Citizens Media Resource: Georgia Election is Case Study in "Don't-do-This" for Democrats

Friday, June 30, 2017

Georgia Election is Case Study in "Don't-do-This" for Democrats

It's not hard to figure out that Republicans have been out-messaging Democrats. We have seen that facts don't matter and that strong messaging overcomes playing not to lose.

Having been a speechwriter, political strategist and PR operative for causes and candidates since Jimmy Carter was President, I was sufficiently horrified in this century to join others in forming Messaging Values Project -- a study of how to clearly message progressive values.

During this project we met political researcher and strategist Drew Westen.

Westen is to Democrats what Frank Luntz is to Republicans. Westen, who lives outside Atlanta, conducts focus groups to learn which messages and words resonate with potential voters and which ones fall flat. He understands how to "prime" a message by firing off mental "frames" in the mind of an audience.

Westen is every bit as good as Luntz -- better, I think, because he does not play on ignorance and hate -- but not as widely known. Westen does not have a track record of success (if you call convincing voters to screw up the country a success) like Luntz. For example, one Luntz gem was to advise Republicans to call Obamacare a "government takeover."

One subject for study, although it should not be a political issue, is abortion. I hate to even bring it up. It's a no-win subject. It's a personal matter that Republicans have wrangled and manipulated into hate and crazy and votes. There is no changing anyone's mind on this, but it is an issue that Westen tested in focus groups.

"A man and a woman have the right to plan a family. Voters respond favorably if you begin with that," Westen said in describing the results of focus groups on messaging women's reproductive rights.

Westen closely observed Democrat Jon Osoff's recent loss to Repubican Karen Handel in a highly watched and richly funded special congressional election in Georgia's sixth district.

In this CNN story, Westen lines out the Democrats' failures in this race, and he advises Democrats should use this as a what-not-to-do case study for 2018 congressional races.

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Wish List of Research

1. Who makes money on war? And on military buying, protecting and occupying? Yeah, we already know, but let's audit this with excellent research that lays out who profited and continues to profit from our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afganistan....or any other military activity and occupations, past or present. We have at least 823 foreign bases that the U.S. admits to; those are paid for by taxpayers, and the military bases are there principally to guard the oil for Exxon-Mobil. I believe we will find that taxpayers spend a huge amount on corporate welfare and subsidies to giant corporations, whose profits obviously are more important than the lives and limbs that are sacrificed in military actions. While we are at it, we should study who makes money from natural disasters, and how they get handed huge government contracts---in a no-bid rush, of course, since it is an emergency. There are capitalistic exploiters who feed off this as an industry; they are just not so long-established as what President Eisenhower called "the military-industrial complex."

2. Economic impact of legalizing use and sale of marijuana. There's another economic stimulus and revenue raiser. It would be regulated for safety and legal for individuals and small outfits to grow and sell. With the chance for broad participation, and the exclusion of monopolistic takeover of the market, many Americans would have the opportunity to be entrepreneurs.