Who is the Enemy?
For all Tomasky talks about the politics of the "Common Good" and Ruy Teixeira document "definitional politics" for progressives, what they singularly lack is the naming of who is undermining that common good, or to put it more simply, Who is the Enemy? Enter Sirota with Hostile Takeover.
To analyze rightwing success without looking at their use of enemies-- communism, trial lawyers, unions and so on -- is to ignore one of the key engines of political unity on the Right. I throughly believe that progressives need a positive program -- I'm a policy wonk by day working with Sirota in the Progressive States Network (the new name for PLAN) -- but you also need to identify the enemy, since people unify as much around what they are against as what they are for. In fact, they often only discover exactly what they believe in once they identify what they dislike.
Teixeira and others want to dismiss the possibility of "class-based populism", yet they would never deny that most Americans are quite skeptical of corporate corruption, see low-wage sweatshops as an evil, and see corporate manipulation of the global economy as threatening their jobs.
So name that enemy. Define those forces as the enemy of the "aspirations" of American families. That's the populism that Sirota and other activists like myself see as the key to progressive success.
The reason such a definition of the enemy is needed is precisely because Americans are optimistic. If we haven't achieved the good life for all our citizens, there has to be a malevolent force involved. Identifying the causal force behind the frustration of that optimistic vision for America is critical, since if progressives don't define that enemy, the rightwing will fill in the blanks -- lazy welfare moms, illegal aliens, liberal media elites, etc.
But a strong progressive definition of the enemy of the common good -- corporations outsourcing jobs, companies breaking our labor laws, polluters of our environment -- is a key to defining not just what progressives are against but also emphasizes why the common good has not been achieved.
Populism is not about a retro-blue collar definition of class, but exactly what the word says-- defining the "popular" cause, a cause that is thwarted by the defined enemy of that popular will. As Sirota defines it, that enemy of the popular will is the corporate money manipulating politics for its own self-interest.
One of the key problems is that those same monied interests often scare off many progressives from naming that enemy, since Democratic politicians and institutions often go hat-in-hand for funding from those same sources. Which leaves many Democrats fighting with one hand tied behind their back-- trying to ape the "talking points" like their rightwing opponents, yet turning mush-mouthed when they articulate who is the enemy of the public good. The question anyone asks is-- If your idea is so good, why hasn't it already happened? And if progressives can't identify an enemy, it leaves them mumbling about "incompetency" of the opposition, which is pretty weak tea.
Yes, progressives need a positive vision that appeals to a broad range of the population, but they also need to explain who is blocking that vision and name that enemy. If progressives can't do that in a convincing manner, they will lose. Which is why Sirota's book is such a valuable manual for helping progressives name that enemy and its works.
Update: One commenter argues "If we play the "enemies" game, the conservatives will beat us--every time. That's not how FDR won.." Which of course is dead wrong, see FDR's 1936 Convention speech where he railed against the "economic royalists":
For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor-other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.
Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of Government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.Read that speech. It makes Sirota sound like a DLCer. In fact, FDR was quite populist:
These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power.Whether the language of 1936 is appropriate for 2005 can be debated, but no one should be able to pretend that the New Deal itself was not built on rhetoric that carefully defined the enemy of freedom as the monied interests.
A valid point, but is it easier said than done?
Take a look at the Right's 'enemy list' as enumerated in Newman's post: They're all easily marginalized, and many in the broad swath of the public think they don't know anyone personally who falls into any of those categories (trial lawyers, welfare queens, liberal media elites).
Yet most people work for big corporations, about which they probably feel quite ambivalently: oppressed and alienated, perhaps, but not only that. Those big corporations sign their paychecks, make the products they buy, advertise on the TV shows they watch. Heck, one of the likely Democratic presidential contenders in 2008 founded a big corporation (Mark Warner -- Nextel).
Or what about the Religious Right? We may rightly want to pillory the Pat Robertsons and James Dobsons and Jerry Falwells, but millions of people subscribe to the same theology and yet still may be persuadable on certain progressive points.
