The Democratic National Committee recently commissioned a poll on the obvious and, unsurprisingly, came up with the obvious. It wanted to know if red-state voters were influenced by moral values as much as actual political issues in the presidential race, and if so, for whom they voted. “Yes” and “Bush” were the answers. Well blow me away.
The poll also found these voters are “tremendously cross-pressured between their pocketbook concerns and their moral values concerns,” which I can only interpret as meaning they’re right on the verge of chucking some values for cash. Again, unsurprising. (What does surprise me is that I’m writing for free -- hint, hint -- when I could be out huckstering polling services to political committees.)
DNC Chairman Howard Dean said the poll’s results point to the need for Democrats to reformat their delivery: “Democrats wonder why people vote against their own economic interest. The answer is that Democrats don't connect with people's fears about how to raise their children in a difficult social environment” – that voters think the Dems’ remedy is a bigger-badder government that will “raise your children for you.”
“Connect” and “fears” are, of course, the key words in that passage, and the first is why the Democrats have been on the losing side for some time. It’s not that they don’t connect or don’t try to connect with voters’ fears. It’s that they don’t exploit them, like you know who.
Take the so-called “death” tax. While Democrats engage in reality-based tutorials about the estate tax affecting only a fraction of a fraction of the filthiest rich who drop dead before retaining a crafty tax attorney, Republicans are occupied with scaring the bejesus out of lower middle-class folks into believing some Darth Vader of an IRS angel of mortality is going to confiscate the trailer home when grandpa keels over.
That’s not “connecting” with voters’ fears. That’s exploiting them after having invented the fears to begin with. And that’s one reason Republicans have succeeded.
Their success also results from manipulating the humbug of “common sense” as much as exploiting outright fear. The party’s chief of manipulative humbuggery, Frank Luntz, prides himself with having helped right-wing politicians understand “the clear, common-sense way to say what you mean.”
Again, take the death tax. Luntz asks, “When I die … I may pay a tax. What else would you call that other than a death tax?” Gee Frank, maybe I’d call it an estate tax, since I’m dead and therefore my estate pays the tax. In addition, would you say you “may” die someday? I noticed you slipped “may” pay a tax after the definite “when” I die. It then becomes commonsensically outrageous to many people that taxes should follow death. A trifle convoluted, yet the thrust of it sticks in the electoral mind.
But Frank knows that. He didn’t get rich by not knowing the tripe he sells to politicians — and what they turn around and sell to voters — is anything less than manipulation. If he’s really wedded to pure common sense because common sense always makes sense, then I suggest he join the Flat Earth Society. Look about you, Frank. Does the Earth look round to you? Of course not. Common sense tells you it’s flat.
At its most fundamental level, though, what Frank Luntz sells is demagoguery. His Republican clients buy wholesale, sell retail. I know it, you know it, Frank knows it and Howard Dean knows it.
And that’s where Dean’s dilemma arises. Should Democrats continue trying to connect or should they start exploiting? We know which one has the upper hand. It always has. A playwright as ancient as Aristophanes could parody the demagogue and his panderings …
Then listen and be attentive!...
I am the dog, since I bark in your defense.
I don’t have an unqualified answer to the “connect vs. exploit” question. And I’m glad I’m not Howard Dean. I’m afraid I might be tempted to just go with what obviously works.