Activists

I'd love to know what the focus groups and polling have to say about the word "activist" but I imagine I already do. I was flipping through The Seattle Times this morning and came across an AP article titled: "A month later, activists still challenging vote in Ohio." In my day job, I run across wealthy women and men, donors to our PAC who call themselves activists. These are layabout folks who donate money for a living. The term is no longer imbued with the meaning from the 60s...or maybe it is and that's the problem.

Between activist judges, and rich activists, and activist as a term for those at meetups, the word no longer seems to connote energy and passion but rather disconnected, ineffective pitiful liberal fighting an already lost battle. For whatever reason activist now seems to speak to a person's capacity to whine. Unfair, sure. But I think we need to stop helping the right by using it. Or at least apply it fairly---Evangelical activists, Southern activists. I realize it's only one word, but I no longer see it as a neutral one, nor as a descriptive one.

My 15 minutes

Emily Thorson asked me to look at a site she was working on: mymoralvalues.com. I checked it out and posted a brief summary of my view on morals and politics. The day after thanksgiving my posting along with several others gets published in the New York Times. I was part of an SEIU ad. How about that.
What did I have to say:

"I believe in an American politics where a shared respect for and responsibilty towards ones neighbor governs individual actions. Where the prosperity of the nation is not simply measured in stock tape but in grocery receipts and school report cards. It is a morality born of the belief that we do better when we all do better. That government may not solve all our problems, and should never be asked to, it does represent a collection of people capable of effecting worthwhile change. I believe in Democratic values like responsibility (for ones children, the environment, and our place within the word) hope, and faith. Faith in the power of people to address and mutually solve the problems they face. "

I was pleased with the line about grocery receipts and stock tape.

EDM...etc

I just finished reading Emerging Democratic Majority. More thoughts as it starts to sink in.

Big takeaway, demographics are in our favor and the worker vs. supervisor approach to Democratic issue framing is no longer apt.

Heightened Awareness

So I was sorting through my mail this morning and I saw a fundraising appeal for a local homeless shelter. The basic message was that we should donate so they can serve Thanksgiving meals to those less fortunate. I started to think, why is this so powerful at this time of year.... (obvious question). I think it's because it's the time when I'm most aware of all that I have (the holiday season, really).

Which prompted this thought: goups that work for gay marriage should have a fundraising appeal/approach that targets their straight donors on or around their anniversaries. The idea being that couples, who are, at that time most aware of the blessing of a love untrammeled by stigma, would be most generous at that time. I'm not sure how to operationalize that fundraising appeal. But I offer it up as a thought.

Are there other appeals that progressives can make that make use of the power of heightened awarness to increase generosity, or action?

From the Comments

It's hard for me to admit, as a person fairly enamored of New Deal style politics (labor movement, fairly involved role for government, big projects towards great ends...that stuff) that I'm in the minority--and by a preposterous margin. And therefore that remixing the golden oldies just leaves you with Jay-Z vocals over a bad Andrews Sisters song--and no one wants that. So......JKD has pointed out several things (in previous comments) that promote a positive hopeful agenda relying either of the grassroots or on public-private partnerships (which is this seasons new political "black").

The first idea, and JKD expound as you will, involves mobilizing the grassroots to take specific public service/charity/good works actions. The key being that it's tied directly to Democrats doing the work. It sounds a lot like Dean Corps.
The upsides: Hopeful, positive. Pro-active. Ties Democrats to good moral works without the stigma of government. Likely to embrace progressive churches and other institutions of faith--and reminds people that Democrats only *appear* to suffer some morality-gap. Great generator of stories (both news, and anecdotal). Candidates would easily be able to draw upon heartwarming stories. It's both localized and national. A cohesive national program/message with localized impact. Stories get written in local papers, but the messaging can be fairly tight.

The downsides: If it's seen as exclusively Democratic it doesn't allow for much overlap with unaffiliateds, or centrists. This is a small downside.

JKD's other suggestion: Get big business on our side. They are pretty damn well aware of just how insufficient the American educational system is in terms of producing workers who can do things (e.g., write, read, etc.). So start by getting big business (and small-business alliances) working with Democratic governors and legislatures to implement job-training programs.Have tax abatements tied to the training and hiring of workers within those states.