I'm all for trying to sort out who the enemy is and to name it (and I look forward to reading Sirota's book), but let's not kid ourselves that building the case will be an easy, black-and-white task.
May 3, 2006 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sounds like you are running against Capitalism. Rather than running to make Capitalism work better. There is a big difference.
So please do name the enemy. You don't really do so in your posting. If your answer is "corporate money" or "monied interests" you won't attract much support.
May 3, 2006 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who is the enemy? Our enemy is a "common" problem. Simply put, the pursuit of the "common good" can be operationalized by solving a "common" problem.
Note that solving a "common" problem provides a focal point for collective action (e.g., the enemy of my enemy is my friend), and a basis for civil political discourse (i.e., it shouldn't matter whose pet policy initiative "wins" but rather that our common problem "gets solved"). For progressives, "progress" is made when a common societal problems gets solved.
The assumption here is that every reputable political or social policy is proposed solution to a problem (if there is no problem then aren’t we are just wasting time, energy and resources?). Thus for every key provision in a legislative bill, every earmark and line item in the federal budget, and every proposed regulatory rule, we should always ask:
+ To what "problem" is this the solution?
+ What are the "other" ways to solve this problem?
+ And in all intellectual honesty, why is it the "best" way to solve this problem?
As Norm Ornstein said, bad process leads to bad behavior and bad policy, while good process can lead to good behavior. Asking these questions is a "smell test" for whether some self-interest or the common good is being pursued. For example, we should ask:
+ To what "problem" is the 'Bridge to Nowhere' the solution?
+ What are the other ways to solve this problem?
+ And in all intellectual honesty, why is the 'Bridge' the best solution to this problem?
As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant." For fiscal conservatives, this problem solving process is how we can achieve limited yet effective government. Echoing Madison's Federalist #51, changing the political rules of the game from "winning" to "problem solving" is how we can oblige government to "control itself." So in one fell swoop, pursuing the "common good" by solving our "common" problems is how we can accomplish lobbying, ethics and campaign finance reform.
As for good policy, we again can ask whether a president is merely being self-interested in making his mark seeking glory (to paraphrase Stephen Colbert) as a "great" or the "greatest" president in history--or whether he is pursuing the common good. For example, the Congress should have asked:
+ To what "problem" is the 'invasion of Iraq' the solution?
WMD disarmament? Regime change" Democracy in the Middle East?
+ What are the "other" ways to solve this problem?
+ And in all intellectual honesty, why is the 'invasion' the best way to solve this problem.
As Ornstein points out, good process can also lead to good policy.
That’s it! There is no need to talk about sacrifice (or even altruism) if we define the pursuit of the "common good" as solving our "common" problems. What is necessary though is the Democrats' core moral value of "moral empathy": i.e., Bill Clinton's "I feel your pain." That was the genius of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech where he made the plight of the Negro as the plight of all Americans. What this means is that the guiding principle for public policy should be to "minimize avoidable suffering." For Christians who have seen "The Passion of the Christ," this should be easy to understand--after all, the Latin translation for "passion" (passio) is "suffering."
May 3, 2006 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
We are not about to change the economic model in the industrialized west anytime soon. The model is that of private ownership of (most) of the means of production (which these days also includes services). If anything the trend is just continuing. Even municipal services are now being privatized. We now have private prisons, water works, electric and gas companies and even roads. Fifty years ago many of these were municipal or state services.
What has changed is that the balance of forces has shifted. The three way balance between labor, capital and government has become one of a capital/government alliance against a mostly ineffectual labor movement. The last time this happened on a large scale was in the 1930's in Germany and Italy.
Large firms through their lot in with the Fascists and Nazis as a way to combat the rising strength of the various communist, socialist and anarchist labor movements. Many in the middle class supported this; they were afraid of what a strong working class labor movement would mean. As we know the governments morphed into something which went far beyond industrial policy. Gross abuses of civil rights and a rise in militarism followed with disasterous results.
