Know Your Audience 4: We Ain’t Nothing but Pack Animals

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Tuesday April 04, 2017 · 2:43 PM PDT

2017/04/04 · 14:43

Pack Dynamics Explain the Last Election and Indicate a Path Forward for Dems

Without a strong thread of pack identity across a country, a nation and a system of government, particularly a presidential system of government, can easily fail.

You see, it turns out presidential systems of democracy are rather fragile, as we are discovering in the good old US of A. They require a broad set of gentlemen’s agreements, accepted standards of practice, and civility in order to avoid descending into gridlock. (New democracies established since WWII, modeled after our system, mostly fail, while newly formed parliamentary systems of democracy succeed about 2/3 of the time.) In order to maintain the sort of civic discourse required by our version of democracy, a broad swath of the governed have to share some notion that they all belong to the same pack.

It’s time as progressives we begin tailoring our outreach to build pack ties (or break them as the case may be), by using pack dynamics to influence voting behavior and brand associations.

But first, a speed overview of where we are picking up in the series:

In my first post, I established a fundamental difference between right/left audiences. In the second post, I discussed a model for how conservatives think, how they are influenced, and how they store information. It has three components, listed below.

The Narrative
The Noise
The Pack

The third part in this series was about making The Noise, with lots of examples of non-traditional ways to form positive brand relationships, as well information on some of the shortcuts conservatives use to weigh decisions. (Lest we be too judgmental, most of these are basic human tendencies anyway. Instead of railing about the shortcuts, we have to use the shortcuts to our own ends.)

Without further ado, let’s dive into the fourth, and final part of this series. The Pack!

THE PACK

You might believe it impossible to have pack tension and still function as a group. But the fact of the matter is, within packs, there are always disputes and shifting perceptions of status, yet the pack can still march on as a cohesive whole. Consider that in 1970, the Kent State shootings happened, a tragic example of left/right tensions in America. But at the same time, we were also passing some of the most important provisions of the Clean Air Act, which is evidence of a pack acting acting for the good of the whole.

Since the Cold War, Republicans and big money have been purposely whacking a wedge into the right/left tensions in our nation’s pack identity. They have been so successful in vilifying the left, “othering” its beliefs and its values to such a degree, that Dems have been essentially booted off the island. And this lies as the crux of why liberals are so upset, and what Republicans don’t understand, about the last election. Conservatives just can’t get why we are so mad that “our guy lost” — it happens all the time. But the election of Trump with the help of the Russians, represents so much more than that. It shows that Republicans would rather vote a wildly unpopular, unqualified, racist, sexual predator to the highest office in the land in order to defeat our pack. In every way they have essentially said, “You are no longer a part of our pack, or our country… we will take any choice over siding with you on anything.”

And when the pack breaks up, in our system of government, democracy can fail quickly and catastrophically.

Of course, it’s important to mention that this is the experience of the white members of the pack. Marginalized communities have long felt outside the pack — immigrants, LGBTQ folks, communities of color, and Native Americans to name just a few — have been living with this dislocation as a permanent state. And frankly, Anglos have really had to come to terms, in a visceral and uncomfortable way, with what it feels like to not be a part of the pack, which was so perfectly demonstrated on election night by Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, and SNL: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/election-night/3424956?snl=1

STATUS

One of the subconscious drivers in pack dynamics is the notion of status. As pack animals, we are constantly assessing and using status as a sort of shorthand throughout our days in big and small ways. Where we walk, who enters through a door first, who sits where, what place you decide to eat, where you like to vacation, what you study — everything says something about your status. In the marketing and branding work that I do, I use the notion of status frequently. People, places, products, and brands can be low status or high status. Neither is better than the other, they are just distinct.

The trick to achieving lasting brand relationships, whether you are a government agency, a political party, a company, a product, or a person is to create an authentic blend of both high status and low status characteristics for your organization, product, or person. So let’s look at what I mean by that with specific examples:

STATUS AND THE DEMOCRATIC BRAND. Like it or not, the brand of the Democrats is inextricably linked to the brand of government. We are perceived as the party of government. If the brand status of government is wrecked, then our brand is wrecked. Guess what? The brand status of government is completely wrecked right now. We live in a time of the extreme deification of the private sector, and vilification of government. We will never change our brand unless we improve the brand of government. Every government entity, from school districts to water bureaus to planning departments, needs to overhaul their communication budget and their operational focus around improving status perceptions. Why do I say that? Because one of the biggest issues with government’s brand is that its status relationships are exactly opposite of what they should be. They are high status in the wrong ways and low status in the wrong ways.

Government High Status. We want government to be high status in the execution of its job. We want it to do a good job managing taxpayer money, and create benefit for our entire community. We want it to be efficient. Conservatives want government to use tried and true techniques for achieving benefits for stakeholders. Liberals want government to blaze a trail and try new things. (Sometimes you can take the same policy and frame it as either tried and true or blazing a new trail, depending upon your audience.) Unfortunately, government is perceived exactly opposite of that. Most American citizens think government is wasteful, both of time and money. Most people in the United States believe it’s not executing as well as the private sector. (Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. Most private sector companies I know are hugely wasteful. And, I would challenge a private sector company to try and run its business with the type of oversight and transparency the public sector is subject to. Imagine never being able to make a single decision without exhaustive input from a wide range of people who don’t really know anything about what you do!)
Government Low Status. We want government to be accessible, to help us interact with it as citizens, to be caring. Again, we have literally the opposite situation going on in practice. Governments often operate in silos, they don’t cooperate and collaborate well across departments or with citizens. When they engage the public, they often do it in a cursory way, instead of developing mutual understanding and education and then soliciting valuable feedback that can be used. Government is seen as monolithic and unapproachable.

I’ll give you an example of this flipped status relationship in government, using large school districts. Often, you will see parents support the high school track their kids go to, donating time and money to foundations and individual schools. But, if a bond comes up for the entire district, they will vote no. That seems astonishing that public school parents would vote against a public school bond. This happens quite frequently with large school districts though because there is literally zero pack identity across the entire district. Once, when doing interviews to help with communications in a large school district, I asked every stakheolder group when they interacted with the district as a whole. Usually people drew a blank. Students finally came up with, “Checking the Website for snow days.” People couldn’t even tell me if the district name was on the school buses. I mean, it’s like they are invisible in terms of brand. If the district is invisible, it is not high status in the right ways.

