Brad Friedman’s tweet (below) led me to Greg Sragent’s tweet which led me to Brian Beutler‘s post and back here to Digby’s Friday post, “What’s popular anyway?” commenting on the same Beutler post about “popluarism,” its merits, its flaws, and why anyone thinks picking “the most popular ideas to run on” is in any way revolutionary.
Digby wrote:
Beutler’s critique is right on the money in my opinion. The public doesn’t understand the implications of most issues and they often tell pollsters what they want to hear. They very often have contradictory views and spout conventional wisdom. Good analysts can sort that out to some degree and professionals who conduct focus groups are able to see through some of the subjects’ attitudes to get to what they really think. But none of that is static. People change their minds, they waffle they go with the crowd or take contrarian stances for all kinds of reasons. Events can change everything.
Mostly people just vote with their tribe because it’s easier. And in this polarized political environment the real task for the parties is to find a way to get people to identify with yours and/or reject the other guy’s. There are ways to do this. As Beutler points out, Democrats have examples like Tester, Brown and Baldwin to prove that.
Voters need to identify more with you than with your policies. You can’t buy that from a pollster. If you could, Terry McAuliffe would be doing better in Virginia.
Regarding Tester (an actual farmer), Beutler wrote this two weeks ago:
So what does appeal to this vague-ish middle that is also compatible with moral leadership? Well, here, for instance, is how Jon Tester presents himself to voters. What is Jon Tester’s policy agenda? You can read that here if you want, but as someone who follows Senate developments very closely my answer to the question was “hell if I know!” What I do know, because it’s what he broadcasts, is that he has a farm and isn’t afraid to (figuratively) pop lying, corrupt Washington politicians in the nose. I also know that he is a huge asset to the party who would never in a million years pull Sinema-esque antics or run scared from a debt-limit vote or abandon his culture-drenched appeals in favor of promoting further means testing of social spending.
Some variation on that formula seems to buy way more good will than promising people what focus groups say they want. Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama are actual pointy-headed former college professors with complicated left-of-center policy visions, but they developed good political brands for themselves with a mix of working-class bromides, ethical conduct, and outsider positioning and it bought them tons of running room, without subjecting them to all the perverse traps that the bipartisanship fetish or “do popular things” can entail.
The word we’re looking for here is authenticity. Those “stupid” voters can sniff out a phony a mile away. As I’ve said:
As a field organizer in the South, I remind canvassers that, no, those voters are not stupid. They’re busy. With jobs and kids and choir practice and soccer practice and church and PTA and Friday night football and more. Unlike political junkies, they don’t keep up with issues. They don’t have time for the issues. When they go to the polls they are voting to hire someone to keep up with the issues for them. And when they look at a candidate — your candidate — what they are really asking themselves is simple: “Is this someone I can trust?”
One of my favorite southernisms is, “I wouldn’t trust anyone my dog doesn’t like.” That, I caution canvassers, is how most Americans really vote, like it or not. And if you don’t purge the thought, those “low information” voters? They will know you think they’re stupid before you do. Right before you ask for their votes.
What makes Tester, Brown and Baldwin acceptable to more conservative voters is they don’t look down on them and they don’t try to bullshit them when answering questions. They don’t dance around what they really think to find a politically beige answer. Those come out sounding evasive. Voters know where guys like Tester stand and will respect someone for that even if they disagree on many issues.
Lack of that sense is among the things that killed Hillary Clinton’s campaign, for all her manifold skills as a public servant. By accounts of people who know her, she’s caring, warm and funny in small groups. But years of right-wing personal attacks and a culture of misogyny meant she did not go out in public without carrying a shield, Wonder Woman-style. Clinton’s was invisible, but it was there. She gave the impression she was peering at you from behind it, and that made her look shifty as a candidate. Her “deplorables” comment cemented that image among people already inclined to distrust her.
I was always impressed by a lefty politician here that he accepted an invitation to speak at a 2012 congressional candidates’ forum sponsored by a local T-party group. Cecil Bothwell was the only Democrat in attendance, and he tried to answer their every question, loaded or not. Mountain Xpress assembled a thread pulled from event tweets:
• Bothwell: Agenda 21 is mostly a fabrication, the UN is NOT moving to take over U.S. gov as many Tea Partiers claim.
• Bothwell on jobs: It’s my view that the Fed gov can help create jobs through infrastructure, transportation projects. Gov spending is a key way to improve economy, just as it was during Great Depression. I realize this goes against the “Taxed Enough Already” philosophy, but I think paying taxes is patriotic.
• Bothwell: I strongly support Obama’s health care reform. It will help bring us in the right direction: a single-payer system.
• Tea Party crowd is listening politely to Bothwell, even as he argues against almost every idea they tend to support.
• Bothwell largely blames military and war spending over last decade for high deficit.
• Folks laugh at Bothwell for saying “the bailout for GM largely worked.” He responds: If you don’t support those jobs, fine. I do.
• Bothwell says he was against the bank bailouts, however.
At the end of it (IIRC), the T-partiers who listened politely thanked Bothwell for coming. He didn’t win any votes, but he earned their respect for stating plainly what he believed, for not talking down to them, and for not trying to snow them with euphemisms. They might not agree, but neither would they hate his guts for disagreeing.
That’s the sense Tester conveys. It’s not about policy. It’s not about message. HE in his flat-top is the message: authenticity. It doesn’t come from poll testing what’s popular.