As many of you know, Drew is a professor of psychology at Emory University who is probably the leading researcher in the country as to how people's brain react when they are thinking about politics. Drew wrote a book called The Political Brain, which talked about how people react to politics more instinctually and emotionally than in a linear way and that politicians who campaign primarily by talking about 10 point plans and House Resolution 2459 are likely to lose. The book also showed how networks in the brain are activated by certain words and symbols, and why it's important for political leaders to understand how those networks work. Regardless of what people think about the particular rational point that you make, they could easily get turned off if you activate the wrong associations in their brain (e.g., gun control, which trips over a fundamental American value about independence, as opposed to "common sense gun laws," with which most voters-including gun owners-actually resonate).
Drew and Stan Greenberg and I began talking several months ago about doing a project where Drew's ideas on political issue messaging were thoroughly tested in a real-world political context using more traditional polling techniques. We wanted to see if, through trial and error research, we could come up with ways to frame messages on some of the most controversial issues that are out there that would win over the broad majority. With the support of some forward-thinking progressive donors (the project took 10 months and hundreds of hours of work), we were able to do the research, and to look at some of the hottest button issues around - among them gay marriage, immigration, guns, national security, and taxes - and discovered that for the most part, progressives can win solid majorities for their stands on these issues even in regions and demographic groups not normally thought of as progressive.
One of the things an organization I run called American Family Voices does is phone calls and mail on major policy issues throughout the two-year electoral cycle. In addition to helping engage voters to call their members of Congress on these issues, I have found that educating voters on issues before the final insane flurry of calls/mail in September and October of an election year makes them more likely to get the message, remember it, and care about it when they do go to vote.
Right now, we're doing calling on the toys from China issue. Most of the people we are hearing from are supportive on the issue, but occasionally we get some negative reaction by right-wingers offended we would call them and suggest that Bush's policies were anything other than sainted. Today, this showed up in my inbox:
From: David xxxxxx [mailto:xxxxxxxxxxxxx...]
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 7:57 PM
To: Mike Lux
Subject: FUCK OFF
David xxxxxx wrote:
I will be paying you a visit next time I'm on travel there and I plan to use physical violence to get my point across to you fucking assholes if I need to. Got it? Again, FUCK OFF!
Thanks. Dave
And thank you, too, Dave. Good to hear from you. I didn't realize there were such passionate fans of poisoned toys.
One of the things that really does concern me about the conservative movement in this country is that so many of its adherents threaten violence so regularly. Having been a spokesperson for PFAW, a consultant to an anti-gun group, and having run ads and done calls and mail for years against Bush and DeLay and their ilk, I have been personally threatened with physical violence several hundred times. Usually these threats came anonymously: I gotta give Dave credit, he at least used his full name in his threat.
There is a long history in this country of right-wing intimidation and violence, from lynching and cross-burnings to shooting up abortion clinics to blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. We have to support each other's work to keep fascism from taking root here, and we have to keep standing up to them and exposing them.
The political market is structured such that the real money in political consulting goes to the specialists. If you focus on TV ads, or mail, or phones, or whatever, you make lots of money. If- like me- you don't like that kind of politics and/or are bored by specialization, you stay poor as a general consultant.
The thing is, though, it is diversification of tactics- having a lot of different tools in your tool box- that makes far winning campaigns.
This S-CHIP fight is a classic example, and as Matt wrote here, it is working. Blogs are getting their readers to call, we're paying for calls, and we're doing print ads. In the Bush Dogs campaign, we're profiling politicians, talking about Google ads, and discussing primary challenges. On the potential war with Iran, we are building a drumbeat on the blogs, getting politicians to take clear stands, and just this morning, the issue advocacy group I chair, American Family Voices, is going up with paid phone calls on the issue into targeted districts.
We obviously aren't always successful, but it is exciting to me as an old political campaigner to see the energy and creativity in the progressive movement right now: protest marches, TV and radio and newspaper and blog ads, phone call drives, Google ads, blogging, YouTube video, door-knocking campaigns. It is exciting to see all this happening, and it's important to keep being creative.
I often get asked by people whether a given tactic, be it Google ads or robocalls or TV ads or YouTube videos or whatever, is effective. My answer is that doing a single thing is almost never effective all by itself, but building a larger campaign with a lot of different ways to deliver your message frequently is. This is the kind of progressive movement we should be building- one that is aggressively trying a wide range of tactics, and is always willing to experiment with different ways of driving our messages home.
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