So I’m still spending most of my waking hours thinking about this and doing research on execution stuff. Here’s where I am so far:
I’ve been thinking about the political situation and I’m starting to seriously suspect that the biggest piece of infrastructure the Democratic Party doesn’t really have that the GOP really dumps resources on is issue organizations like Americans for Prosperity, The Federalist Society, the NRA, and Americans for Tax Reform.
I think we build an issue org that only cares about the bottom half of the income distribution and how policy will impact them. The median American family and everyone worse off. We have dues paying members, scorecards we give those dues paying members, and we do our best to serve as a Wayne Wheeler style lobbyist for the bottom half. Wayne Wheeler took on one of the largest industries in the United States that was the primary source of funding for the federal government and got a constitutional amendment passed making the thing that made their product fun illegal. He did that by building a movement of single issue voters that made the NRA look tiny.
On to the podcast. I watched a standup comic recently whose name I can’t remember (butch lesbian black woman, very funny) and whose routine I can’t find anywhere despite remembering it and thinking it was very good did one of the few bits about Trump to actually make me laugh. She said he had strong back of the bus energy. I was a back of the bus kid, I got it instantly. That’s the vibe I’m going for. I’m going for slightly rowdy blue collar conversation about politics. We bring normies on and talk to them about politics. We talk about what something means for the lower class in a super frank way. We give it to them as simple and honest as we can.
This is as much about organizing people on the basis of their economic class as it is about anything else. Have that be the unifying thing they all have in common.
Yeah, I did make the point that I was pretty sure this was the wrong thread te recommend a podcast. I also I assume I’m not the 1st to suggest it. I guess I saw this thread being active and just wanted to bring the idea up one more time because I think this group could pull off something interesting. And while I do think it could have some benefits, I agree it doesn’t rise to the level of the more compelling and critical things being discussed here.
Agreed. I think we could do a good and successful podcast, but that’d be my suggestion if I was asked what our easiest path was to making money in the political sphere while doing some good. It’d be more fun and less work, too.
I think a podcast is something we can redirect people to. The more I think about this the more I think a big part of the problem is really not even trying to target the cultists.
The digital ads are the delivery device, but we still need a payload and preferably one that returns some of our spend to be recycled.
To get people out of the Maga cult we definitely have to offer them something to replace it with.
I see marketing campaigns as a two part process: the first is the marketing work that gets the eyeballs, and the second part (which I think is often more important than the marketing) is how the product you’re marketing captures value from the marketing.
The goal here is to create a perpetual motion machine, because those grow insanely fast and can cover ground really quickly in that gap between inception and relevance.
There is only so much value we can get out of digital ads. Don’t get me wrong, they work, but as I’m looking into this I’m realizing that what they really are is reminders to people about work they already did to build habits and an inner narrative in the person seeing the ad.
That’s not a bad thing really, but it means we have to be advertising an actual thing. I think an issue org aimed at single mindedly working for the economic benefit of the bottom half is a good thing to advertise.
I’ve given a lot of thought to the anonymity thing, and as much as I like it I don’t think we’ll succeed in being anonymous from the people we want to be concealed from… and the less organizational power we can have. And since organization is probably the #1 thing that has to happen to get where we want to go, and where most of our ability to bully politicians would come from, I don’t think we can give that up for anonymity.
Healthcare: I think the message we need to have here is that the person we are talking to is being charged almost all of the global cost for medical research (an evil foreign enemy? Really?). That the US is Xth in life expectancy and spends XXX% more than the next most expensive country. That we’re being taken advantage of. Talk about the loss of freedom to choose your providers coming from constantly being forced to change insurance plans to try to find something affordable. Talk about private equity funded ER’s straight up highway robbing people. Talk about balance billing and the people who are fighting to keep it a thing. Talk about the loss of freedom to start your own business because of health insurance. I’ll tell my health insurance story so many times (and it’s good content, I’ve been workshopping it for years) you’ll all get super super sick of it.
Tax the rich: Sir, you pay more of your income in taxes than insert rich person here. The roads are getting worse, healthcare costs a fucking fortune, the schools are worse than when you went to school (demonize common core here because it’s unpopular and doomed anyway), and you can’t afford to pay for your kids college. They got caught already google the Panama Papers.
The key thing in all of these is that they make sense in the targets existing worldview. They can absolutely be convinced that the GOP is a corrupt corporate conspiracy to keep them down. They can’t be convinced that the Democrats aren’t that until the Democrats do something real for them.