JKD again can expound, but my sense is that this works as well for several reasons. There is the obvious...hey more American's can do their jobs--and that's good reason. A program that encourages business to see education as part of their own investment in their workforce is in my estimation inherently beneficial. Democrats are focusing in this case more on principle than on position (Getting to Yes)--by doing the right thing and not just playing to the fear that many Dems (me) have of big business, I think you undercut some of the nasty class warfare rhetoric of the Republicans. Plus, in a fairly crass analysis--Democratic legislators and Governors working on this project place themselves in a great position to rise to higher office. This is the kind of program that you want to stake your name to. This puts people like Granholm, Siebellius, Vilsack and others in a solid gubernatorial position and helps if they want to move to senate. Senate majority leaders in Colorado and elsewhere who championed this would be in a better place to run for higher office. It's a good program, that sells well, is easy to write about, and enables Democrats to have a good jumping off point for higher office.

Contract With America

So what's our variation?

Promise with America
New American Convenant
Compact with America

Rockridge Institute

A link to George Lakoff's group. They are working with frames and framing.

Excerpts from Mario Cuomo's 1984 DNC Address

This is partially what I'm trying to get us towards. Maybe a little more folksy than this...but essentially this idea.

A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one, where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.
In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.
In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation --. Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill."

Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places. Maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds, maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.

Maybe, maybe, Mr. President. But I'm afraid not.

Because, the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that this is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from very the beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. "Government can't do everything," we were told. "So it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer -- and what falls from their table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class."
You know, the Republicans called it trickle-down when Hoover tried it. Now they call it supply side. But it's the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded -- for the people who are locked out -- all they can do is to stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers.

It's an old story. It's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us will inherit the land.
We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact. And, we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees -- wagon train after wagon train -- to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans -- all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America.

For nearly 50 years we carried them all to new levels of comfort, and security, and dignity, even affluence. And remember this, some of us in this room today are here only because this nation had that kind of confidence. And it would be wrong to forget that.

So the new deal is dead...what now

So JKD points out that the New Deal is dead. With it, I imagine the notion that government can be a collection of people and resources put towards the easing of human suffering. And frankly, for me that just sucks.

It seems like the general hatred of government has been generalized to include minorities of all stripes. Ie, government has become something that only works for and with those who are "not mainstream." If government is tied to the left, and tied to people giving money to blacks and rights to gays, then what do we do. By separating government from mainstream values the Right has effectively shot the Left with a magic bullet...hitting us twice.

So...what the fuck do we do? I personally would love to rehab the image of the government. But I think that that may be too close to a heroic reeducation project...the intellectual version of the TVA.

Can Democrats demonize government? Can we say, that government (this wonderful abstract concept) no longer represents the values of fairness, mutual responsibility. I think we can. Government is no longer about helping the little guy, it's about maintaining power for partisan ideologues (or a more red state friendly word). Government (ie, CIA, FBI) are now owned by partisans, and the little guy never gets a fair chance.

Can Democrats talk about values without bringing up our desire to use government towards the end of making things better? Democrats fight for better jobs. Democrats work for working people. and not mention government.

I need to read the sermon on the mount, I'm told it's all Jesusy, but also about loving and respecting others. As Sun Tzu said, "Know the enemy (not christians, but the right) and know thyself and in a 1,000 battles you will not know defeat."

Issues that Win, Issues that Lost

This pretty much sums it up.
Look kids - it's over. The New Deal is done. People don't want it anymore. They don't want it because they're ignorant (ignorant, as in, they don't realize what it does, and what the world was/will be like without), but they still don't want it. We need to realize this - the people that we purport to be fighting for with our (i.e., progressive with regard to economic justice) agenda DON'T WANT OUR HELP. They don't want health care, or well-paying union jobs, or environmental protection. In essence - a lot of people are pretty OK with being poor, ignorant and miserable, or at least vote that way.
It's sad, but it is. We obviously can't take the privatization of Social Security lying down, but it's my hunch that the GOP will be able to pummel the media into believing that it's a good idea to return to an American where old people die poor and alone.
Look - we lost. We lost on guns, and, smartly, Dems have stopped talking about them.
And now, pretty much, we've lost the New Deal. It took us 70 years, nearly, but it's done. We can still fight for economic justice, expanding health care and the like, but need to find ways to make it matter to people today, and stop trying to appeal to their dead great-granparents.

