Over the weekend, I expressed some frustration with the results of the polling advice being given to Democrats by Stan Greenberg and James Carville. Greenberg and Carville are advising Democrats not to talk about the Republicans’ responsibility for the deficit, unemployment, or the economy in general. Apparently, at least according to their polling, the American people don’t want to hear it.
Now, I just want to give a little counterexample, but I have to set it up a bit. As you hopefully know, Harry Truman became president in the last months of World War Two when Franklin Roosevelt died just shy of seeing complete victory. As soon as the war was over the country began to demobilize, our soldiers began returning home, and we saw a lot of economic dislocation that came with high unemployment, significant inflation, a housing shortage, and a lot of labor unrest. As a result, the midterm elections of 1946, much like those of 2010, were a disaster for the Democrats. There was very low turnout, and the Republicans retook control of the House and Senate for the first time since 1932. These Republicans came in thinking they had some kind of mandate to roll back the New Deal, attack Social Security, and destroy the labor movement. They overrode Truman’s veto to pass the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act, which still stands on the books. But, mainly, they did nothing. They obstructed, much like the modern-day Republican Party has done since Obama came into office.
This led Harry Truman, who was looking like a dead-duck, to dub the 80th Congress the Do-Nothing Congress. And look at how Truman went after them during his campaign for reelection:
Know Nothing, Do Nothing Congress
Elizabeth, New Jersey, October 7, 1948
Harry S TrumanYou are here because you are interested in the issues of this campaign. You know, as all the citizens of this great country know, that the election is not all over nothing but shouting. That is what they would like to have you believe, but it isn’t so–it isn’t so at all.
The Republicans are trying to hide the truth from you in a great many ways. They don’t want you to know the truth about the issues in this campaign. The big fundamental issue in this campaign is the people against the special interests.
The Democratic party stands for the people.
The Republican party stands, and always has stood, for special interests. They have proved that conclusively in the record that they made in this “do-nothing” Congress.
The Republican party candidates are going around talking to you in high-sounding platitudes, trying to make you believe that they themselves are the best people to run the government. Well now, you have had experience with them running the government. In 1920 to 1932, they had complete control of the government. Look what they did to it!
This country is enjoying the greatest prosperity it has ever known because we have been following, for sixteen years, the policies inaugurated by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Everybody benefited from these policies–labor, the farmer, businessmen, and white-collar workers.
We want to keep that prosperity. We cannot keep that if we don’t lick the biggest problem facing us today, and that is high prices.
I have been trying to get the Republicans to do something about high prices and housing ever since they came to Washington. They are responsible for that situation, because they killed price control, and they killed the housing bill. That Republican, 80th “do-nothing” Congress absolutely refused to give any relief whatever in either one of those categories.
What do you suppose the Republicans think you ought to do about high prices?
Senator Taft, one of the leaders in the Republican Congress, said, “If consumers think the price is too high today, they will wait until the price is lower. I feel that in time, the law of supply and demand will bring prices into line. “
There is the Republican answer to the high cost of living.
If it costs too much, just wait.
If you think fifteen cents is too much for a loaf of bread, just do without it and wait until you can afford to pay fifteen cents for it.
If you don’t want to pay sixty cents a-pound for hamburger, just wait. That is what the Republican Congress thought you ought to do, and that is the same Congress that the Republican candidate for president said did a good job.
Some people say I ought not to talk so much about the Republican 80th “do-nothing” Congress in this campaign. I will tell you why I will talk about it. If two-thirds of the people stay at home again on election day as they did in 1946, and if we get another Republican Congress like the 80th Congress, it will be controlled by the same men who controlled that 80th Congress–the Tabers and the Tafts, the Martins and the Hallecks–would be the bosses. The same men would be the bosses, the same as those who passed the Taft-Hartley Act, and passed the rich man’s tax bill, and took Social Security away from a million workers.
Do you want that kind of administration? I don’t believe you do–I don’t believe you do.
I don’t believe you would be out here, interested in listening to my outline of what the Republicans are trying to do to you, if you intended to put them back in there.
When a bunch of Republican reactionaries are in control of the Congress, then the people get reactionary laws. The only way you can get the kind of government you need is by going to the polls and voting the straight Democratic ticket on November 2. Then you will get a Democratic Congress, and I will get a Congress that will work with me. Then we will get good housing at prices we can afford to pay; and repeal of that vicious Taft-Hartley Act; and more Social Security coverage; and prices that will be fair to everybody; and we can go on and keep sixty-one million people at work; we can have an income of more than $217 billion, and that income will be distributed so that the farmer, the workingman, the white collar worker, and the businessman get their fair share of that income.
That is what I stand for.
That is what the Democratic party stands for.
Vote for that, and you will be safe.
People told Truman not to talk about the Republicans but he did anyway. And he got to hold up that famous copy of the Chicago Daily Tribune with the headline Dewey Defeats Truman while displaying a shit-eating grin. The Democrats took back both houses of Congress and held them (with the exception of 1953-54) uninterrupted until 1981 (in the case of the Senate) and 1995 (in the case of the House).
The parallels between now and 1948 are not perfect, and I don’t know what polling would have showed about the advisability of Truman’s approach. All I know is that it worked. It worked really well. So, here’s my advice. Don’t listen to Carville and Greenberg. Listen to what history teaches you. Tell the truth and they’ll think it’s hell.
Ignoring this polling entirely because it isn’t what you want to hear doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea to me.
A smarter strategy would be to take the results of the polls into account, recognize that the public wants to hear an affirmative plan for going forward instead of just casting blame on the long-gone Bush administration, and to sneak in criticism of the Republicans’ disastrous policies by way of explaining how the Democrats’ plans contrast with what Republicans did, and want to do again.