And regarding low status elements, if you ask parents about districts as a whole, administratively, the majority will either have no experience, or have a negative experience. The district is often perceived by parents and local schools as being inaccessible, opaque, and doing something that unfairly impacts a specific school or group of children negatively. They have no idea that the individual schools are essentially their brand evangelists. (In the school my kids attend, the principal is amazingly beloved by parents and students alike, she is an incredible advocate for her school. I also happen to know that the district office does not like her at all, and sees her as someone they need to make conform. What is this doing for the districts low status brand relationships? This principal should be a brand evangelist for the district, not viewed as an obstacle.

We need to start reversing status perceptions in government RIGHT NOW in order to improve our brand.

STATUS, RACISM, AND THE ELECTION. People who say this election wasn’t about racism are wrong. For a lot of white voters, it wasn’t necessarily about overt racism (although there was plenty of that). Rather, it was about a more insidious, and covert type of racism that is baked right into the very founding of this country. We have worked hard over the last few hundred years in the United States to create a permanent underclass based purely on race, beginning with slavery and the subjugation of Native Peoples, and then applying that later to subsequent waves of immigrants from communities of color. This was stated quite baldly by John C Calhoun, who served as a VP, Senator, Congressman, Secretary of State and Secretary of War in the United States. He hailed from the state of South Carolina:

“With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and the poor, but white and black, and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals, if honest and industrious, and hence have a position and pride of character of which neither poverty nor misfortune can deprive them.”

Boom. Baked in, permanent mid-level status for white folks, no matter their income.

This creation of a permanent underclass is particularly relevant because of the conservative desire to be identified as “middle of the pack”. I work a lot in red state communities, and I do a ton of branding workshops to improve marketing for places. One of the most interesting characteristics that comes out of my research is that conservatives generally want to feel that they are squarely in the middle in terms of status associations — from a social perspective, form the perspective of security, and the perspective of finances. (Which pretty much governs how you frame everything for conservatives — you are in the middle!)

If you create a permanent lower class, it means that white people always get to feel they are in the middle of the pack. That is until you have a black President. Every day, Obama’s presidency was a reminder that pack dynamics are being shaken up, that being white is no longer an automatic entry to middle of the road status. That is devastating for white people, particularly lower class white people, and elicits an almost primal reaction to protect their status, and a lot of it is entirely subconscious. Which is why they can say with the straight face, “I am not racist” while still voting for Trump, a proud and avowed racist, they are protecting their status without even realizing it.

IMPLICATIONS OF STATUS IN FRAMING FOR WHITE AUDIENCES.

White Working Class. Notice the name, they are called “working class”, rather than “poor”. Here’s the reality: in lower income communities, Dems usually require that people self identify as poor or downtrodden to be a part of our pack. That is a huge mistake with white working class voters. To help these groups, we have to place them squarely in the center. No one wants to have to receive retraining, for instance, it implies that they are stupid and in need of the adult equivalent of remedial spelling class. If you want to bring the a community of white working class people to the table, you have to first identify the unique strengths and skills that come out of their traditional economic base (manufacturing, mining, wood working, agriculture, ranching, whatever), and come up with new ways to apply those skills to create new economic activity.

Instead of saying, “You are poor and need help” we have to say “You have mad skills, let’s find new ways to create commerce with those skills.”

And for policy initiatives, it might be interesting to create toolkits for helping lower income communities based on ways they self identify instead of by income. So for instance, food assistance for rural, suburban, and urban communities. Even if they are literally the same program, if they are targeted to people based on their geography of choice, instead of their income, they might be more palatable and build pack ties across various groups.

White Upper Class. They want to see high status execution in government, and they are particularly sensitive to anything that might imply a loss of white status. By the way, this is one of the interesting implications of status that you have to remember in building brand relationships: almost every human being hates to lose status. And for most groups, and for this group in particular, when some other people’s status goes up, they feel their status has gone down, even though it hasn’t changed in an absolute way at all. Like it or hate it, it’s a reality, so use it! All framing needs to keep this in mind.

I’m going to go back to the big city, large school district example to illustrate this. In a lot of big districts, the most reliable and consistent voters are higher income, higher educational attainment white voters. If you want to pass bonds, you have to appeal to this group. Do you know what they care about most? That white kids aren’t being left behind. Yep, status again. (I know, it’s incredibly self involved and terrible, because that is clearly not a core educational problem. Why do they feel this way? Because in large, diverse districts, it’s common to have a school or two with kick-ass, high-performing Asian and Indian kids getting a lot of press for things like math team, or scholarships to Ivy League schools. This gives upper class whites the perception that their status is slipping. Part of me says, “Who gives a fuck?” But the part of me that works in marketing and branding just wants to make these voters do the right thing and pass the freaking bond, which benefits all kids.) This is why bond campaigns need highly tailored messages. First, you want every parent in the district to have their “parent of a school child” hat on, not their “taxpayer” hat. They should understand directly how they will personally benefit from a bond. Secondly, you need to create targeted materials for consistent white voters to be sure that they know white kids aren’t being left behind. Does this suck? Sure. Does it work? Yes. And while school districts can’t use public funds to do this, a foundation or a teacher’s union can. You know where they live. You know what they need to hear. Make it happen.

Different framing, different people, same policies. We need to make it our mantra.

BUILDING PACK TIES

ENCOURAGE NATIONAL PACK IDENTITY. Peer pressure works, but only if you are part of the same pack. Hurting your fellow Americans with policy, taking more than your fair share, being unwilling to do your part, none of that matters when you are dealing with people outside the pack. This is particularly important for conservatives. They really view the world as inside the pack or outside the pack. They treat these two groups completely differently. Being part of the pack is everything, and being outside is nothing. Liberals try to reconcile the two: treating them as equally as they can, maybe not always succeeding, but it’s an aspiration. If we can’t reestablish a more strong national pack identity across party lines, the country will be lost because conservatives literally don’t care about you if you are perceived as being outside of the pack.

