How did “I have a dream” poll? King’s message was taking the country’s founding mythology and demanding that it actually be applied to black people. Challenging, to be sure, but direct, succinct, and ultimately persuasive. Defund the police fails on several counts. It’s confusing and has to be explained and qualified, or it’s tremendously unpopular. And even after explained it’s still pretty unpopular, since polling indicates that people of all races, including blacks, actually want the same amount or more police. The actual popular part of “defund the police” is transferring some of the police’s responsibility for mental health intervention and similar stuff to other, better funded agencies. But that fits much better into a “reform the police” framework.
How is that relevant to my point?
One problem is asymmetrical intensity. Republicans have trained their coalition to hate liberals and Democrats. Democrats need to be equally polarizing. I know people around here have the tendency to hide to posts that suggest that the only good Republican is a dead Republican, but that’s really the sort of messaging that Democrats need to embrace. Conservatives are bad. Conservatives are why your life sucks. Voters should hate conservatives. We need to train people to reflexively support concepts such as “defund the police” without understanding what it means simply because Republicans hate it.
If you believe in the idea of negative partisanship–an idea associated with political scientists such as Alan Abramowitz and Rachel Bitecofer that some voters are motivated by opposing the other party rather than supporting the ideas of their own–then you should see that the Democrats fail to appeal to this sort of partisanship. Too many still subscribe to an Enlightenment idea that politics should be a rational debate conducted salon-style, but we are not a nation of philosophes and we need to find a path for a post-Enlightenment, postmodern conception of politics.
I have to double check this to verify it, but you know who I think ended up doing really well despite all the polling hate from us? Emerson. You know who else probably nailed the popular vote? The IBD/TIPP tracking poll.
If ultimately means 20 years after they murdered him for it, then yeah ok.
Yeah, Emerson was really good this cycle, and unlike others they didn’t always miss in the Biden direction:
Final Emerson Polls:
- Georgia; Trump +1, Actual: Biden .25 (off 1.25);
- Maine: BIden +11, Actual: Biden +10 (and still counting so it might hit +11), (off 1.0);
- Arizona: Biden +2, Actual: Biden +.3 (off 1.7);
- Nevada: BIden +2, Actual: Biden +2.4 (off .4);
- National: Biden +4, Actual: Biden +5ish (off 1);
- North Carolina; Even, Actual: Trump +1.4ish (off 1.4);
They did badly miss on Texas, PA, WI Ohio and Iowa though.
I wasn’t trying to argue that King accomplished everything he wanted to or set out to or needed to. I said that his messaging and tactics were effective and changed the country. They did, that’s inarguable.
I don’t remember this forum hating on Emerson particularly, except for one person: Nunnehi. He harshly attacked the Emerson polls because… he took college algebra there and it sucked. Loooool. Dude has an uncanny track record.
Those look pretty good. I’m sure there are others.
I wasn’t trying to shit on polling universally.
But when you end up with things like Wisconsin+17 and Florida+6 and the results come out to be Wisconsin+1 and Florida-3, those pollsters should lose their A+ rating.
Do better next time, and you can have it back.
I’m sympathetic to the challenges of polling and I do think expectations are generally too high, but when the polling outfit that literally makes up what it hopes the results will be does better than your “A+” pollsters, maybe pump the brakes on the “poles were awesome again” takes, Nate.
I’m no polling expert but isn’t this a little like saying the guy who calls all in on his gutty cause he knows his 8 is coming, and it does, made the right play?
MLK led the bus boycott in Selma in 1955. 8 years later, in 1963 he delivered his speech at the March on Washington. 8 years after he started his public facing activism in earnest, the American public support for his activities and message polled lower than Defund the Police polled just 3 weeks after G Floyd murder. Should MLK have stopped because according to the polling numbers his tactics and messaging were bad? Of course not. Challenges to the status quo will rarely have initial popularity.
Imagine an alternate universe where in the 1990’s gay marriage went from ~not heard of to polling at 25-39% within a month. The activists within that community and the people who support the movement wouldn’t go back to a position: welp, we’re under 50% better stop trying, better advocate for something else.
The cat is almost all the way out the bag on Defund the Police. Well, the eDems are trying to kill the cat as usual. Because their role is to squash left social movements before they become fully realized.
I’m starting to think I was right. Maybe there should be a poll.
The problem is that it’s really, really hard to find a pithy articulation of the concept, so I’m not saying the solution was/is obvious. Shit, I have no idea what the message should be, and putting forth nothing was not an option.
I’m just saying that it’s like if the M4A slogan was “Socialized Medicine Now!”
Hard disagree on this. Seems like it would be better to focus and to place the blame where it truly should be: the oligarchs, the kleptocrats, the plutocrats…whatever you want to label them. Getting regular people to hate other regular people…hasn’t ended well in the past.
I would get people to hate Republicans by continually painting them as the party of business elites, which they are. These things should go hand in hand.
Regular people already hate regular people; it just only goes in one direction. Republicans hate Democrats, and Democrats want to work with their friends the Republicans. It’s true that we have a common enemy in plutocrats, but working class Republicans have shown that plutocracy is acceptable as long as they get to own the libs.
A lot of the hateful stuff in Donald Trump’s agenda is opposed by plutocrats. Muslim ban, border wall, and family separation come to mind. For COVID, the oligarchs may want OFB (the smarter ones maybe not), but they definitely don’t want “masks are for pussies.” There’s only one group of people who prop up all of the policies that bring misery to working folks and marginalized groups. It’s Republican base voters. I don’t see any benefit to pretending we can be allies, when they are quite open in their contempt of us.
Anecdotally, I’ve not cared for any of the Democratic candidates I’ve voted for in a GE over the past four years. But God damn did I slam that lever on election day, because it felt great to register my “fuck you” to the Republicans. Hatred is a good motivator imo.
Of course not. But that doesn’t stop their Republican opponents from blasting ads about their ties to AOC and Bernie and wanting to defund the police and spread lawlessness in the streets by setting their small businesses on fire while rioting and looting and killing babies on the side.
So many posts agreeing with this, when the question isn’t even framed correctly.
It’s not about leading with values. It’s about clearly communicating how our policies come from/relate to values. And if we want to deprogram these GOP cultists, we have to tie our progressive policies to values that they have “taken over”. Shit like freedom and patriotism and god bless america and hard work and bootstraps and the american flag, yada yada.
Tell them stuff like: forgiving student debt will allow you to be FREE to change jobs or start a small business. It’s PATRIOTIC to help your neighbor with health care coverage. AMERICA has the best scientists in the world and we need to use them. Et cetera.
it sounds trite, but as we’ve seen, trite works. Also, no one gives a shit about 15-page policy papers except us.
I agree that base Trump supporters will most likely never become allies. But there are many Trump voters beyond the base. When I interact with those folks, I’ll admit I can get frustrated with their beliefs, opinions, etc. For me though, I reserve my anger for the oligarchs who control the media outlets that lie to them, and my contempt is aimed at the politicians who sell them BS while their lives are made worse, and I save my vitriol for the billionaire ruling class.
A good motivator for what though? Getting people to vote for and elect candidates that you admit you don’t care for? That doesn’t seem like a positive to me. You’ll have to walk me through why you beleive that’s a good thing.
Right.
Saying values does not work ignores that the GOP makes it work, you just have to rap it up in a nice simple package.