Lies, smears, and distortions all the way down
“If you want people to vote for progressives you can’t get them to do that by repeating right wing ideas,” my friend Anat Shenker-Osorio advised on Twitter yet again on Thursday. Debunking lies by repeating them back simply reinforces the lies. “You have to get the people who already support you to repeat why progressive things are good for all of us & the alternative is to cede our freedoms, families and futures.”
It’s not enough to say why the other guy is bad, hideous even. You have to offer voters a more attractive alternative based in what they truly value.
Allies of both major parties are guilty of selling more fear than hope. It’s just that the GOP, with nothing to sell but fear itself, sells fear more relentlessly.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican-party aligned super PAC, has been running attack ads against North Carolina Democrat Cheri Beasley in the race to replace outgoing Republican Sen. Richard Burr.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. She’s one of THEM. And she’s coming for YOU. More “deranged apocalypticism” of the sort Joshua Tait cited this week. Like other propaganda, the ads are patsiches of lies, smears, and distortions.
These involve Beasley’s taking corporate PAC money she didn’t, “support” for tax hikes that weren’t, and Beasley siccing legions of nonexistent IRS agents on Jane and Joe Average. Beasley has never been a legislator. But the ads never let the truth get in the way of the Othering.
The PAC is running similar ads with similarly debunked talking points wherever there is a competitive Senate race: Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Ohio.
Taking Anat’s advice, I won’t copy the scripts or post the videos here. But Politifact’s assessment of the Senate Leadership Fund’s 2018-cycle ads makes my point (above).
Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund is running an ad in Georgia hitting Republican candidate for Senate Herschel Walker for stances on abortion and guns.
Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent consider the Everytown ad “an effort to connect with voters in a visceral, energizing way by linking abortion and guns around the shared theme of safety and security.”
People can agree on safety and security even if they disagree on particulars. It’s a good place to start. But what the ad lacks is a reason for voters to turn out to vote for the progressive candidate. Just “his extreme agenda puts us all at risk.” (I get it. As a PAC, Everytown does not want to campaign directly for Democrats.)
Shenker-Osorio continues, “Trump Republicans are incredibly vulnerable on the question of how we keep ourselves and our families safe. They block every popular commonsense gun measure out there. And they cheerlead a criminal conspiracy to overthrow our elections.”
“And they are trying to throw us off our storyline – protecting our freedoms – by attempting to distract voters with the exact same story they always tell: divide, scapegoat, fear monger. We need not take the (race) bait.”
The left has to sell itself as vigorously as it attacks its opponents. Start with shared values, identify the villains and pull back the curtain to reveal their actions and true motives, then offer a progressive alternative. Remember not to repeat the lies.
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