Trail of Lights Austin Texas 2016
I want to start out by thanking everyone for their comments in part one of this posting. As usual, there were positive and negative views of my post, which is to be expected. Someone mentioned lack of facts and I cop to that — this is meant as a sharing of ideas to engender comment and for the first time a diary I wrote got a lot of comment.
In the first part I outlined how it appears that Republicans, in their mad dash rightward, have potentially alienated themselves from the majority of Americans. At the start of the diary, I mentioned an opportunity for Democratic Party to grow and will offer ideas towards generating that growth.
The mid-term elections in 2018, often mentioned as a potential wave election, presents the opportunity to begin the path to relegating Republicans to a perpetual 30% minority. Because this election is basically local in nature, the emphasis for targeting pick-ups should depend on the enthusiasm demonstrated in recent special elections. However, to begin the path to the Whitehouse in 2020, the message machine should not depend solely on “he’s with Trump”, messaging. The 2018 election is the time to start developing and honing the message machine necessary to ensure the wave continues into 2020.
That said, I will begin by offering my take on avenues to pursue in the “he’s with Trump” category. First, especially if Mueller brings serious and credible charges regarding the Russian conspiracy before the November election, we should shout RUSSIAN SCANDAL and COVERUP from every platform and ensure that we connect the scandal and coverup to any Republican congressperson who in any way participated in the farcical committees that either impugned the integrity of FBI or otherwise overlooked the seriousness of the Russian meddling in our election with the aid and assistance of Republicans. This avenue is especially important in the 2018 elections as the story will be fresh in the mind of many people.
The second avenue is to take a page from how publicizing the Dreamer’s stories help their cause and lead to 87% support for allowing them to stay. I have read many very compelling stories about their situation that engenders empathy and appears to impact public opinion. It would be nice to find similar compelling stories to publicize wrt the impact the recent tax reform will have on people, and the impact the piece-by-piece dismantling of Obamacare have had on people. The idea of this approach is twofold — first show direct examples of how Republican policies are inherently cruel, and to implicitly state that Democrats care about people because we want to rid the nation of policies that result in pain and suffering for people.
I don’t know about fellow readers here, but I find myself in election after election, being disgusted about airwaves filled with the incessant commercials that constantly attack opponents. Somehow, someone (as a group) has determined this works, to the point that it appears political strategists believe opponent attacks are the only advertisement worth spending money on. I would like to see a new emphasis on commercials and messaging that discuss how, “I plan to help you.” And the world of opportunity in this field is vast. Health care, taxes, income inequality, repairing foreign policy (though that’s more presidential than congressional), and so on. And when Republicans and their PACs continue their attack ad strategy, a response could be along the lines of, “Oh, grow up!” and “That’s so juvenile” followed by another positive spin message.
My heading, inclusion vs leftward shift, is addressed by emphasizing messaging that affects the majority of people and which Republicans have failed on. A majority of people support Dreamers so emphasize immigration policies and messaging (with stories) that show the contributions immigrants made to this country — the more recent and impactful, the better. A majority of people now support expanding healthcare so show a path to a vision that allows people access to healthcare without any chance of going bankrupt from an illness. (And some discussion on how to control the exorbitant and growing cost of healthcare itself would be needed.) A majority of people support medical marijuana so take a position to remove marijuana as a schedule one narcotic and change laws to allow states to form their own marijuana decisions without federal interference. A message and policy position should be generated that emphasizes building up small businesses while finding a way to reign in the way mega-businesses fleece Americans. There are a lot of areas where there is a lot of agreement by a lot of people that can be added to this list — feel free to add to the list in the comments below.
Finally, Democratic growth depends on doing more to bring more minorities on board. It has been noted in analysis of Senator Doug Jones election victory that black women played a significant role. Some diaries on DK mentioned this but I haven’t seen a diary that addresses the central question related to this. Black women said they’ve been overlooked by Democrats. If that’s the case, what is it that the Democratic Party can do to change that situation? As an older white guy, I don’t have any connection to their story to even begin to know how to answer that question but it deserves serious consideration. A similar question arises from the Hispanic community. It’s obvious that Republicans are alienating both of those communities, which in general helps Democrats, but better would be to find out and implement policies that positively impacts these communities such that they have an enthusiasm to go out and vote for the party that has their interests at heart instead of voting against that other racist guy over there.
In summary, positive stories of helping people in all walks of life is an inclusive path that trumps playing the anti-Trump card in 2018 and can lead to larger victories and a growing Democratic party in future elections. Of course, I must add, every district and every contested election will need to combine the suggested stories with a strong ground game and get out the vote campaign to ensure success.