The original Populist movement in the US didn't succeed at the ballot box, but was able to change the tone of discourse and allow people like Teddy Roosevelt to put through progressive programs. We may be seeing some small rumbling of this now, but it hasn't cohered into a movement yet.
I don't think blaming corporations is going to resonate, but perhaps appeals to fairness and a level playing field may. A weakening standard of living is making people angry, but so far those in power have been able to deflect the anger onto the usual marginalized scapegoats.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
May 3, 2006 1:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Newman's got it exactly right here. The key however is to define the enemy in the way that appeals to both the left-wing base of the party as well as swing voters. In the 1970s, the GOP reinvented themselves by derining themselves as against the utopianism of the Great Society (e.g. welfare queens), against the libertinism of the cultural left (e.g. Hollywood, abortion on demand) and against the pacifism and anti-Americanism of the anti-war movement (e.g. commie-lovers). The result was the Reagan Revolution. The flipped this agenda into a "positive" mantra of lower taxes, family values and a strong military.
Democrats need to find a way to identify the GOP with rapacious multinational corporations, libertarians who want to gut what's left of the federal safety net, the Dobson-Robertson extreme of the religious right and the Rumsfeld-Cheney bomb first and ask questions later approach to foreign policy. Further, they need to do it in a way that makes swing voters such as deficit hawks, non-fundamenalist communitarians, and Wilsonians who initially supported the war in Iraq, align with the Democrats against the "enemies" on the right.
The question that the resurgent populist left has to answer is how to allow for room to build left-center coalitons while at the same time creating a political environment in which universal health care is a mainstream idea and that radically pro-corporate policies like the bankruptcy bill are considered extreme right-wing positions.
May 3, 2006 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is one big reason why Democrats should not define the enemy as Corporate America. Consider this alternative...
If we narrow our definition of the enemy to THE REPUBLICAN POLITICIAN, we would then be able to argue that Corporate America has been misled by incompetent, pandering Republican Politicians who have proposed polices that have actually hurt the interests of wealthy Americans in real terms. Yes, Corporate America is a victim(!). The real enemy of the American people is The Republican Politicians.
With this approach, I believe we'd have a chance to win over a good chunk of Corporate America by earnestly insisting that Our Way (the More Enlightened Way) is The Way that is going to make them better off in real terms. If they were to use this approach, Democratic politicians would be able to look many of these 'corporate interests' in the eye and tell them that the Democrats are going to make them wealthier in the only ways that really matter.
Sometimes an indirect approach is far better when there are divide-and-conquer opportunities.
May 3, 2006 2:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's far more likely to work the other way around-- appeal to some honest Republicans that they'be been misled by corporate lobbyists.
While you definitely can recruit some responsible businesses to support progressive solutions, the issue is dividing the corporate elite between them and the scumbag companies that have enriched themselves at the expense of family wages and our environment.
May 3, 2006 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Those "scumbag companies" are the same ones in people's 401K portfolios. With 40% or so of the population participating in the stock market (even if most only nominally) the old anti-corporatist themes just aren't going to resonate as they did in the past. Even the remaining workers in defined benefit plans still want to see their firms do well.
I think an appeal that emphasizes that the present structure is enriching management and speculators and hollowing companies and making them less competitive with foreign firms might work better.
Just look at how the unimaginative management at the big three auto firms has crippled these companies over the past 30 years. The unions didn't do this, management did. They needed to push up short term profits by overbuilding high margin SUV's instead of investing for the long range. This was all to keep Wall Street happy.
--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape
May 3, 2006 3:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Amen, amen. You've articulated what I've been thinking for years, but without the profanity! Democrats have seemed to be the 90 pound weakling on the beach since we let Nixon misdefine George McGovern. The reaction from Democratic office-holders and spokesfolks every time a DEMOCRAT says something that would force them to take a stand triggers my gag reflex. The loathing the DLCers have for Howard Dean shows the fear the Bidens, Liebermans, et al, have at offending their corporate sponsors. I don't argue that we should purge these people, just wrest leadership of our party from them. We are Democrats. We stand for something. We want to be represented by people who do the same.
