I read a book once called Nexus, by Mark Buchanan, which dealt with the implications of Small World's theory in modern society. One of the key insights of how we can go from one person to another anywhere in the world with so few steps (the famous six degrees of separation), is that our strong relationships are not the means by which this connectedness is possible.
If you know somebody, it's likely they know somebody you know. Your strongest ties are also the most insular. Everybody knows each other first or secondhand. So what does a possible connection to Kevin Bacon have to do with anything?
Everything. Because we are not in the business this election year of preaching to the choir. This election year, we need to make converts. And to understand how to do that well, we need to understand the strength of weak ties, and take our approach accordingly.
Obama's approach has taken advantage of this. His recent meeting with T. Boone Pickens illustrates how this works: Pickens is definitely not a general friend of the Democrats. He was one of the SwiftVet sponsors. However, politics makes for strange bedfellows, and renewable energy connects him and Obama.
There are many other issues like this, and Obama's ability to accept and speak to similarities between long divided segments of the population is part of what makes him an inspiring figure. Additionally, his style of argument, his thoughtful composition and first principles approach to responses and debate allows him to break out of the closed loops of politicial factions and political attitude that have so gridlocked our system.
But he can't be the only one. The appeal of this end to the caustic degeneration of politics must extend to ourselves. Otherwise, it becomes more difficult to persuade people who aren't Democrats, or netroots Democrats to come over to our side.
Now, I'm not being naive here. The naive thing to believe is that you can just bash people over the head with your emotions about the Republicans and what they've done and expect everybody to sympathize. Many will, but not necessarily everybody we need to reach will respond with the same affinity for your conclusion.
We have to inspire others to feel the same about things despite the fact that they do not share our general outlook. We need to develop the weak ties that most commonly link us to everybody else.
So what do we do? First, we strip apart our own thinking on the different topics and candidates, and figure out how and why we look at things the way we do, what brought us to certain conclusions. Second, we look at our target audience, and reconstruct an engine of persuasion along those lines. Finally, we approach with genuine, real sympathy for these people, because they aren't our enemies, and they never were to begin with. We don't need to defeat them. We need to extend our definition of community to them.
In the end, if we hope to change this country, and change the world for the better, we must work from common ground whenever possible, because in reality, political wins go to those who can extend their community of consensus the furthest on policy matters. They don't go to those who merely come up with the cleverest snark, or who bash the other side into submission. Those people just set themselves up to fail, if they rely on those means alone, or those means for the most part.