David Jarman’s excellent front-page
diary sparked an idea for a diary I’ve long wanted to write. We can’t hope to match the Koch brothers’ millions, but we can do something these sclerotic, vicious businessmen can’t, and that is
innovate.
Yes, the elections in 2014 are crucial, and no, we don’t want a repeat of the election results of 2010. To avoid that, Democrats will have to implement a threefold strategy:
1. Identify the voters
2. Educate the voters
3. Get the voters to the polls
If you'll follow me below the fold, I'll explain.
Part 1, identifying the voters, is not hard: it's been done. Eric Lewis wrote an excellent diary
on the subject a month or so ago. Who are they? Briefly, they’re the young, single women, and minorities.
Part 2, educating voters, is crucial. To get people to vote, we have to give them a reason to jump through all the hoops the establishment, especially the Republican establishment, has put in their way. We have to give them a sufficiently compelling reason to turn out. Educating the voters has traditionally been achieved through television ads, direct mail, canvassing-plus-doorhangers, robocalls, and in the last few years, house parties. There’s a case to be made for each of the aforementioned tactics, but I believe newer, fresher ideas are needed.
For one thing, who in the world watches TV ads nowadays? A great many of those who are at home to watch TV in the evenings fast-forward through the commercials. People who aren’t home to watch TV in the evenings—by whom I mean the people who work three crap jobs paying $7 an hour each—are out of range for TV ads, robocalls (assuming they have landlines in the first place), and probably direct mail: they’d just throw that in the trash. My contention is that spending millions of dollars on TV commercials is a waste of both money and messaging.
How, then, are these tired, busy potential voters to be reached? They neither watch the TV news nor do they read newspapers. They may listen to the radio, so that should be borne in mind. The old-fashioned way of educating voters has been for party operatives to walk the precincts and tell the story. People who work all day and part of the evening and all weekend aren’t home to be canvassed. So where are they?
They’re mowing lawns and planting flowers. They’re staffing the cash registers at 7-11s and neighborhood grocery stores. They’re dishing up fast food in the food courts in shopping malls, cutting hair in barber shops, waiting in patient lines at bus stops to get to their next job.
So…what if there were flash mobs of people who seemingly are taking part in the everyday life of neighborhoods—mowing lawns, working in the food courts, lining up at bus stops—who suddenly start enacting playlets about the issues?
The issues could be universal state-funded preschools, Medicaid expansion, raising the minimum wage, women’s right to equal pay for equal work, making broadband Internet available to everyone, and the right to paid sick leave, for starters. An example could be as follows;
FIRST GRANDMA (with toddler in stroller): My daughter can’t feed her kids on what she makes. She’s going to have to apply for food stamps.
SECOND GRANDMOTHER (also with toddler in stroller): But it’s harder to get food stamps now, with the new laws.
BYSTANDER: If we had a Democratic governor, he or she would sign a law to raise the minimum wage. Then your daughter could feed your grandchildren on what she makes from her job.
(That governor would need a Democratic-majority legislature too, but one thing at a time.)
A perfectly ordinary-looking line of people waiting at a bus stop could suddenly reach behind them and hoist large signs that spell out a message on one of the issues. Six storyboard signs, each with one sentence of a message that voting Democratic will increase the likelihood of getting universal state-funded preschool or equal pay for equal work for women, would work like a sound bite.
If a flash mob can pull off a rousing rendition of “The Hallelujah Chorus” in the food court of a shopping mall, surely a band of 30 highly motivated Democratic volunteers can put on a playlet that will educate voters in similar surroundings.
Using playlets to educate low-information voters has been tried in at least one country, India, which has a large population of low-information voters.
Republicans being the Koch-fueled miscreants they are, part of voter education will have to consist of pushback against their nefarious tricks. A Rapid Response Team of Democratic operatives thoroughly conversant with social media platforms should be available to counteract dirty tricks and expose them. For example, in Florida Republicans put up fake Web sites that looked like Democratic candidates’ Web sites—but the people who went to the sites to donate unwittingly donated to Republican candidates instead. Democratic operatives should show up at every Republican rally to video gaffes and hold up signs that read, “If you hate government so much, why do you want to be part of it?”
In Baltimore the Republicans put up fake posters in low-income neighborhoods that proclaimed the national election would be held on a Saturday, and giving the wrong time and location. This tactic should be forestalled by Democratic operatives putting up posters with the title “Why Are Elections on Tuesday?” in both English and Spanish in low-information neighborhoods.
Of course, other excellent messaging techniques, such as the Overpass Light Brigade, can be used as well.
Voter registration campaigns should be implemented concurrently with voter education, from now until the registration deadline, whatever it may be.
Part 3, getting voters to the polls, has been handled quite well by the Democratic party in the last two national elections. However, more and greater efforts, both paid and volunteer, are needed. Babysitters to mind children while parents vote; vans to take elderly or infirm voters to the polls; folding chairs and bottles of water for the aged, pregnant, or infirm who may have to stand in line at the polls for hours; volunteers from law school to keep a wary eye on the behavior of election officials and step in immediately in case of trouble—all of these will mitigate the obstacles in the way of citizens who wish to exercise their right to vote.
In conclusion, we have tools nowadays the Founding Fathers never envisioned. We can bring talent, energy, and enthusiasm to the implementation of new ideas for reaching people who have been beyond the reach of conventional techniques. Let’s make this happen, starting now.
Fairness, Equality, Opportunity = Democracy