On a local level, where my professional economic development work is conducted, I see people in conservative places working together, side-by-side, regardless of party affiliation, to improve their communities all of the time. The most innovative, interesting, and successful work in government is still happening at the local level, and it’s very heartening. However, this usually completely disappears at the State level and is long gone at the Federal level. Cooperation happens at the local level because everyone is still perceived as pack, regardless of political brand affiliation! Examples/opportunities for creating more purple include:

Highlighting cross-the-aisle collaborations at the city/town level. We are all purple now! The NEA Mayor’s Institute of City Design Program is amazing and the National Main St program is amazing. The city of Miami’s work to deal with sea level rise and climate change is fascinating, and happening despite the State’ s climate change denial. We need to get these stories out there with specific framing around red/blue collaboration.
Show/Support/Highlight red state places implementing perceived blue state policies. Utah is a great example. They are a very conservative state, but are doing some of the most ground breaking work in this country around homelessness, land use planning, and transit. Why? Because they are all pack on a State level, and they really care about what they are leaving their grandkids. They illustrate the conservative ideal perfectly: study the problem, execute with solutions you know will work, do it better than anyone else.
Improve status relationships with conservatives, as described below!
- Lower Status with rural red voters. We need to work on massively lowering our status. To rural folks, Democrats as a party are viewed as being elite, in other words, way too high status. That’s why, in my last post, I suggested ways in which we could make our party, supposedly the party of the people, more approachable. We have to SHOW we are the party of the people, not just talk about it. So having Nancy Pelosi and some of her ilk out picking apples with some migrant farm workers would be an awesome way to lower status and make our party more approachable. Or having some senators washing cars to raise money. Or, going and working in a factory for a day in Ohio. Or helping a small farmer with a harvest.
- Raise Status with Well-to-Do Conservatives. With more well-to-do conservative voters, we need to raise our status around issues related to economics. I work in a lot of red communities doing economic development work. I bring up a ton of progressive ideas about how to tackle improving their economies, some totally whacky! And, I generally get zero push back on those ideas because I present an air tight case on why my ideas make economic sense. I know the numbers inside out. How it really works. I can speak to every concern of the private sector. When you speak to them in the language they care about, with content that they relate to, they can and do make changes.

An example of economic framing came up a few months ago at the #OurFirstStand rallies about saving the ACA. I attended one in Portland, OR which was featured a smattering of Senators and Congresspeople. The delegation that showed up went on and on about single payer, and helping people, and the human element, which is all great. And it was a blue audience, so that’s fine. I was really struck though that Kurt Schrader was the only congressperson that talked about the economic impact of the ACA — reducing the deficit, reducing healthcare costs, and the improved performance of hospitals, especially rural hospitals, with the ACA. Not surprisingly, this came from the Democrat most considered to be a closet Republican! Seriously, it was exactly the argument that would resonate the most with a red state crowd. (And on a side note, these appeals also do well with men of all political stripes.)

CREATE PACK PROFILES. We need to break down the red electorate and consider what conditions encourage: a) full defection from Republican to Democrat; b) partial defection to vote Democrat but still retain the Republican brand identity; or, c) not identify as a Republican and be demoralized enough not to vote. Areas of study include:

Voters who change their brand affiliation from conservative to liberal. We need to quantify and codify the inflection points that come with this change, such as life circumstances, age, demographics, gender, income, education, geography, etc and pursue flipping more of those people. Oddly, my father has gone through a sort of liberal/conservative/uber-liberal arc in his life. If we can figure out this process, we can hasten it along.
Study Republicans who haven’t changed their personal brand connection to the party, but who vote and/or contribute to Dems regularly. For instance, I know people who vote Democrat, but they still identify as Republicans because they first began their political lives as Republicans and it’s a part of how they see themselves. It’s like using Tide for life because your Mom did. These are people we should leverage and court more heavily. How can we flip them? Should we flip them? There are a lot of them out there.
Study what characteristics most tie different demographic groups to the Republican part of the pack, and systematically work to a) break those connections with the GOP, and b) build new connections with the Dems. As was discussed previously, three big brand associations Republicans care about include: a perception of strength, patriotism, and success. So we should always work to portray them as weak, unsuccessful, traitors to their own pack, and try to woo them through stories of strength, patriotism and success in our own ways. To win red people to our brand, we have to give them positive reasons for being one of us. Again, to address the idea of status, we have to stop telling people, “Hey, you are a bunch of poor losers, and by the way, we can help you with that.” No conservative person will almost never join a pack that requires them to self identify as as a broke, uneducated dumb ass in need of retraining. As we talked about in the comment thread of my last post, conservatives are excited they are in the pack with a dude who has a golden toilet! That’s not a negative.

I know this was a long one! Believe it or not, I had to cut a ton of stuff! Ha. Anyhow, this is the final post in this series. Thanks for sticking with me and A thousand apologies for taking so long to finish it. It has been wonderful to engage in a discussion with the Kos community about these issues. Gives me hope for the world!!

Between and betwixt my actual life responsibilities, I also contribute to DissentEngine.com with resistance prose in the form of #HaikuThursday, the #DissentDeck (little cards with resistance quotes we collectively besprinkle around the country) and general small activities we engage in to retain our sanity. We are hoping to facilitate some larger resistance projects at the intersection of art and dissent soon too! You can follow us on Twitter @DissentEngine.

Know Your Freaking Audience 3: Making Noise that Slaps People Upside the Head

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 15, 2016 · 3:48 PM PST

2016/12/15 · 15:48

Sing_a_Song_of_Six_Pants_(1947)_2_PD_Three_stooges.jpg

This is the third part of my series looking at how we can take the Republican identity machine down a peg...do some damage to their brand identity. And that’s why we are talking about audience. In order to manipulate brand associations, you have to understand your audience. I know, “manipulate” is a frank word that a lot of liberals are uncomfortable with, but that’s really what effective marketing and PR is — manipulation.

A quick summary of where we are so far:

In my first post, I generally talked about the GOP audience. In the second post, I discussed a model I have for how conservatives think, store information, and make decisions. It has three components:

The Narrative
The Noise
The Pack

The quick explanation of this model is that GOP identifiers live in a narrative that is impacted largely by two things: Noise and Pack. If we are going to get people to shift their narrative, we need to understand The Noise and the Pack in more detail.

Today, I’m going to talk about The Noise!

THE NOISE

If you want to get people’s attention is this busy media world, where consumers (and voters are consumers) are inundated with conflicting messages, you have to get off the path of thinking a 12 point plan and a press release are going to get you there. It especially isn’t going to get you there with conservatives. It’s hard work bypassing all the filters people have set up to NOT PROCESS messages they aren’t receptive to. Unless we get creative about bypassing that, we will keep getting our asses handed to us.