In which case, it would be useful to have Democrats’ plans actually contrast with what Republicans did, and want to do again. I don’t hear anything from this Administration, or this Senate, that leads me to believe they disagree with trickle-down economics. Austerity now, folks!
Then you aren’t listening.
And that’s not the Democrat’s problem.
OK, what job creation plan are Democrats running on in 2012? For that matter, what are they going to try to get passed in 2011?
Nice goalposts you’ve got there.
In which case, it would be useful to have Democrats’ plans actually contrast with what Republicans did, and want to do again. I don’t hear anything from this Administration, or this Senate, that leads me to believe they disagree with trickle-down economics.
Magically becomes
OK, what job creation plan are Democrats running on in 2012? For that matter, what are they going to try to get passed in 2011?
Funny, I thought we were talking about whether Democrats were calling for “austerity now” (your words). You don’t want to talk about that anymore?
Fine. What budget-cutting austerity measures are the Administration and the Biden Group opposing? (That would be austerity now. You know, the same thing that has failed worldwide, but political realists assure me is Serious and Savvy.)
What job-producing measures are the Administration and the Biden Group promoting? (Oh — they have no appetite for that. Suck on that, US workforce.) Clear enough?
And I’m still waiting for those job creation plans.
Well, be careful. There is a long history of people saying one thing in the polls and doing another.
Consider that if you ask people what they think about negative campaigning they’ll always tell you that they don’t like it and they prefer candidates who are positive. But that’s what they say in the abstract. In practice voters RARELY punish negative campaigners.
Consider that in the 1988 election Bush ran an extremely negative campaign and won by a large margin. People complained bitterly about how negative the campaign was, but they responded in the way Bush wanted.
The anecdote that stands out to me was an interview one news network ran with some “people in the street”. One young woman was asked about the negativity and she responded on cue how bad it was and how she hated hearing nothing but bad stuff about both candidates. Then:
Q: Who are you voting for?
A: Bush.
Q: Why?
A: Because I’ve heard less negative stuff about him.
And there you have it. The polls said people wouldn’t like negative campaigning, but they fell for it anyway.
The fact is the average low information voter needs to KNOW that the Ryan plan does not “reform” Medicare — it replaces it with something much worse. They need to KNOW that the vague “spending cuts” the GOP is pushing include teachers, consumer protections, advanced weather warning systems, and other stuff people rely on. They need to KNOW that the GOP is fighting hardest to preserve government subsidies to the wealthiest corporations and individuals.
And if they are told these things, consistently and on message, it will work. No matter how much they say they want parties to not be negative, that is just an abstraction. When they find out one party is working to cause them personal pain they’ll forget about that abstraction in a nanosecond.
It would certainly be a mistake to take the results of polling data and apply them directly, in a one-to-one manner, when formulating a campaign message, but that doesn’t mean the results shouldn’t be incorporated at all.
The fact is the average low information voter needs to KNOW that the Ryan plan does not…
I don’t disagree with any of that. Attacks on the Republicans’ current agenda need to play a large role in the Democrats’ message.
I, and Booman, were talking about these tidbits from Greenberg and Carville::
To get heard anew, Democrats must do the counter-intuitive – forget the past, the financial crisis and recovery. For people, the economy is a set of powerful on-going realities: a middle class smashed and struggling, American jobs being lost, the country and people in debt and the nexus of big money and power that leaves people excluded.
Democratic messages focused on the past and financial crisis tested dismally, but a message that rejects debates about the past as old politics is one of the highest testing messages for Democrats.
Talking about the Ryan Plan, and contrasting with the Democratic plan (called “Medicare”) is exactly the sort of thing Carville and Greenberg are recommending.
I agree, it’s long past time for the Democrats, led by Obama, to start actively campaigning against the opposition party.
This is the party that wants to end Medicare.
This is the party that wants to defund hurricane and storm warning systems.
This is the party that will filibuster to protect federal subsidies to the most profitable corporations in the world, oil, big pharma, and finance.
And then take it to the next level. Reveal the Republican base, the tea party, in all its glory.
The whole point of politics and leadership is to lead. When the polls say one thing, and you know that another is true, you should not follow the polls, but you should craft a message that tells the truth, and refutes the polls.
The polls have been used as an excuse for a lot of shit, and a lot of terrible shit, over the years.
Obama needs to come up with a truth of his own, get the Democrats on his side, and sell the truth to the American people. That is the Republican strategy, and it has been succcessful for them. Due to lies, false statements, and MESSAGE DISCIPLINE, Americans now believe all kinds of MORONIC SHIT THAT IS FALSE. Cutting taxes raises tax revenues, Reagan ended the Soviet Union, on and on and on.
But, and this is key, OBAMA HAS GOT TO END THIS BIPARTISANSHIT SHIT. It’s time to call a spade a spade. If we enact Repukeliscum economic stupidity, we will have an economic collapse. It we continue to cut taxes for business, we will have a terrible deficit.
tell it, BooMan…
cause that’s exactly what I thought when I read that bullshyt from them.
Tell the truth and they’ll think it’s <del>hell</del>
in other news:
“DNC chairwoman: Republicans ‘literally’ want to revive Jim Crow laws”
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/164893-dnc-chairwoman-republicans-literally-want-to
-revive-jim-crow-laws?page=2#comments
That is outrageous.
Republicans are figuratively trying to bring back Jim Crow laws.
Wasserman-Shultz should be ashamed of herself for her misuse of the the word “literally.” And that is all.
I meant to do a strike through on the word hell and it didn’t work.
ah well.