deeply fitting that the animal in Aesop’s “Please All, Please None” fable was a donkey. This kind of, let’s meet people where they are and actually say nothing, approach is the best summation of current Democratic strategy.
Unlike Republican voters, where many potential Democratic voters are during mid-terms is at home watching television. We need to figure out where they’re capable of going and what it takes to get and keep them there.
Our own recent research on economic issues tells us a progressive approach is in order. What voting skeptics need to hear is recognition that their vote would mean appreciable differences in the economic struggles most Americans are facing.
Messages like “every working parent should get paid enough to care for their kids” and “Americans deserve more than a decent living, they deserve a decent life” test through the roof with our base and persuade that hotly desired middle.
This is in response to the Party’s insistence that the “big winner” of a message is to pimp the idea of “growth” rather than kvetch about “inequality”, the problem being that we’ve had plenty of “growth over the past few years all of it leading to more inequality. The whole approach leads to policies that make the lives of average people worse. And as the authors point out it reinforces a very conservative worldview.
The truth is that nobody’s against economic growth. That’s daft. But average people aren’t benefiting — that rising tide is only lifting the top 1% of boats and everyone else is being shoved underwater. Simply talking about growth is basically lying to people about what needs to be done to make their lives better.
Shenker-Osorio and Lake also make what should be the obvious point that it’s important to appeal directly to your own base voters in these off-year elections rather than swing voters. If they stay home your sunk no matter how many swing voters find your nice, bland messaging about “growth” to be pleasantly inoffensive and non-threatening.
Needless to say, the Republicans aren’t going in that direction.