So I’ve generated some basic rules to follow for making noise with conservatives to get their attention about various issues. Within each of these rules, I offer an example of how someone has implemented that rule, and then I give some thoughts on how we might be able to apply them strategically to Trump and the GOP.

RULE 1: STOP TALKING, START SHOWING

As we discussed in previous posts, conservatives use a lot of shorthand techniques in their decision making and information parsing. “Where There’s Smoke, There’s Fire” is one of the shortcuts we discussed — they don’t necessarily want to wade into facts, rather they prefer to take the aggregate temperature of noise. They also prefer symbolism shortcuts. As an example, they believe if you revere the flag, then they get to actually receive credit for revering all of the collective ideals of America. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Someone can actually revere the flag, and then shit on the ideals of America. But that’s another story.

The key with shortcuts is to think about how to use them to shape thinking, to convey ideas. Instead of railing about the use of shortcuts, use them to make inroads.

One way to look at your messaging is to enumerate your goals, and then for each goal/item, consider how to show it, rather than tell it. Showing is always better.

As an example of how to start showing and stop talking, consider the the former mayor of Bogatá, Antanas Mockus, who was a genius at showing!

When there was a water shortage, Mockus appeared on TV programs taking a shower and turning off the water as he soaped, asking his fellow citizens to do the same. In just two months people were using 14 percent less water.

I would love to see California’s Governor Brown take a navy shower, maybe onboard a military vessel, on TV as a means of encouraging rich white folks to save water in California.

APPLICATION of rule 1 to making noise directed at conservatives

I’m going to give three examples of showing here, a light, medium and heavy example.

Screen_Shot_2016-12-15_at_8.24.57_PM.png

Light Example: This is one that I’m involved in: creating a Dissent Deck, which is a deck of small, business-size cards with pithy Dissent sayings on them that we leave in random public places for others to find (pictured to the right). Because these cards are showing up in unexpected places, and they are bright red, and you can pick them up, touch and feel them, it is much more interactive, engaging, and memorable.

We want to grow this into a large, visual piece of resistance that worms its way into people’s everyday life — on the bus, in a bathroom, when you get a plastic bag out of a public dog poop scooping station. These are times when filters are down, and if you begin to see these cards consistently as a Trump supporter, you begin to feel maybe you are out of step with a large number of people. As pack animals, humans don’t like that, especially conservatives. The GOP generally deals with being out of step by shutting out what the rest of America thinks, so we have to figure out how to bypass that, because peer pressure works!

(You can download, print, and distribute your own Dissent Deck at the link above. It’s actually really fun leaving them around your city! More info in general at Dissent Engine.)

Medium Example: The Dems love to talk about how much we support immigrants, communities of color, LGBTQ communities, working class voters, lower income folks, etc. We are the party of the people, or so we like to think. Here’s the problem. We just talk about it, we don’t show it. If I were in charge of Dem messaging, I would develop social media channels around Dems getting real, rolling up their sleeves, and spending time in the trenches, in large ways and small ways. Live video on facebook, snap chat stories, the works. Every week some group from Congress would be doing something real and authentic, along the lines of the following:

Take a large group and travel to some area farms and participate in a day of picking. I would pay money to see Nancy Pelosi out picking apples in her jeans.
Send small delegations to pop up “we support you” protests at planned parenthoods, mosques, and immigrant centers with funny signs! (Have videos of them actually making their signs.)
Work side-by-side with jail road cleaning crew.
Send a crew to work an assembly line or warehouse jobs at an Amazon warehouse.
Clean up schools with night crew janitors.
Small groups frequenting and showcasing immigrant-owned restaurants.
Take a large group and attend church services in minority communities, or non-christian services. Just pop in.
Host a random Senate fundraising carwash and Congressional fundraising carwash on different car lots at the same time in DC, and make it a competition to see who can raise more money for a cause that fights Trump.

In every case, senators and congresspeople should be interacting with folks, interviewing them, talking about what they learn, sharing their observations. And make the actual representatives and senators run the technology. Watching old dudes stumble with new technology, is funny...and humanizing!

Heavy Example: This will make a lot of people uncomfortable, but remember, we are talking about how to make noise that gets attention, so I’m putting it all out into the fighting arena. Because flag burning enrages Republicans, that also means it gets their attention. When trying to get people’s attention, it’s smart to use techniques that are known to work. So perhaps the left could use flag burning to send a new message. Instead of using it as a symbol to say “we don’t agree with something our country is doing,” protesters could use it to show “This is what Republicans are doing to America — they are burning our country down.” This would get loads of coverage for the protests, which creates noise around the idea that a lot of America isn’t very happy. Mind you, this tactic would make a lot of people very mad, so you aren’t using this to win hearts and minds, more like you are using it to demonstrate extreme anger on the left, and stake out a more radical left position on the political spectrum, so the idea of what is reasonable and who is in the middle shifts leftward. This kind of work can paves the way for moderates to make progress.

RULE 2: THEY REMEMBER HOW YOU MAKE THEM FEEL

I love Maya Angelou’s quote “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

I want to build on this, because I think it’s true, but not always in ways people think. For instance, unless you are ready to go to the mat about something, Republicans don’t think you really care about the issue, particularly conservative men. So you have to literally make them feel something unpleasant before they will process that it’s something you care about. (Another shortcut...) Liberals find this very irritating because progressives don’t want to argue, they want to talk about it and work out a compromise. This tendency to make things work is used against liberals time and again.

The lesson here is that sometimes you have to make them feel a way they don’t want to feel to get the point across that you care about something. Stupid, I know. But there it is.

So what do Republicans not want to feel? Shame. They really don’t want to feel humiliated — okay, none of us do, but it’s a big deal for Republicans. Our instinct as Dems is to honor that, which is frankly, stupid. Instead, we should be using it to drive behavior.

An example, again, from the Mayor of Bogata. He wanted to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries in the city, and he realized that people weren’t really motivated by getting tickets or fines. So instead, he launched hundreds of mimes to wander the city and mock anyone breaking traffic laws, they seriously embarrassed the shit out of law breakers, pedestrians and drivers alike. Guess what? It freaking worked. Traffic fatalities went down 50%.

People remembered how much they didn’t like being mocked, and they changed their behavior accordingly.

APPLICATION of rule 2 to making noise directed at conservatives

My dream for implementing this in our current political climate, which involves the GOP walling themselves off from feedback from the majority of America, is to create a tip line/flash spoken word protest movement. It runs like this.

