What idiots! What morons! The American People were duped! They must not really want Change! They must be masochists in disguise!
So on and so forth. I know the claim will be that we're just being realists. The problem with this kind of talk is three-fold. One, it assumes that everybody is as interested in politics as we are; two, it assumes that people haven't been stewing in Republican Propaganda for the last thirty years.
And three, most importantly, it doesn't really do much to sell our case to these people when we insult them to our faces, when we become the doom and gloom and smug superiority crowd. It only serves the Republican intent to divide people against us.
Most people don't frequent our sites. They don't come across the screaming headlines of Republican misdeeds. They probably don't know about the real budget numbers, or what the Republicans did.
What they know about is their own lives, their own matters, the pieces of information they get from the news and the popular culture as they're trying to relax after a days hard work.
It's not that we're any better than them, merely for being better informed. Most people simply don't get involved.
The Republicans certainly have their siren call of deficit reduction, of getting things back under control. They certainly have their red-baiting words to throw around on Capitol Hill, taking the headlines for themselves.
They have their screaming, outrage Tea Partiers pushing that message that people have been primed for my entire lifetime to receive.
We thought that after everything, after the huge emergency that it would simply be easy to convince people not to vote for Republicans anymore. In some cases, this is true. In others, unfortunately, it's not.
We will have to go about the difficult, sometimes ugly business of trying to sway people to our side. It's that simple. Our ideas and our politics are not self-evident to people, even now, so we will have to persuade people to support us to win political battles. And remember, folks, they have to do this of their own free will. If they catch an earful of what we're saying, and they don't like it? Well, we have a first amendment right to stick our collective foot in our mouths, don't we? People must choose to believe us, choose to take our side for us to win. To show up with sweet talk about how tolerant we are, only to bring folks back here and turn their ears blue with talk bashing folks for their religion, for their committment to certain issues, or for not voting for Democrats in the last election, to question people's intelligence and sanity, is not to put the world's best face on our pleas for political change.
It's one of the oldest stereotypes, really, that are applied to us, and such behavior walks right into it: the image of the liberal elitist, who condescends to the rest of the country. It's what Obama's warm, friendly appearance and articulate explanations helped defuse in the 2008 election. We cannot simply be warm and friendly when the tide is for us. Now, when the tide's gone against us somewhat, is the critical time for us not to be alienating people.
Which is not to say we can't make our points. But we got to realize that the audience that is most important is the audience that doesn't fully correspond to our way of thinking. The people who already side with us, who believe us, who are our choir, they're already safely within the fold. But if they aren't sufficient, the people we have to appeal to might not be so sympathetic to our disparaging remarks about outsiders.
We need to accept that not all the people that could be on our side are going to be easy sells, and that the Republicans have headstarts in many areas. So they do. But really, if you listen to what many Republicans in Washington say, they take these people for granted. They don't think they're being watched, that the country is taking notice of their behavior. Well, you should do your best to change this. It might be a quiet thing you do, just sharing an article with a friend, a concern about a law or something. It doesn't have to be you confronting somebody, indeed, sometimes its better if you don't force people to raise their defenses.
There is a virtue in being disarming, in being likeable. I'm not asking you to stop working for the compelling needs of this country, or to stop confronting those who are lying and corrupting this country and its government. I am asking for you to consider that while it's easy to be your own hero, your own sympathetic lead, it's another thing entirely to convince somebody else that you're the one in the right. We can't just be right on the facts, we ourselves have to be right on the message we send to people.
Don't make the face of the Democratic Party be one of condescending anger. Be the person whose side those voters want to be on.