May 3, 2006 5:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
If we play the "enemies" game, the conservatives will beat us--every time. That's not how FDR won, or even how Clinton won. Remember "It's the economy, stupid." NOT "Bush is an SOB, stupid" or Republicans suck, stupid."
The problems are the enemy! The bad health care, insecurity in jobs, stagnant working class per capita incomes, "preventive" war, political corruption--those are the enemy.
It's marketing 101--you have to have a real problem that people want to solve, and then IMMEDIATELY you have to offer a CREDIBLE solution.
Some good ideas in this thread, but a lot of missing the mark, too.
May 3, 2006 6:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wonder if we can't allow for all of these strategies - liberal groups making a case before the public that corporations are hurting them and hurting America; some Democrats making the case to conservatives that they've been misled by corporate lobbyists (and neoconservative leadership); and most/all Dems making the case to the public that Republican Party policies are bad, period.
May 3, 2006 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The State is the enemy (along with religion) - which is the answer on the surface level.
But you can't even handle THAT answer.
The real problem is your primate nature - your fear of death, your hierarchical primate social behavior, your neurochemistry that overrides your conceptual processing ability with emotionalism.
I can retire now, having explained your problem.
Oh, wait, I forgot - I'm talking to humans.
Try this - who is the enemy?
You are. "We have met the enemy, and they is us."
Aside to self:
(I can't wait until Bush attacks Iran. The Dems are going to be SO screwed up trying to sell this game plan while everything goes to hell around them...)
May 3, 2006 6:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes - and while long hours, unpaid overtime, and little to no vacation allowances all hurt productivity, increase stress and worsen health, with evidence for this going back over a century, faith-based bosses still stick to the "obvious" conclusion that working longer and harder increases productivity. Talk about unimaginative management. For-hire CEOs are ruining the companies hard-working Americans work in and invest in, and hurting America by lobbying for policies that help them, not workers and shareholders.
May 3, 2006 6:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
The enemies game is a loser alright. Republicans will always have better enemies, at least for 'the base' kind of voter: gays who want to 'destroy the family', 'baby killers', brown people with drones of death or nukes who hate our freedom and think they own our gas, communists, evildoers. Republicans are also willing to kill, maim, start wars borrow trillions and lie about it all. Solution: more time with GW in charge and when the economy crashes Americans will be looking for some old fashion progressive programs to ease the pain.
May 3, 2006 7:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
"malefactors of great wealth"
i just googled this well worn TR phrase. while i expected a lefty love for it, i was surprised to find the national review embrace the phrase, turning it around on 'greedy trial lawyers'. another righty site turned it on the liberal media.
actively using it to define certain elements on the right might give us some interesting politics.
May 3, 2006 9:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dang, I was trying to rate your comment, and the comment you were responding, but it doesn't seem to be working - the little blue wheels are just spinning. But you both get a four in my book.
But here's something I've been wondering for quite a few years - I read an interview with Ruplican fund raiser Richard Viguerie years ago - if you remember he was the champion direct-mail fund raiser of all time during Reagan's campaign. He was asked what he owed his success to, and he answered with his two guiding axioms:
1. 9 times in 10 people will do as they are told.
2. People will give 10 times the money for something they are against than something that they are for.
Since both axioms alienated me, I wondered if Vigurie was using the term "people" to signify his republican base. Obviously he used republican mailing lists (I know that I did not receive any solicitations from him). I took some comfort deciding that a democrat base would not behave in the same manner, but I don't really have any evidence to support that. It's just a hunch.
So when I read the word "enemy" in this discussion the red flags went up, and I'm very happy that you and vorkosigan1 have raised the challenge.
Could it be that the difference to responding to the negative and responding to the positive is a demarkation of the political culture of the two political parties? Admittedly, that's an ambitious concept - but is it at least partially true?
