Yesterday's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission (pdf file) has made this week's series on how corporate money is spent to sway public opinion even more timely. That was precisely the issue in the Citizens United case: not unlimited corporate money to candidates' campaigns, but unlimited corporate campaigning for or against candidates.
To write about corporate influence on public opinion without mentioning Citizens United would be like the old joke, "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?" But it's no joking matter, and that's why there are no Kossascopes this week.
More below the fold....
Making the Bandwagon, Part II (Plus SCOTUS Commentary)
This week, Morning Feature looks at the strategies corporate-funded campaigns use to sway voter opinion. Yesterday we discussed the bandwagon effect, showing that independent voters like our archetypal Fred are more likely to join what they believe is the majority. We also discussed two of the key strategies commonly used: pollsters who create the illusion of a majority through sample weighting and the sequence and wording of questions, and the manufacture and repetition of repeat talking points as reasons for that illusory majority's views. Today we'll look at two more strategies: the industry-funded protest movements to put faces on the illusory majority and harden the opinions of those involved, and finally advertising that invites Fred to join that illusory majority by believing the corporate message.
First a clarification: if the median voter, Fred, jumps on the corporate-funded bandwagon, it is no longer an illusory majority. With Fred on board, the corporate-funded bandwagon becomes a real majority. It may not last long - bandwagon majorities tend to be short-lived - but it doesn't need to. The bandwagon majority only needs to hold together long enough to sway legislators' votes on an bill, or to win an election. A corporate-funded bandwagon's effects may continue long after Fred has jumped off and finds he has to walk back home.
What's more, some won't jump off even after it should be clear the bandwagon isn't taking them where they want to go. The most active will remain loyal, owing to....
Cognitive dissonance.
Cognitive dissonance is a term from psychology that describes our tendency to defend our actions in the face of contradictory information. While the introduction to the Wikipedia article (cited) discusses "contradictory ideas," the research on cognitive dissonance (described in the article) has focused on situations where someone has acted on an idea. The theory suggests that we need to believe we act reasonably, thus if we have done something it must be reasonable.
If challenged with information that suggests our action was not reasonable, cognitive dissonance kicks in and we are prone to use confirmation bias or other ego defenses to defend it. We're more prone to believe information that supports our action and reject information that doesn't. We're prone to offer alternative explanations for bad outcomes. We may defend an action based on information we did not know until after we acted, either as "Well it worked out fine" or by convincing ourselves we knew the information before we acted.
Cognitive dissonance can even arise vicariously, when the actions of someone we feel a bond are challenged by an outsider. For example, parents often defend their children's actions and spouses often defend each other, at least against the outside challenge. Of course we'll then defend the actions we took in defense that other person's actions and, depending on how active our defense was, may even internalize his/her action as if we had suggested or supported it before the fact.
It's important to note that cognitive dissonance is not always "wrong." Our action may have been reasonable and the challenge may be unreasonable. Although the research has focused on actions that are arguably unreasonable - to highlight the effect - cognitive dissonance is not limited to that case. It simply says we're more likely to defend an idea if we have acted on that idea.
Taking it to the streets.
Cognitive dissonance shows that we're more willing to back away from ideas we think or talk about than ideas we act on, and it provides the psychological fuel for public protest movements. Get out in the street advocating an idea, and you will more likely remain committed to that idea. If you're looking for the simplest explanation to the "enthusiasm gap" between tea partiers and progressives, there it is. They took it to the streets and we haven't (yet, or have we?).
As noted above, this can also work vicariously. If Fred sees a friend on TV at a tea party protest and the protest is attacked by an outsider, Fred may well defend his friend. He may not have known about it until he saw his friend on TV. Or he may have disagreed with the protest before. But now that he's seen his friend take action, and his friend has been challenged, loyalty and cognitive dissonance may trump previously held but not acted on ideas. Depending on how active Fred becomes in defending his friend, he may come to defend the tea party protest as if he had suggested or supported it.