First, we gather together like minded activists who live in or around DC who are willing to stand up in a public place and recite a spoken word piece about how Republican policies are actually affecting real people (Insurance stories, Medicare stories, Social Security stories, SNAP stories, etc.)
Second, we actually write said spoken word pieces.
Third, we set up a tip line, a la TMZ, where people phone in photo tips of where GOP folks are in DC at any given time. We may want to explore paying for tips.
Fourth, we send out a Lyft-style request to our volunteers, and any volunteer near a spot where a conservative has been tipster-outed can take the assignment.
Fifth, said volunteer walks in and recites the spoken word piece to that GOP leader in loud public voice wherever they are.

Republicans will not be able to go to a restaurant, to a coffeeshop, to a performance, anywhere, without hearing how real America thinks and feels. And it will be filmed and shared by bystanders on social media. That, my friends, is noise.

Elected officials should feel shame for pursuing policies that harm Americans.

Know any billionaires who want to fund this? I would put my business on hiatus to set this up in a heartbeat.

RULE 3: PICK TWO GOP STRENGTHS, THEN BEAT THEM TO DEATH…FOR YEARS

When engaging in character assassination, or brand destruction of a politician or a party, you have to attack a perceived strength. Then, you have to beat these strengths to death for years. Why does this work? Because we bypass conservative (and frankly human) filters by invoking the shortcut conservatives use to process information: “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” Conservatives may not dive into details, but they do aggregate and respond to general trends in what people are making noise about.

The Republicans used this strategy with Hillary Clinton very effectively. She went from a 69% popularity rating when she stepped down as Secretary as State to ratings in the low 40s during the campaign. They beat two drums — Benghazi and Emails — relentlessly and effectively, exactly in her two areas of perceived strength: trustworthiness and competency. Right? She ran on “Most qualified person running for President.” And you know what? They very successfully undermined that brand by using this technique.

APPLICATION of rule 3 to making noise directed at conservatives

So what two areas should we focus on to diminish Trump and the GOP? (And mind you, we have to tie one to another — the GOP and Trump should always be linked. We don’t want them later trying to claim that it was all the other’s fault.) In the comment thread of my last post, I posited two areas of strength that are a fundamental part of their Pack Identity that might be worthy of focus: monetary success and patriotism. They both tie together nicely, as you will see below.

Also, I want to be clear that we have to pick just a couple of things. A classic Dem mistake is to be paralyzed by wanting to right every wrong, explain every cheat. And to do it in an ad hoc, uncoordinated manner. (I am so sick of individual Dems all frantically circulating random petitions on Facebook. LEAD US for God’s sake.) Pick something, ask us to support it. Republicans don’t care and won’t pay attention to a lot of random small things. Noise. We need to make a lot of it about a few things. That is what is memorable. So let’s consider monetary success and patriotism in more detail.

GOP STRENGTH 1: MONETARY SUCCESS

One of the reasons GOP voters go against their economic self interest is because they are really excited about being in the pack with the rich kids, it makes them feel successful by brand association. (And yes, we need to work on messaging that doesn’t require people to self identify as screwed up and poor….but that’s another post.) We cannot let this brand association stand. We must tear it down. One way to start would be by attacking how they are making their money (by screwing people), not the fact that they have money. So something like, “Hey, we don’t begrudge people being rich, but you shouldn’t make your money by poisoning the drinking water of...” That sort of thing. This could be particularly effective with Trump at the helm.

Step 1 For Trump: Create Simple, Three-Part Divestment Demand.

I can’t believe I haven’t been seeing a very short and very clear list of divestment demands consistently coming from Dems, every day, every hour, on every kind of media. Keep it short and simple: In order to be considered a legitimate President, Donald Trump must:

Release all of his tax returns so we know if he has Russian business interests and what his exact holdings are.
Immediately place ALL holdings in a blind trust.
Remove his children from running his companies, and remove them from influence in government.

There, now we have a list of demands to rally around. Right now, there is nothing but a litany of bad news to rally around, so everyone mills. We need a specific list of short demands that are easily actionable. That could get people riled up and it is something we can put continued pressure on Trump to do. Even if he never does it, by continuing to ask for the same things, over and over, for a long time, it lends the sense that there is something nefarious he is hiding.

Step 2 For Trump: Unceasing Bribe Investigations.

Stop using the phrase “Conflict of Interest”. Instead, use the phrases “Fraud” and “Bribe Taker”. It ties into patriotism and treason when you have a a foreign angle, and works for domestic bribery as well. So essentially, any way in which an entity or other country uses GOP/Trump businesses to curry favor, the GOP are acting as bribe takers and perpetrating fraud. This should frame everything, including how we talk about and pursue investigations. They are bribery investigations, pure and simple. (We might need a legal check on exactly how to frame this for slander reasons since the Drumfster is lawsuit happy.)

Step 3: Lawsuits:

Find companies Trump competes against that are willing to sue him for unfair advantage since he won’t divest. Throw in lawsuits about betraying the constitution with business interests. (Also un-American). Lawsuits about appointing his children. Talk about how much it is costing America. blah blah blah. We also need to make sure Dem talking heads speak about all lawsuits, state and federal, all the time, in the same way.

Bonus GOP Policy Tie In

These characteristics of Trump described above — being a fraud, being a con man, being a cheat — can also be used as a sort of continuation play in framing GOP policies. If we can find a phrase structure for Trump’s bad behavior, and then apply that same framework to GOP policy initiatives, the cadence becomes the tie in with no complicated explanations needed. It all becomes part and parcel of the same thing.

I was thinking a reverse Robin Hood kind of phrasing might work: “Steals from [insert victim] and gives to [himself, cronies, etc.].”

Trump

Trump is stealing from American taxpayers and lining his own pockets. [Such as for renting out Trump Tower]
Trump is stealing from American taxpayers and giving that money to Carrier to automate the plant. Those jobs will be gone in Indiana soon anyway.
Trump plans to rob hard working American taxpayers and line the pockets of his 1% swamp buddies taking up residence in DC.
Trump is taking bribes from foreign governments and lining his own pockets at the expense of the American people.
Trump is stealing government cabinet positions and selling them to the highest bidders who donated to his campaign.