I think I see the same sort of thing with "framing" political discourse. In the final analysis, it strikes me as a rather form of sloganism. True, jumping democrats for being thoughtful about issues by calling it "flip-flopism" (a bad, negative thing, eh?) appeals to some species of political thinking, but I don't think it has much truck with the left.
We need to be careful. Aping republican strategeries could be disasterous. The left in this country are diverse and thoughtful, and are just as likely to be shut-down by propaganda and sloganism as being motived by the same.
Neoboho
May 4, 2006 12:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I do not doubt for a minute that a lot of misguided Republican policy originates in the minds of corporate lobbyists, I have come to perceive Republican politicians as essentially naked opportunists who try to come up with whatever policies they can think of that might please the wealthiest members of our society. So yes, it goes both ways, but there is a reason why I want to target the Republican Politicians.
The Republicans have been able to persuade Swing Voters to vote for them by convincing them that The Democrats are a threat to them. In order to get those Swing Voters back, we need to persuade them that it is the Republicans who are actually the Great Threat. I think this is best done by calling into question the character and motivation of the Republican politicians they are thinking of voting for. It is the people who are running for office that we need to define.
Naming Corporate America as the enemy allows Republican politicians to defend them as a third party. That allows them to escape the accusation that they are the ones that Americans need to fear on election day. See my point?
May 4, 2006 5:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
You are onthe right track. Butto have enemies, you have to personalize them, humanize them in some ways. Think about it. Part of the effectiveness of the "liberal" characterization are its personalized forms the "treehuggers', wealthy, effete whiners, the no-work welfare queens. Now one can have a field day with the right using similar characterizations but railing against corporations is like railingagainst the weather. Even if one made them out to have a corrupt and evil side, who really believes with all their money and power that the Dems would really curb them significantly (not me). But the Bush gang is vulnerable. After all they are privileged, frat boy, chikenhawks, who never worked a day in their life, ivory tower foreign policy planners who have never had to deal with the mess they create, people who have no idea how hard it is to maske ends meet because they never have had to in their lives,irresponsible, arrogant, privileged. Yes,economic royalists.
May 4, 2006 5:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
This discussion jumped out at me because I'm drafting the phrase "monied interests" into a campaign speech I'm working up for Dave Patlak, Democrat for Congress in Florida District 18 (against Republican incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen).
Monied interests may be the enemy in many of our progressive efforts, but a better word to use is foe. Monied interests are composed of people who are also citizens of this country, and they have rights. Better not to use enemy to refer to fellow citizens.
What they presently have is undue rights. We have a Supreme Court that grants freedom of speech to money, a Congress and President who grant monied families eternal power by taking away the estate tax. Removing these undue rights must be progressive goals. Base your drive on the Preamble to the Constititution: "We the people" are the first words, not We the monied interests, nor We the corporations.
The Constitution and Declaration of Independence are not conservative documents (I hold my nose while passing over references to slaves in the pre-amendments Constitution). Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- progressive, not conservative. "Promote the general welfare" and "secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity" are phrases from the Preamble -- progressive, not conservative.
We have much to build on, and let's be wise and moderate in our use of terms. No enemies, please. I'm old enough to have wondered if I was on Nixon's enemies list.
May 4, 2006 6:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
There are several enemies, not just one, although they are all very similar, being united within the Republican platform.
The first enemy is globalization, or unregulated global markets, which are dominated by a small number of the largest firms. Thus, the first enemy is a force, along with the opportunists (a minority of businesspeople and corporations) who are taking advantage of globalization to profit themselves at the expense of ordinary people and local businesses. The solution to this "enemy" is not protectionist tariffs and trade-barriers (that's too old-fashioned and conservative) but new cutting-edge ideas like a national investment in local economic development (lets call it "Localization"). We can add jobs by developing new small businesses. Another idea is "Fair Trade"- international trade deals that include provisions for protecting workers rights and the environment in all countries (call it "Good Globalization"). Lets stop the "Globalizers" and help the American people recover their economic stregth.