Rahm Emanuel...smart guy

I don't know that I agree whole heartedly with Rahm Emanuel, but here is his quote. My favorites highlighted

Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter got elected because they were comfortable with their faith," said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, a former Clinton aide. "What happened was that a part of the electorate came open to what Clinton and Carter had to say on everything else - health care, the environment, whatever - because they were very comfortable that Clinton and Carter did not disdain the way these people lived their lives, but respected them." He added: "We need a nominee and a party that is comfortable with faith and values. And if we have one, then all the hard work we've done on Social Security or America's place in the world or college education can be heard. But people aren't going to hear what we say until they know that we don't approach them as Margaret Mead would an anthropological experiment."

Suprisingly enough, if we treat persons of faith with respect, we might do better. We don't have to be of their faith or religious--just respectful. This goes back to a frustration I've had for years: progressives are fine with mocking Christians and poor whites, but defend (appropriately) vigorously the rights of Muslims, blacks, whomever else. Poor white folks who work for a living are just about as powerless and fucked over as poor black folks. For instance at Oberlin you could talk about West Virginia white trash. Words mean something--thus the idea behind this site. And even if those words don't get used in political speech they inform the policies and approaches of liberals--the otherness and disdain we often apply to those who live in the south or the ozarks or appalachia. I'd like to see those words and approaches purged as much as possible. It's not going to serve us well if the very "poor folks" we're trying to "save"*, we think of as TRASH.

*oh, and saving people....not something we do well. empowering better

Al From

Is wrong.

If Al From told me my shoes were untied, I wouldn't trust him. I'm certainly not going to listen to shit about how we as a party/movement/gaggle need to move to the center. Clue for Al--the center is something we win. We win votes from self-ided liberals, and independents. There are more people by 12% who identify themselves as conservatives (vs liberal). It's a matter of self identification. We cannot pretend to be conservative.

Al From: "We've got to close the cultural gap"
Reality: We've got to close Al From's mouth with duct tape.

Saletan....

Talking about values. I've been saying this for a while, and found Obama's speech compelling for just this reason---we have values. Let's talk about them. I'd rather finish a speech knowing how a candidate thinks and sees the world, than knowing her positions. (Though I'm a sucker for a well written speech). William Saletan gets it:

When leaders betray troops through bad planning and false pretenses for war, that should be your issue. When Republicans cut taxes for the rich while the nation is at war and the Treasury is empty, that should be your issue. When soldiers from poor families die while corporations skim from the war budget, that should be your issue. I've heard John Kerry talk about each of these issues separately, but each time, he sounded opportunistic. To be powerful, they must flow from a common message. That message is responsibility.
All the issues Democrats like to run on—education, the environment, the deficit, energy independence—would be vastly more powerful if united under a single theme. Clean up your mess. Take care of your children. Pay your debts. Stand on your own two feet. It all comes down to responsibility.

I'd add that we tap into the idealized notion of the small town. The center of the myth of small town America is shared values, and shared responsibility. I don't favor welfare programs as a giveaway--I just embrace a more full notion of community. There needs to be a way to talk about responsibility that allows for mutual respect.

So how should we talk about responsibility, values, and community.

Where do we go from here

I spent yesterday trying to figure out what comes next. It seems fairly clear that the American people don't like us. Or at least they would rather have their country run by George Bush. It's not a lack of education (though that matters) and it's not a lack of resources (though, that too matters). I think it's a challenge of words, and frames. More voters identify themselves as conservatives than liberal. Though that doesn't necessarily play out in their issue positions. But the power of frames and words is such that we lose. Because calling us liberal automatically triggers rejection for our positions our facts, and efforst are lost.

So, how do we talk about our issues. How do we reframe the debate?

I just read "Don't think of an elephant" by Lakhoff. It's phenomenal. It is the ground work for this new goal of mine...to have an online....think tank....clearinghouse, blog, discussion place...for talking about talking about issues.

Aaron