Then you take this same cadence and apply it in general to Republican initiatives:

Infrastructure:

Trump plans to steal from the American taxpayer and gives to rich contractors to build bridges to nowhere.
Trump plans to take from the American taxpayer and gives to rich contractors to build a freeway that isn’t even needed.

Medicare:

Paul Ryan is literally willing to kill your grandmother so he can give a tax break to the 1%
Paul Ryan is taking from sick Americans and giving to rich insurance company CEOs

Social Security:

Paul Ryan wants your grandparents to eat dog food so he can give a tax break to the 1%
Paul Ryan wants to steal your Social Security payments so he can give a tax break to the 1%

Environment:

Donald Trump is taking clean air from the American people and selling it to oil company CEOs.
Donald Trump is taking clean water from the American people and selling it to large companies.
Donald Trump is taking public land from the American people and giving it to a few ranchers.

You get the picture. They are making money by stealing from America. They are con men. They are frauds. They are cheats. They are destroying the reputation of America to enrich themselves.

Some people might say, “Well we tried that with Trump University and what we knew of his taxes...it didn’t work.” I would remind you, they didn’t destroy Clinton’s popularity overnight. It’s a cumulative thing. And with Trump, that’s hard to manage because there are so many transgressions to focus on, it all gets lost, one buried underneath the next outrage. We have to focus on a few things and be relentless about them, for years.

GOP STRENGTH 2: PATRIOTISM

I was having lunch with a left leaning friend recently, and we were talking about the election, of course, and I mentioned how it might be good to hit the GOP in the area of patriotism. My friend replied, “Really, do people really care about that?”

That’s a Dem thinking like a Dem and assuming the Republican audience believes the same things that Dems do. They don’t.

When I do market research in red communities, one of the questions I ask is “What is your [district, city, neighborhood, town, etc.] passionate about?” Very open ended. People in conservative communities invariably answer this question with “patriotism” as an item — it matters to them, a lot. Progressive communities never answer with patriotism. This is a classic example of how liberals don’t pursue a strategy because it doesn’t appeal to us.

We need to assail Trump, and the GOP for being UN-AMERICAN, and for being TRAITORS, and we need to paint them with an elitist bent, wherever possible. I’m going to reiterate my thoughts from the comment section of my last post that are still true today, even more so with all the Russian hacking stories. We need to mock them for electing the thing they supposedly hate — east coat elites!

It is un-American to collude with Russians, the GOP and Trump are traitors.
It is un-American to reject the White House and not work where your job actually takes place.
It is un-American to choose to live in New York rather than the South, where your job actually is.
It is un-American that your family doesn’t live with you in the White House.
It is un-American to be best friends with Julian Assange.
It is un-American to take bribes from foreign leaders.
It is un-American to work with a foreign power to throw an election.
It is un-American to give your kids jobs in the White House while they run your company.

Next up in the series: The Pack!

Know Your Freaking Audience 2: Denting the GOP Brand

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 01, 2016 · 3:23 PM PST

2016/12/01 · 15:23

Do you want to successfully take the Republican identity machine down a peg? Do you want to shave off slices of the GOP electorate? Then you need to understand that audience, and communicate accordingly.

The left has to stop treating the right as if they think, process, and make decisions like liberals. They are not, and they do not.

In this second post of this series, I want to explore a model I have been musing over to help understand how to think like a conservative, and devise communication strategies that can create brand division, or that might be meaningful for splintering voting groups.

The model has three components, listed below, which I want to look at one-by-one with examples.

1. The Narrative

2. The Noise

3. The Pack (Brand Identity)

THE NARRATIVE

The Narrative is the mental construct where conservatives live. This construct has nothing to do with reality in key ways that we all have to understand in order to start kicking ass.

First, as we have seen with the very successful fake news engines making tons of money off the GOP on social media, The Narrative is not fact-based, nor is it particularly interested in facts. The Narrative only cares about information that reinforces The Narrative, regardless of its veracity. Truth doesn’t matter.

The second characteristic of The Narrative is that it’s more malleable than Democrats think, shifting very dramatically in response to The Noise and The Pack. For instance, Evangelicals were totally happy to shift their moral Narrative to elect a pussy grabbing wife cheater to the highest office in the land. Republicans, the party of virulent anti-Russian sentiment, were happy to view the entire Trump campaign’s collusion with Russia as a good thing. An astonishing shift. People will move the narrative in response to Noise, or to stay with the The Pack. (More on The Pack below.) So we need to think about using The Narrative to move people’s perceptions, it is malleable. Use it.

The third characteristic of The Narrative is that it lives in an almost constant state of conflict. An example would be the way that poorer conservatives vote against their own economic self interests when they vote GOP. Liberals always try to resolve conflicts like this, conservatives ignore them. In fact, they go out of their way to avoid acknowledging the conflict all together. Dems love to point out the conflict, as if conservatives are going to stop and take an unflinching look at this essential conflict, and then decide to resolve it and becomes liberal. Pointing out the existence of the conflict is not a useful strategy for reaching Republicans.

THE NOISE

Republicans are too dependent upon "Where there is smoke, there is fire!" as a shortcut for evaluating and categorizing truth, or even deciding what is important to consider in decision making, such as figuring out who to vote for. Essentially, what this means is that Republicans respond almost exclusively to Noise, not to nuance.

To be clear, The Noise (“Where there is smoke, there is fire”) shortcut is a human shortcut that we all use. While The Noise is a shortcut that is a huge timesaver, and is probably super effective in small closed systems where you know everyone and information is passed through informal networks of people you trust, like in a town of 500 or 1,000 people, it is NOT effective in large, complex systems.

The challenge with The Noise is that Republicans overuse this method for decision making. As a group, they generally don’t have an interest in diving into facts, especially if those facts run counter to The Narrative. Liberals love facts, and 10 point plans, and breaking down issues. Republicans don’t necessarily care, unless there is a lot of The Noise to tell them to pay attention. They are primarily looking at how many people are making the same noise, and the overall volume of that noise, and only when those two are in concert, and HIGH, do they tend to pay attention. If you are going to talk like a liberal — fact-based, nuanced, multi-point, annotated lists…with a lot of discussion, dissenting and opposing viewpoints — then it might as well be invisible to Republicans.