The other enemy is intolerance, another force, and the minority of self-appointed so-called "Leaders" who use intolerance to divide the American people against themselves, while promoting thier own status, influence and power. This includes anyone who employs overblown demagogic rhetoric, anyone who engages in witch-hunts, anyone who tries to use legislation to impose their values on others (there is someone like that in practically every congressional district). The solution to this problem isnt protectionist social legislation unless that legislation is also in the interest of all Americans. It will be up to us to explain how affirmative action, gay rights, immigrant rights, and strengthed science education in our schools help all Americans. So lets stop the demagogs and help the American people regain their sense of unity and common national purpose.
Key to exploiting our opposition to these twin enemies of the American people and the values they share is adoption of a political process that reflects the importance of the opinions of ordinary Americans and the issues they think are important. Currently, many political barriers exist to prevent ordinary people from getting their voice heard and actively contributing to policy debates: gerry-mandered districts that protect the incumbants of both parties, including the leaders of our own, weak campaign finance regulation that favors big-donars, including ours, a concentration of policy-making power in Washington making local decisions impotent, including communities whose values we dont share. All these contribute to a national government whose leaders can act without accountability. We have to possess the moral courage to oppose these things even though (or, more accurately, precisely because) they are not really in our short-term self-interest. An unaccountable government is incapable of holding large corporations accountable as well. So think of "Unaccountable government and unaccountable corporations" as a third "enemy" (granted, we need a sexier term than "unaccountable" Anyone?).
Three enemies: globalization, intolerance, unaccountability. Three solutions. Lets get going.
May 4, 2006 7:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
While I feel that any political party that is in search of a message is actually a party in search of itself and I don't like the idea of making adjustments to a collapsing system that will only delay the collapse and not prevent it I will offer the following: It appears that what most progressives can agree on is the need to curb the excessives of Extreme Capitalism so that it changes back into a form of Moderate Capitalism. I believe the value of moderating the excesses of capitalism was realized around the time capitalism emerged. Perhaps the downside of Extreme Capitalism is marketable?
Another point that I think many are side stepping here is that the forces that are benefitting from the current form of Extreme Capitalism are consolidating their power over "We the People" at an ever increasing rate within this country. Soon, if not now, any action of a moderate nature to overcome this consolidation may no longer be possible. It may be that the frog can take another few degrees of water temperature, maybe a few more (no sense in making a drastic move when its still relatively "comfortable") but soon it will be cooked.
The idea of appealing for votes and political action based only on current, perceived self interest may be complete folly for progressives in the current historical situation.
May 4, 2006 7:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you - excellent language. Polishes some things I've been thinking about lately, ties up loose ends, points new directions.
That's all. Thanks.
May 4, 2006 8:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'll echo the comments upthread. We can't simply run against "corporations" or "big business", and I don't think we can even run against "monied interests" or "the wealthy few" these days.
Progressives need to campaign against the corruption of our economy and our political sphere by individuals and businesses who bend the rules, bribe, cheat, pollute, and steal to get ahead.
I think the best way to define this issue is to take Clinton's formulation of good government-- lending a hand to people who work hard and play by the rules-- and applying it to economic regulation. We want to help businesses and investors succeed if they play by the rules, treat their employees well, and serve the common good as well as the bottom line.
Economic growth, trade, globalization, and profitable businesses are all in the public interest, provided that these goals aren't achieved by slashing wages and benefits and bribing Congress or federal agencies for special favors. I know this may seem like a statement of the obvious, but that hasn't been the message that's been getting across lately.
May 4, 2006 9:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Precisely. We are living in fascists times. Our government is run by fascism policies. Mussolini failed, it is instructive to learn, how and why. We are no longer a democracy...corporations are running the state and thus the people, have been stripped of their voting power. By co-opting the government via big money and corruption...K street will live on..
May 4, 2006 12:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree. And using this reasoning, the only problem polling high enough to win an election demands the slogan...."It's the illegal immigrants, stupid"
May 4, 2006 12:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
An ad listing the indictments or convictions of the politicians since 2001, mostly Republicans, with their crimes displayed should be more than pursuasive.