Media coverage is a key element of public protests. If the media ignore a protest, the protesters may get discouraged. Fred is also less likely to interpret a minimally-covered protest as representing a majority opinion, even if it does. And Fred is less likely to see a friend taking action in that protest, evoking vicarious cognitive dissonance.
Why haven't progressives taken to the streets to advocate for progressive legislation like health care reform? Part of the answer is money. Most of us have families to feed and bills to pay. Traveling to a public protest is expensive ... unless a corporate-funded movement offers us a free ride and maybe even meals and a place to stay. That has happened, at least for some, in the tea party movement.
The other part of the answer is a trick question. Some progressives did take to the streets to advocate for health care reform. But unlike the tea party movement, we didn't have a corporate-sponsored news network committed to covering those events. While progressives did not turn out equal numbers with the tea party movement, those we did turn out also often went unnoticed.
Tea party protests not only deepened the commitment of the protesters, but added to the illusion of a majority. And if Fred saw a friend at a tea party protest, vicarious cognitive dissonance may have made him more receptive to their message, and more likely to jump on the bandwagon and make the illusory majority a real majority.
Advertising and Citizens United.
Seen in this context, advertising seems almost icing on the cake. It is, but bakery customers often choose a cake based on the icing. To continue that metaphor: the skewed polls, talking point repetition, and industry-funded protests are pictures of cake, and the bakery scents wafting over the street. They prime Fred to want a cake, and the beautifully designed icing of advertising is meant to seal the deal.
While the majority opinion in Citizens United is one of the worst court decisions I've ever read - and as a former appellate attorney I've read thousands - let's first be clear on what that case did not do.
It didn't throw open the doors on unlimited corporate spending to sway public opinion on legislative issues like health care. Those doors were already wide open. The Corporate Propaganda Sunshine Act sponsored by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) would require disclaimers and disclosure on all corporate public relations activities that are not direct advertising for their goods and services, and the Court in Citizens United held 8-1 (with Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting) that was constitutional. Representative Grayson's Business Should Mind Its Own Business Act would impose a 500% excise tax on corporate contributions to PACs and on expenditures on political advocacy campaigns. The Court did not examine this issue in Citizens United.
It also didn't throw open the doors on unlimited cash contributions to political candidates. Instead it allows unlimited in-kind contributions, because most candidates' campaign money goes to advertising. Instead of corporations giving money to candidates, who then spend it to produce and buy broadcast time for campaign ads, the corporations can produce the ads and buy the broadcast time themselves, telling Fred to vote for Candidate Red or - far more likely - against Candidate Blue.
The Citizens United case involved the latter, an hour-long informercial criticizing then Senator Hillary Clinton. The dissenting opinion reasonably predicts that will be the pattern for most corporate election ads. Negative messages ("Blue Sux!") are very effective, and all the more so when the ads are run by a third party, freeing the candidate to spend his/her own money on positive messages ("Red Rox!") that seem to "take the high road."
In Citizens United, the majority held that a law prohibiting corporate-funded campaign broadcast ads during the 30 days immediately before an election violated the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause. The majority held that the Free Speech clause protects speech, and that the law in question unlawfully forbade speech based on the speaker's identity as a corporation or labor union.
To reach that decision, the majority turned logic and precedent on their heads, including citing the case of First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1974) as the basis for a principle the Bellotti Court specifically rejected. Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion simply treated the Bellotti opinion as if that sentence weren't there. Indeed, the majority reached beyond the parties' initial briefs - which did not challenge the constitutionality of the statute on its face but only as applied in that specific instance - to manufacture an excuse to overturn the law.
It was conservative "judicial activism" on a par with the infamous Lochner Courts, which are widely and justly derided as the worst in U.S. Supreme Court history. This decision was that bad.
The majority opinion seems entirely driven by an intended outcome: to ensure that 2008 - where a candidate relying on a mass of individual, small-money donors was able to outspend a candidate relying on fewer, very-wealthy-but-maxed-out donors - never happens again.
Several comments yesterday used the metaphor of progressives having to push a boulder up a hill, while conservatives are content to leave that boulder where it is. With Citizens United, the hill just got a whole lot steeper.
+++++
At least it's Friday.