Let’s look at an example from the last election. In written communications, the first thing that’s important to conservatives are headlines. The article itself is often pretty meaningless. So if a big story hits the cycle, such as the Comey letter to Congress, what’s important to look at is not what people write in their articles, but what the headlines say, particularly in main stream media. I remember checking after the Comey disaster, and they all said some version of the same thing: “Clinton investigation reopened.” That’s it. Game over. Where there is smoke, there is fire. She is guilty, otherwise, why would the FBI reopen an investigation? Some of the worst headline writing I have ever seen happened in that news cycle.

And let’s be honest, The Noise works on Dems too. Not a lot of people wanted to wade through all the complications and ins and outs of the email scandal that was not a scandal, so they defaulted to The Noise. I heard a lot of liberals say, “Well, Hillary has some real issues there with her emails too…” but when I would ask for follow up, they couldn’t really tell me anything. The Noise works.

The left is absolutely horrible at creating concentrated, collective, and loud Noise — whether it’s countering fake news propaganda, or influencing The Narrative using Noise. The bottom line is that conservatives, particularly conservative males, don’t really think your beliefs are solid until you engage with them in a huge fight and beat them over the head with Noise. This was one of Obama’s biggest failings, not recognizing that there is a whole different way you have to engage part of the populace.

If we are going to be a successful party of opposition, we need to start using Noise much more effectively.

THE PACK (Brand Identity)

The last influencer for Republicans is The Pack. Human beings are pack animals. And conservatives, when I do market research in red communities, really want to a) strongly identify with and be a part of a pack; and b) they often like being smack dab in the center of the pack. Pack is everything. So much so, that conservatives actually have two realities — inside the pack, and outside the pack. That is why a small town can have an accepted cross dresser that everyone treats well, but these same people will vote for virulent anti-LGBTQ laws and discrimination. Or that infamous, “black friend” that conservatives love to haul out as proof they aren’t racists. In a twisted way, there is truth to their logic. Inside the pack, they really do treat people differently than they do abstractly, outside the pack. And they are completely comfortable with that essential conflict in ways liberals do not understand.

Democrats don’t think about The Pack strategically at all. If you want to start impacting voter patterns, you have to understand why these voters want to be a part of the GOP pack, identify exactly what are the attributes they associate with and relate to, and then you have to go about dismantling those pack associations ruthlessly, one-by-one. Destroy them.

This very issue just came up in a recent article about rural Kentucky Medicaid recipients being upset about the ACA going away, but still voting for Trump. At the end of the article, a woman said she voted for him “because she is a Republican.” Policy doesn’t matter. Pack is everything.

In general, I would say the GOP projects a brand of strength, of steadfastness, of success, of wealth, of aggression, of patriotism, of loyalty. So that’s where you attack them. Why would a rural Kentuckian want to associate with Dems? Liberals want to study them in order to help them, and give them “retraining” and “technical assistance”. (Who wants retraining and receive technical assistance? I know I don’t! Frame it differently people.) To a big slice of the country, we give off a vibe of being weak and lacking conviction, and we are essentially telling them if they come into our pack, they are weak and stupid and need help. Not a sexy, or effective brand identity for our pack.

==========

In the next post in this series, I am going to offer some thoughts on how to proceed in terms of messaging, given this model. Coming soon!!! Thanks for sticking with me on such a long post.

In the meantime, feel free to join us at www.dissentengine.com, where a collection of us share the small intentional acts of #DailyDissent that we engage in each day to remind ourselves that we support rights and opportunities for all Americans! Some are even fun!

Know Your Freaking Audience Series 1: Misinformation

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 17, 2016 · 11:18 AM PST

2016/11/17 · 11:18

So the first rule of marketing club is know your freaking audience. I mean seriously, you should know everything about them: how they think, what’s important to them, what they identify with, how they process and store information, how they make decisions, what they like, what they don’t like.

In watching the Dems and ReThugs circle each other nationally every 2 years, I feel the GOP knows us inside out, but lefties act like they don’t know a God damn thing about conservatives, especially around the ideas of motivation and information processing.

Because I do a lot of market research in red communities, and grew up in a very red rural place, I’m going to do some redsplaining as it relates to voter motivation and messaging.

I’m going to start this series with some observations about misinformation. The role of fake news in this election was outsized, and frankly, downright scary. It seemed the right wing noise machine had finally figured out how to make full use of the Internet, which really highlighted the different ways the left and the right respond to propaganda.

Over the years, when my conservative friends on Facebook went on a rant about guns or gays or minorities, said rant would often start with a bald faced lie based about some sort of meme. The kind of thing that was patently, and obviously false. And if one wasn’t sure, one could have spent about a few seconds confirming said meme was false by using a really simple search.

Usually, I would find myself patiently explaining that it was false, provide them a link to the proof, and then explain why their behavior was offensive. The conservative reply would inevitably be: “Oh, well, thanks for telling me, but I don’t really care, it’s what I believe anyway.”

Let’s fast forward to this election. I have had countless Facebook friends who range from almost anarchists to solid Dems, and they are all feverishly sharing posts about Democratic click bait memes that are false, encouraging connections to ignore said memes, and telling people definitely not to repost them. They didn’t care that these memes might support the liberal narrative.

So the conservatives are happy to repost anything that fits their narrative, regardless of veracity. Probably smart in a propaganda war. The liberals are careful about re-posting suspicious items, taking the time to check them, and generally avoiding the spread of junk news. Probably not smart in a propaganda war.

This seems to have been borne out by market forces. The buzzfeed article about the kids in Macendonia making false news items to draw ad revenue was particularly revealing: by far the highest volume of re-posts, and therefore the most profitable misinformation, were items fed to the Republicans.

I’m not going to draw some grand conclusion from this right now, I’m still processing. But I do think it speaks to a fundamental difference in the ways that the right and the left process information, and that we really need to think more strategically about how we message to conservatives if facts don’t really matter. In other words, stop treating them like they are us.

In the meantime, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to harnessing all of this passion to do something about the dreaded #Drumpf, and start making some noise in our own unique Dem style (in other words, not through retweeting fake news.) And also, how do we get folks engaged who aren’t experienced activists and political junkies? (Hint: It’s not yelling at them about safety pins and Facebook posts.) So I’m collaborating on a site called Dissent Engine that is going to feature a #DailyDissent activity that is easy to complete every day — accessible, reasonably fast, meaningful, and even occasionally fun. A collective reminder of what we stand for.

It will also will feature a mix of more serious projects and blog posts about messaging and dissent. Dissent Engine is on Twitter too @DissentEngine!