Grab a few self-serving quotes from these guys proclaiming moral superiority as a lead-in.
We don't have to label them enemies...merely HYPOCRITES.
One of my personal favorite moments was when Pat Robertson backed that butcher now being tried by international tribunal...said he was a good christian man.
May 4, 2006 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Unfortunately, you are profoundly wrong about this. FDR won only because the economy was collapsing into the worst Depression in our history. Clinton won, not because he stressed the economy, but because---with his extraordinary charisma---he was able to respond deftly to Republican attacks in a way that cast doubt on his accusers. Almost every single election year, Democratic candidates stake out positions that would improve the welfare the a significant majority of the electorate, but the Republicans still manage to persuade millions of those Swing Voters out there to vote against their own best interests.
If you look at the past century of the American politics, you'll notice that Democrats are only able to get elected into the White House under extraordinary circumstances. They need either a Great Depression, an Assassination, a monumental scandal (Watergate), or candidates who possess an extradorinary amount of personal charm/charisma (Kennedy/Clinton). It's been a very rare occurence. We've been right on the issues, but the Republicans win anyway because they know that as far as the Swing Voters are concerned, the issues really don't matter. The IMAGE CAMPAIGN is everything.
Republican strategists know they would rarely win if election results were always determined by a logical discussion of The Issues because they know that most voters would benefit more from Democratic economic policies than from Republican policies. They know they must win the Image Campaign to have any chance of winning. That is why they are committed, now and forever, to negative campaigning. Republicans have never forgotten a key stratagem they perfected during the Reagan Era: DEMONIZING YOUR OPPONENTS WORKS. It works because Swing Voters are essentially “headline readers” & “sound byte nibblers.” When they see in the headlines that Candidate A accused Candidate B of having a certain personality defect, they tend to believe it.
The Issues might actually be important to many Swing Voters early on in a political campaign, but when both sides start to pick apart each other’s facts & interpretations, the typical Swing Voter quickly becomes confused. As the debate over The Issues drags on, Swing Voters realize that they don’t understand the details well enough to make an informed decision, so they end up relying on their impressions of the candidates.
The most important reason why negative campaigning has worked so well for the Republicans is because their negative attacks on the Democrats create a positive impression of Republican candidates, who appear—in contrast—to be individuals who do not possess the defects that they have accused others of having. They define themselves [positively] by defining their Democratic opponents [negatively]. On a visceral level, what the Republicans actually “stand for” in the minds of Swing Voters on election day is that they are not Democrats---those defective people who seem to have been born to ruin everything.
I used to be an Issues Democrat, before I watched the Reagan Era unfold before my eyes. If Democrats want to become the majority party again, and defeat Republicans at every level, they are going to have to do better than Marketing 101. They are going to have to master Marketing 901, The Subtleties of Waging an Image Campaign. For more on this: The Republican Nemesis.
May 4, 2006 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nathan, you wrote, after quoting FDR in 1936, that "Whether the language of 1936 is appropriate for 2005 can be debated, but no one should be able to pretend that the New Deal itself was not built on rhetoric that carefully defined the enemy of freedom as the monied interests."
True. As you intimate, 2006 is not 1936. We are not in the midst of a great depression. We are in the midst of is a "quiet" 30-year recession, marked by the steady erosion of middle class living standards.
The implications are different. In 1936 political leaders didn't need to persuade ordinary Americans that they were suffering terribly. Persuading people who don't necessarily perceive themselves as suffering a whole lot that they are suffering is a downer, any way you slice it, it seems to me. The implication is that the talking politician knows better than they do how their life is going? Who do you believe responds positively to that sort of appeal?
It's also true that FDR said the only thing to fear is fear itself and communicated a relentlessly upbeat faith in the ability of our country to pull through the Depression.
If we can find a messenger who is able to name a compelling enemy while remaining fundamentally upbeat about our country and seizing the optimistic high ground, then perhaps that might work. Perhaps. Presidential candidates perceived as more optimistic and pleasant than their opposition seem to win of late, no?
