Focused Read in 3-4 minutes
"Steve Israel Opinion: Democrats Don’t Need a National Message
A bottom-up approach is better than a single line imposed by party leadership.
On an early morning in June, I joined several dozen Democratic donors in a plush residence on the 64th floor of Trump World Tower to support the reelection of a Democratic congressman. The irony that we were raising money in the president’s building escaped no one ...
But most in the crowd wanted to know one thing: What’s the Democratic message?
There, in a building staffed with uniformed doormen, standing on floors so fine that we’d been asked to remove our shoes, the donors demanded to know why their party had no unifying theme.
Or, more precisely, why wasn’t the message the specific message that they wanted messaged?
... Late last month, House Democrats introduced what they hope will be the answer: “For the People,” their new slogan for the midterms. One top Democratic aide told me it’s meant to capture the innate sense among voters that “Democrats are for the people and Republicans are for special interests.”
But my fellow Democrats have it wrong that they need a national message template in the first place. Past elections have shown that the most effective messaging is local and specific to each district.
To really understand how we got here, it’s useful to attend a weekly Democratic caucus meeting in Room HC-7 of the Capitol building, as I regularly did when I served for eight terms as a congressman from New York.
... Democrats hash out the weekly agenda. But they all have different ideas on what that agenda should look like.
The majority-minority caucus looks, sounds, and thinks in vivid contrast. And not just in terms of identity, with different ethnicities, races, religions, and sexual orientations represented. The Democrats I served with held varied views on all sorts of issues, from foreign trade and taxes, to budgets and health care.
It’s what I loved most about being a House Democrat: My party looked like the country does.
But its collective worry about distilling all that diversity into a single message has persisted for years.
When I served as the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015, I tackled this same problem. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asked me to lead a project to fashion a disciplined and resonant message for House Democrats.
My team studied polling and focus groups; consulted with linguists and neuroscientists; and researched what voters respond to in farm country, exurbs, and suburbs. We tested messages in all hues of red and blue.
We had a full-day workshop with about a dozen House Democrats to brainstorm various themes, and lined a large room at Democratic National Committee headquarters with Sharpie-streaked whiteboards.
At one point, we sent a survey to every House Democrat, asking for suggestions for a succinct national message. The responses included: “Make It in America”; “Rebuild the Middle Class”; “When Women Succeed America Succeeds”; and various slogans and themes emphasizing jobs, health care, campaign-finance reform, free college tuition, equality, opportunity, security, and, in one case, access to contraception.
(After all that, we came up with: “A Stronger America: A New American Security Agenda.” It didn’t take.)
It’s difficult to get all Democrats on a single coherent message... There’s just too much ground to cover.
Republicans don’t have these same issues...Aside from a few hand-wringing moderates, GOP members of Congress are bound in ideological lockstep. They’re parroting the White House—and being parroted by Fox News—on taxes and spending, terror and immigration, and any other hot-button issue that can frighten voters, including who uses which bathrooms. It’s easy to impose message discipline on a group like this: When you look alike and think alike, you’ll inevitably sound alike, too.
This isn’t what Democrats should aspire to.
Former House Speaker Tip O’Neill was correct in saying that “All politics is local,” and nothing in politics is more local than message.
Democrats have won all the progressive seats they can win.
The path to the majority is taking those remaining districts that are evenly divided or leaning Republican, and whose voters aren’t motivated to turn out over the prospect of impeaching the president or abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It seems so obvious, but it’s lost on so many:
A message that resonates in downtown Brooklyn, New York, could backfire in Brooklyn, Iowa—which happens to be located in a Republican district that’s now highly competitive.
Midterm elections, which are fought in dozens of ideologically diverse media markets, should be thought of like tuning your car radio on the interstate. You’ll pick up that great country-and-western station in some markets, National Public Radio in others.
The fact is that a national message works best in presidential-election years. The party’s nominee is the “messenger in chief,” building a national brand that unifies base and swing voters, donors, activists, volunteers, canvassers, and down-ballot candidates.