Economic Insecurity, Fear of Crime, and GOP Voting

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday November 25, 2012 · 5:04 PM PST

2012/11/25 · 17:04

Why were residents in Spokane, Washington so worried about crime even though they were listed as the fifth safest city in America? What does this have to do with conservative populations and how they vote?

I work with communities, districts, and public agencies on branding and identity projects; oftentimes in struggling areas, including lower-income suburbs, rural towns, and edge cities. This means I spend a lot of time in conservative locales, gaining insight into why those that lean right are so engaged by extreme Republican messaging, and are prone to voting against their own economic self interest.

The identity-framework process we employ in these communities is rather unusual in that we utilize the same story framework that improvisation artists use to help communities and public sector agencies build their own authentic story with their own words. This framework allows us to quantify all of the elements of a place's story…even (or especially) the elements they might not be aware of, or that they might want to ignore.

So, what has this process revealed about our more elephantine brethren? I will tell you below the fold!

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday June 07, 2009 · 4:31 PM PDT

2009/06/07 · 16:31

My ten-year old daughter broke her wrist badly while playing outside a restaurant in Buenos Aires, where my family and I were eating with some friends.

Our experiences dealing with a health care system in which we had no insurance and an intermediate level of Spanish was positively illuminating in terms of illustrating how broken things are in the US.

Our first trip to the public hospital emergency room, via ambulance, was completely free (this included x-rays, local anesthesia, wrist setting, a specialist...). Our second visit visit two days later due to swelling issues, this time to a private hospital, cost a grand total of $56.

Follow me below the fold to hear first hand how it feels to participate in a health care system that works.

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday March 22, 2009 · 10:55 AM PDT

2009/03/22 · 10:55

It has been interesting to live in a nation that was once one of the wealthiest and most successful countries in the world, but is no longer. (My family and I are currently in Argentina.)

At the turn of the century, in the early 1900s, Argentina was a top 10 GDP nation built upon massive exportation of grains and meats. Their success was derived from multiculturalism, generous immigration policies, and an ability to work with foreigners both in terms of investment and export strategies. Argentina generally had higher wage-paying jobs than Europe at the time. This persisted roughly until World War I.

What the hell happened? Crappy government is what happened.

Powerful people making decisions to benefit themselves while hurting their country is what happened. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday October 22, 2008 · 2:19 PM PDT

2008/10/22 · 14:19

One woman's story to get her damned ballot, come hell or high water.

My husband and I knew that we would be traveling in Argentina when ballots were sent to voters in Oregon. So, like the good little citizens that we are, we marched to the elections office in September to ask them what we should do--you figure that would be enough time, right?

We told them that we were leaving October 9th for Latin America and asked for advice on how to ensure that we would receive our ballots. We seemed to confuse everyone; however (follow me...)

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday October 10, 2008 · 9:39 PM PDT

2008/10/10 · 21:39

Preface: I am insanely lucky to be in a financial position to be able to afford coverage I won't be able to use in order to maintain insurance, but that doesn't change the fact THAT I SHOULDN'T HAVE TO.

My family and I are taking a year sabbatical overseas. I have been self-employed and have always paid for individual insurance. I have some pre-existing conditions and our children have life threatening food allergies as well as some ocular pre-existing conditions.

In order to ensure that we are not turned down for insurance when we return, we are going to have to pay several thousand dollars over the next year for a high deductible insurance plan in the United States with limited benefits. Follow me after the fold for more.

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday October 03, 2008 · 3:51 PM PDT

2008/10/03 · 15:51

Alaskans benefit from big petro-dollar supported refund checks and the highest earmark spending per capita in the nation.

Alaska is not a microcosm for America--it is an energy producing state (we don't have a lot of those) with a very small population that is controlled much like the population in Saudi Arabia, by sending them petro-dollars to keep them happy.

Sara Palin's job as governor is to see how much energy-money she can distribute to the Alaskan populace directly. Gee, I wonder why her approval ratings are so high!?! She doesn't have to govern, she only has to bribe.

I'm sure every other governor in this country would love to be in her shoes.

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday October 01, 2008 · 2:47 PM PDT

2008/10/01 · 14:47

I have put on my Republican thinking cap and have compiled a PRO/CON list in order to make the case for Republican disdain of Arugula and Latte. (Unfortunately, once I tapped into my inner wing nut, I couldn't think of any PROs, so really, it's simply a CON list.)

ARUGULA CONS

It's a funny word that is hard to say. (What the hell is wrong with just plain lettuce?)

Arugula is not a highly processed food made with corn syrup by the military industrial food complex, so it must be removed from American diets. (It's un-'merican to eat anything not made with Number 2 corn.)

It was very popular in ancient Rome, so it's foreign. (If we've banned French toast and French fries, then we sure as hell should ban some "Aye-talian" vegetable.)

Arugula has the fancy pantsy nickname of "Rocket," therefore it must be a gay vegetable.

MichRee

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday September 28, 2008 · 11:26 AM PDT

2008/09/28 · 11:26

I had many friends during the primary who were very vehemently supportive of either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton.

The Obama supporters were people who were largely new to the political process and were very enthusiastic about their candidate, expecting any and all to spend their free time helping Obama.

My friends who supported Hillary were generally women, many older, who were beside themselves with excitement that we finally had a superstar female candidate to back for the office of the Presidency.

I was on the fence for a long time. It was a tremendous joy to me that we had TWO erudite, intelligent, capable candidates. I truly didn't know what to do with myself. So I enjoyed the race and developed a mantra for my friends decrying the length of the primary: "Whoever wins this and goes against the Republicans in the general election will need to be battle-tested and ready. The longer the primary, the better."

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Know Your Audience 4: We Ain’t Nothing but Pack Animals

Know Your Freaking Audience 3: Making Noise that Slaps People Upside the Head

Know Your Freaking Audience 2: Denting the GOP Brand

Know Your Freaking Audience Series 1: Misinformation

Economic Insecurity, Fear of Crime, and GOP Voting

Broken Wrist and Health Care in Argentina

What if it Was the Law that you Had to Vote in America?

Desperately Seeking My Ballot in Argentina

I Get to Pay Thousands to Keep Insurance I Can't Use

Palin's Job Is to Hand Out Cash

Why Oh Why Does the Right Hate Arugula and Latte?

Thank God it Was a Bare-Knuckle Primary