The best choice for an enemy would register at the level of values as well as interests, and be embedded in a larger narrative that makes sense to the people we want to vote for us. The phrase "economic royalists" implies, to me anyway, that the bad guys are not unwittingly taking the rest of us for a ride but know precisely what they are doing. And an economic royalist is a person who calls more readily to mind a human face than can "multinational corporations" or "monied interests."
Multinational corporations are too much tied up with business in our country and our country is not anti-business. The middle of the electorate wants corporations to be good citizens and have their growing excesses reigned in. But they don't want to do away with them. They can't even imagine what that might mean in practice. "Monied interests" doesn't sound promising to me. If the intent is to single out special interests who are dominating the political system at the expense of the rest of us, well then find some catchy phrase that communicates that instead.
"Enemies" carries with it the implication of a force or person that needs to be done away with, or at least locked up. I would tend to prefer "foes", or maybe "opponents".
There may, as others in this thread imply, be a Myth of Strategic Equivalence at work--the idea that Republians play dirty and demonize people and they've been winning, so--therefore--Democrats need to do the same to win. That may or may not be true. But I don't think it should simply be assumed to follow. It needs to be argued for.
For example, did Bill Clinton win by playing dirty and demonizing people? He fought back quickly, hard, and effectively when he was attacked. But that is not the same thing. Is the pool of people who are potential Democratic voters affected (both to vote for people and to vote against them) by negative tactics and appeals in the same ways and to the same degree as is the pool of potential Republican voters?
May 4, 2006 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
All you need are the proper adjectives. What's so bad about trial lawyers, for example? Greedy trial lawyers are another matter. Nobody likes them.
So how about "amoral international corporations" who respect no nation's sovereignty and care only about profits, or "selfish monied interests" whose only concern is their own wealth, no matter who it harms or the cost to society? Does that sound like it may garner a bit more support? Especially since it's true.
The point is these interests are anti-market forces that are destroying capitalism as we knew it.
May 4, 2006 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I. for one. am so glad you are not human. It would be a stain on the race.
May 4, 2006 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh, the race is gonna get a stain all right.
That's about all that's gonna be left when you chimpanzees get through with your wars, biological weapons and nukes...
And if you don't, we Transhumans will finish the job when you're dumb enough to attack us.
There are only three possible outcomes - and a fourth which is the most likely:
1) You get transmogrified into Transhumans whether you like it or not.
2) We ignore you and leave.
3) You attack us and we exterminate you.
And the most likely scenario: All of the above. Some people get transmogrified, some get ignored and some get exterminated.
Your choice.
Have a nice day.
May 5, 2006 2:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent points, to which I would add one other: From time to time conservatives critique "tax the rich" policies as not all that popular with the working class Americans because so many people aspire to be rich themselves one day. I think that point is overstated, but nonetheless has a kernel of truth that needs to be kept in mind and addressed as we work out the rhetoric of a politics that challenges "monied interests."
May 5, 2006 5:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let me try again.
The enemy of the "pursuit of the common good" [Federalist #57] is the "system" (i.e., bad process). If different people in the same system produce the same result, the problem is not the people but rather the "system." As Norm Ornstein says, bad process leads to bad behavior and bad policy.
What this says is that we need to control the effects of "factions" [Federalist #10]. We need good processes that can lead to good behavior and good policy. We need honest leadership that encourages intellectual honesty, fair play, and deliberation for the common good--and open government through Internet transparency to ensures that it does. We need to change the political rules of the game from "winning" to "deliberating" (i.e., joint problem solving). Simply put, we need to change the way Washington works.
So who is our "common enemy?" My answer is Washington, with its toxic partisan environment and culture of corruption. The American People want change. Here the Democratic Party should call for the "Great American Restoration" of the deliberative democracy that was envisioned by our Founding Fathers.
May 5, 2006 9:13 AM | Reply | Permalink