Last night on Tim Russert, Markos and Jerome talked about reframing the national debate; taking the debate away from single hot button issues and focusing on democratic core values. Not that the idea isn't a good one, listening to them last night I realized that Democrats desperately need to wrest control of the message back from the republicans and make it their own; however, it strikes me as an idea that's a lot easier said then done. We are, in many ways, an "ADD" nation - a nation of sound bites and catchy commercials and flavors of the minute. Democratic principles should be easy to explain but for some reason people running for office lose the capacity for applying our values of fairness, opportunity for all, justice, and honesty to the issues of the day in a manner that's both easy to understand and easily remembered. It seems as if they get bogged down by the issue at hand: what to say, what not to say, how not to offend, how to offend just right so my base stays excited, etc.
I started thinking about this topic after seeing Markos and Jerome and reading a diary about the Texas Alliance for Life forcing UT to abandon their soliciting of funds for
adult stem cell research. I asked myself: How can Democrats frame the issues so they reflect more on core democratic values than just on one single issue, and not only keep the listener/reader/viewer interested but enable people to understand, agree and then reflect that idea? The republicans do this sort of thing very well but they narrow the focus to the hot button issue whereas Dems should want to broaden the focus.
Well, I found out, just by putting down some ideas, that it's a lot harder then I thought it would be.
In reference to the stem cell diary, I had commented that politicians need to start framing "wins" such as what Texas Alliance for life had done as actual loses in opportunity:
Not only did Texan's lose the ability to have one of the top universities in the country apply the collective intellect and money to this research, they have also lost the knowledge that research might have produced, potential life saving techniques and/or medicine, potential prestige for UT which could be turned into recruiting brighter minds and more money, and also potential jobs that might have been produced by the research done. It's a huge blow to education, research, jobs, economy, medicine; the list goes on and on.
However, the real question is how does the politician word/phrase his/her comments to reflect the idea? I'm no speech writer but I envision
Chris Bell, or really any politician in any state, saying something along the lines of:
Today the great state of Texas suffered a devastating blow in advancing education, jobs, medicine and pure Texas ingenuity because certain elements in this state want to damage opportunities for their fellow Texans. Adult stem cell research may provide the key to medical breakthroughs for a parent with Parkinson's or a child with diabetes, and groups like the Texas Alliance for Life have succeeded in destroying our Texas universities from participating in this research. Texas Alliance for Life represents that they lobbied for the halt of this research and saved the lives of countless stem cells when in fact the stem cells to be used were from Adults. We must not let those who would prey on our fears to cloud our minds and spoil the opportunities that all Texans, all Americans, deserve as their right. As your next Governor I will not allow these opportunities to be denied simply because one partisan group does not have their facts straight, I will not allow fringe elements to place strangleholds on the best and brightest Texas mind's because the truth has been twisted to suit their political needs. For the lives of our parents and the future of our children I endorse any research using adult stem cells.
It needs a lot of polishing, but it's only about 1 minute long, I timed it, and it moves the debate away from killing little baby stem cells to what we Texans lost because our politicians went along with the insanity.
There are a dozen different topics/issues that could use this treatment. The marriage amendment, flag burning, abortion, immigration, the death penalty, minimum wage, school prayer, etc but it's not an easy job. I worked on mine for a long time and it's not any where close to something an actual candidate/politician would say. I even tried my hand at a few of the other topics, but nothing seemed to come out right so I'll have to save those for another diary.
In traversing this line of thinking I've actually raised more questions for myself: Once the debate is reframed, how can it be passed on as a local, state, national message? If it starts at the netroots/grassroots how can we be sure it percolates up? Can Democrats even conceive of implementing something like this at a national level if we don't have the "machinery" in place? Markos said tonight:
...they [Republicans] can create the message, they can market the message, and then they sell the message. We don't have any of that at this point.
That's a scary thought with midterms right around the corner - almost makes me want to find Aaron Sorkin and beg him to ghost write for all the hotly contested races.
In essence, I suppose I'm asking a twofold question: How do Democrats reframe the debate to reflect our values and then how do we get the message across effectively? I took the time to do a little research using the tag framing and there are many well thought out, interesting diaries on framing certain issues; however, in keeping with Daily Kos's activism, how can we round up all the good ideas, turn them into speeches/messages and get them to the candidates?