You do not want to get into arguments with these people, you want to get them nodding along. The nodding along is the delivery device. Then you finish with ONE THING they disagree with that is the logical conclusion of everything you just said. Then handle the objections. Do not use words that the right has been training them to resist for 20 years. Build value in your argument and then close them. And close them on an idea that has a name like Freedom Dividend rather than White Privilege.
It is very hard to sit with someone who is basically totally wrong about everything and not bristle up when they say regrettable shit. You really have to dig deep and find the empathy you need to keep seeing them in a sympathetic light no matter how unsympathetic they actually are. You’re looking to replace their regrettable ideas with something that accomplishes the same things as the old idea does for them.
And not everyone is gettable obviously… but think about the political rewards that would come from slicing off 10-20% of Trump’s base and having them vote for leftists in primaries and Dems in the general? It’s hard work, but I don’t see any way to get where we need to get in the time we have left without just coming through the front door guns blazing. We have to convert these people to something else.
I think a lot of this is too complicated. The freedom angle is good. But mostly it should be: more healthcare, less cost, less hassle. If you’ve got it from your employer, you’re getting a raise. If not, it’s going to cost you less. Best of all, you’re never going to worry about it again. Never waste an hour on the phone arguing over coverage again.
That’s the current Democrats message and they don’t believe it. I think these people love feeling like they are being abused so we play into that on healthcare. They objectively are being abused. I think healthcare is perhaps the best topic to get people angry with we have. I agree it all needs to be distilled down further, but I think healthcare is a great topic to move people with. We can find as many people to tell horror stories as we want. It’s only not the biggest eyesore in our entire system because the criminal justice system exists.
A huge part of my plan is finding people who have a lot of justifiable anger that is being directed at the wrong people… and instead of telling them that they’re terrible people for being angry at people for being different than them in superficial ways they should be angry at the people who are actually hurting them.
Telling the truth is a cheat code. Really caring about people is a cheat code. Listen to them rant and then do like the Improv people do… “Yes, and…” and talk about a real grievance. They’ll take the new one if it’s better at some rate… and once they’ve got something else to be pissed at it’ll be a lot easier to sand the edges off their more objectionable views. Once there’s some trust built.
And as for sanding down the edges… how you communicate with the offender is insanely important. If you make it something they did wrong that you’re reprimanding them for they’ll get defensive and it won’t work. Think about how you’d tell one of your friends that his fly was down and his dick was hanging out of his pants. That’s exactly the vibe you’re trying to create. That you’re embarrassed but you’re his/her friend so you want to help them not cringe out the whole room and or hurt them socially really badly. Even if that implies that you’re totally fine with what they just said, you have to look past your own image and do the right thing to solve the problem.
Also we really need someone to take on the mantle of adjudicating what the standards are for getting dragged for social justice stuff. Maybe several people. We’re not helping ourselves by letting the right tell the rubes that we think they are monsters.
No one is really countering the right wing narrative about social issues among the white population that I can see.
So this thread has kind of died and other than econophile buying data (has that come in yet?) I don’t think we’ve actually done anything yet.
I want to get to work. Other than creating some FB groups to pull right wing people into what can I be doing here? It’s that or start doing the research and outlining on the Nancy Pelosi sucks podcast if we’re doing that. I definitely think we lead with Nancy if we’re going that way. Mitch is obviously next. And next after that is some other very public Democrat who is terrible.
I don’t feel like figuring out what kind of entity we should create is a good use of my time when there are lots of other posters who have either like @chupacabre created a PAC and done all the work already of figuring it out or are straight up lawyers. I also don’t think I’m the guy to create a website or do anything technical, because again I feel like we already have people who are literally professionals at that. I mean just look at how great this website is setup lol.
I think we need to do a Discord or Slack group or something, discuss the broad strokes, and figure out what kind of entity we need to be for the Georgia runoffs and who we need to talk to on that.
From there it’s all fundraising and action until the runoff.
Ok when are we all free to get in there and have a discussion?
My schedule is pretty slammed, I’m only available from 10a to 2a EST tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Sunday after 5pm EST works too.
So what I’m doing from now until Monday is building a sort of focus group. Basically I’m looking normal people from the kinds of places our message isn’t penetrating that I can talk to about politics… and test our messaging on.
. And right now all I’m doing is sitting around posting on here intensively.