Given a rather shocking loss to the elephant party in an election that should not have been close, I began to speculate on an approach to winning elections.
This speculation occurred in the quiet morning light as I huddled alone under my blankets - trying to force sleep whilst my mind churned relentlessly.
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If you decide to run for office, you need to carefully consider your position on all the relevant issues. Sun Tzu said those who do not have knowledge of the self lose all battles.
Positions on issues are ultimately derived from moral priorities. Decisions cannot be made without an emotional core. Therefore, to accomplish full self-understanding, one should understand the moral values which bolsters your stance on the issues. Some common progressive values are caring and fairness.
Once you've reverse engineered your political moral system, you look at your audience and your competition.
To borrow from sociological business experiments, you can develop prototypes of the various members of the audience you must persuade to vote for you.
Study the competition, his or her position on the issues and the moral priorities guiding those positions. (Note, this is an area where progressives could have a powerful advantage over conservatives. Conservatives cannot admit that other moral systems are valid, while progressives admit the existence of other systems of morality. In this way, progressives can project their moral system, while attacking conservatives in the frame of the conservative moral system - this would have a potential effect of rallying the progressive base while weakening the conservative base. Some conservative moral values: Strength, toughness, authority. Attack conservatives by saying they're weak, wimpy, and take marching orders from others... like the U.N.)
Once this is done, the final step to campaign preparations is to develop your theme. Most successful campaigns run on resonating mythical themes. JFK's "New Frontier", Clinton's "Bridge to the 21st Century", Reagan's "Morning in America". This has the effect of evoking grand frames and values which can unite most of the electorate, and consolidating your own moral positions for communication.
Basically, examine your gift (introspection), find out who you're going to send it to (the audience), find out what your opponent is planning to send and compensate (research opponent), and wrap up your gift in a pretty package (message development). Soon, you're ready to mail your present to the nation.
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Now, once the preparation phase is complete, what then?
Given the chaos of a campaign, the only notes I could make are a few dictums which one should normally abide by.
- Communicate moral values and character first and foremost through language and action. They mostly trump issues.
- Immediately frame the debate, do not allow the opposition or the media to define you and the issues.
- Move quickly to deflect any character assassination moves by the opposition before that frame settles into place (swift boat ads, flip-flopper, etc).
- The respective bases vote mainly on issues because they've already internalized the moral positions of an ideology. The swing voters often vote just on perception of character because they do not adhere to a single ideology, and do not pay as much attention. So when they go to vote, they vote on how much they like, identify with, and respect his/her character. This is probably an instinctual approach because moral positions lead to positions on issues, and if the swing voter can agree with a moral position, the issue that position props up will not be a problem even if the swing voter does not fully grasp the issue.
(note, there's another smaller set of swing voters who are informed on issues, their vote goes to the candidate whose frame they accept)
What does all that mean? In primaries, issues are slightly more important than they are in the general election.
I'm going to ignore the mechanics of elections, such as GOTV efforts, the ground game, etc. Not educated enough in the political science.
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Okay, I've only gotten 2 hours of sleep, I just finished taking the GRE, I'm ready for a nap. If you read this all the way through, wow, I'm grateful. Feel free to comment on my sleepy daydream.
Oh hey, my first diary.