A midterm election cycle, by its very nature, is fragmented, with hundreds of different campaigns with hundreds of individual candidates.
... (That) bottom-up approach is a better solution than a message imposed by party leadership. Democratic activists would be wise not to debate nouns and verbs, and instead give candidates their freedom of speech.
I ask the assembled to raise their hands if they think the message should be “stopping Trump.” Almost every hand shoots upward.
Then I ask whether the message should be based on a future of career opportunity and wage security. Many of the same hands are raised. What about gun safety? Fewer, but still plenty of hands. Climate change? Hands.
In these rooms, the very people insisting on message discipline vote for this variation: “Democrats: The Trump-Stopping-Job-Creating-Gun-Violence-Reducing-Climate-Protecting Choice.”
How’s that for a neat little bumper sticker?
Budging voters from their perches takes work. The hardest part of that work isn’t writing slogans—it’s reading minds. It’s discerning voters’ hopes, but also their anxieties and fears.
Democrats weaken our connection with voters when we’re presumptuous enough to speak for every voter from Trump World Tower in Manhattan to a Trump-won congressional district in Kansas.
The people best able to rebuild that connection are Democratic candidates on the front lines. (Cheri) Bustos in Illinois. Conor Lamb, who won a special election in Pennsylvania by focusing on basic economic concerns. Danica Roem, who in 2017 became the first openly transgender candidate to win election in Virginia by focusing on local issues like highway traffic.
They know winning voters is more than mouthing the right words. It means showing up at the local supermarket and listening to what voters have to say.
Those Democrats can be trusted to find the right words."
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Among many other things,
former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was
noted to be the driving force behind the
creation of The Universal Declaration
of Human Rights.
"... By 1948, the United Nations’ new Human Rights Commission had captured the attention of the world. Under the dynamic chairmanship of Eleanor Roosevelt—President Franklin Roosevelt’s widow, a human rights champion in her own right and the United States delegate to the UN—the Commission set out to draft the document that became the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt, credited with its inspiration, referred to the Declaration as the “international Magna Carta for all mankind.” It was adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948.
In its preamble and in Article 1, the Declaration unequivocally proclaims the inherent rights of all human beings: “Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people....All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
The Member States of the United Nations pledged to work together to promote the thirty Articles of human rights that, for the first time in history, had been assembled and codified into a single document. In consequence, many of these rights, in various forms, are today part of the constitutional laws of democratic nations. ... "
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The Democratic Party Website
Also, NOT exactly a Democratic Party specific source under a GOP majority but a good place for to hear and to watch speeches & hearings directly C-SPAN
→ Some of my favorite, most active organizations -- some existing & some developing to elect Democrats:
Born from conversations between Governor Howard Dean and Secretary Hillary Clinton in the aftermath of the 2016 election, Onward Together was established to lend support to leaders — particularly young leaders — kicking off projects and founding new organizations to fight for our shared progressive values. here
→ Fact checking organizations courtesy of the Society of Professional Journalists
in alphabetical order...
→ Some of my favorite, most informative
follows on Twitter include:
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ US Intelligence | Author | Navy Senior Chief | NBC/MSNBC
⭐⭐⭐ Federal Government Operations | Vanity Fair | Newsweek | MSNBC Contributor | Author
⭐⭐⭐⭐ Voting Rights/Voter Suppression | Author | Mother Jones
→ Some of my favorite, highly credible media -- at the moment:
📰📰📰 Mother Jones
📰📰📰📰 The Washington Post
→ Some of my favorite Talking Heads -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
→ Some of my favorite media/panelists -- at the moment -- and their Twitter handles:
✅✅✅ Jennifer Rubin Conservative blogger at @ WashingtonPost's Right Turn,MSNBC contributor
lintel community. @ NBCNews/@ MSNBC contributor
→ Some of my favorite Democrat Party Leaders to follow on Twitter, not in elected office but proving knowledge & experience are positives & not negatives are:
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It’s a simple but powerful idea: We are stronger together."
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