“I am the dog, since I bark in your defense”

The Democratic National Committee recently commissioned a poll on the obvious and, unsurprisingly, came up with the obvious. It wanted to know if red-state voters were influenced by moral values as much as actual political issues in the presidential race, and if so, for whom they voted. “Yes” and “Bush” were the answers. Well blow me away.

The poll also found these voters are “tremendously cross-pressured between their pocketbook concerns and their moral values concerns,” which I can only interpret as meaning they’re right on the verge of chucking some values for cash. Again, unsurprising. (What does surprise me is that I’m writing for free -- hint, hint -- when I could be out huckstering polling services to political committees.)

DNC Chairman Howard Dean said the poll’s results point to the need for Democrats to reformat their delivery: “Democrats wonder why people vote against their own economic interest. The answer is that Democrats don't connect with people's fears about how to raise their children in a difficult social environment” – that voters think the Dems’ remedy is a bigger-badder government that will “raise your children for you.”

“Connect” and “fears” are, of course, the key words in that passage, and the first is why the Democrats have been on the losing side for some time. It’s not that they don’t connect or don’t try to connect with voters’ fears. It’s that they don’t exploit them, like you know who.

Take the so-called “death” tax. While Democrats engage in reality-based tutorials about the estate tax affecting only a fraction of a fraction of the filthiest rich who drop dead before retaining a crafty tax attorney, Republicans are occupied with scaring the bejesus out of lower middle-class folks into believing some Darth Vader of an IRS angel of mortality is going to confiscate the trailer home when grandpa keels over.

That’s not “connecting” with voters’ fears. That’s exploiting them after having invented the fears to begin with. And that’s one reason Republicans have succeeded.

Their success also results from manipulating the humbug of “common sense” as much as exploiting outright fear. The party’s chief of manipulative humbuggery, Frank Luntz, prides himself with having helped right-wing politicians understand “the clear, common-sense way to say what you mean.”

Again, take the death tax. Luntz asks, “When I die … I may pay a tax. What else would you call that other than a death tax?” Gee Frank, maybe I’d call it an estate tax, since I’m dead and therefore my estate pays the tax. In addition, would you say you “may” die someday? I noticed you slipped “may” pay a tax after the definite “when” I die. It then becomes commonsensically outrageous to many people that taxes should follow death. A trifle convoluted, yet the thrust of it sticks in the electoral mind.

But Frank knows that. He didn’t get rich by not knowing the tripe he sells to politicians and they turn around and sell to voters is anything less than manipulation. If he’s really wedded to pure common sense because common sense always makes sense, then I suggest he join the Flat Earth Society. Look about you, Frank. Does the Earth look round to you? Of course not. Common sense tells you it’s flat.

At its most fundamental level, though, what Frank Luntz sells is demagoguery. His Republican clients buy wholesale, sell retail. I know it, you know it, Frank knows it and Howard Dean knows it.

And that’s where Dean’s dilemma arises. Should Democrats continue trying to connect or should they start exploiting? We know which one has the upper hand. It always has. A playwright as ancient as Aristophanes could parody the demagogue and his panderings …

Then listen and be attentive!...
I am the dog, since I bark in your defense.

I don’t have an unqualified answer to the “connect vs. exploit” question. And I’m glad I’m not Howard Dean. I’m afraid I might be tempted to just go with what obviously works.

Comments

[Maezeppa]

Maybe we have to make the red staters afraid of real things instead of inventing boogiemen like the hard right-wingers do. That shouldn't be too hard.

[Mazurka]

The moral value voters do not vote on true moral values. Where is the morality in an unjust and illegal war? Where is the morality in a President who lies and then sends young Americans to their deaths because of those lies? Where is the morality in the deaths of 100,000 innocent Iraqis, mostly women, children, and the elderly. Where is the morality in spending taxpayers' dollars on fraud, waste, and abuse by Halliburton? Where is the morality in bombing a country to total oblivion? Where is the morality in the red staters' intolerance? The mistake we make is allowing to let them think they are moral when they are not. Well, I don't allow that any more. None of the anti-abortion, fetus people have any moral authority over me if all they do about the issue is vote for a President who says he is antiabortion. They do no research to find out that abortions have gone up since Georgie porgie took office. There is nothing moral in there bigotry against gay people in general and those who want to marry. There has been no sanctity of marriage when 95 percent of married men cheat on their wives. [This comes from my personal experience from the time I was 18-35. I wish I had a dollar for every married man who hit on me--two dollars for the ones from church.] Marriage used to be all about property and nothing else. Thus, this is my suggestion for all the blue staters do not allow these people to claim morality. THEY HAVE NONE!!!!

[Art Durand AKA Whitebear]

People of conscience cannot afford to betray their prinicples because lying works. Sad but true. Let's keep on exposing the charlatans.
If we are the praying kind we might give thanks that powerful fools and idiots are in place, working hard to wake us up. We slept while the dominate forces in society stole the land and decimated First Nations Peoples all over the planet. We slept while administrations of both parties funded brutal dictatorships around the world. We are waking up now because our jobs are being sent abroad, because our taxes are funding unjust wars thus causing our own infrastructure to crumble around us. We lived the "good life" by being carried about on the backs of the invisible poor. Let's hope it's not too late to help undo the damage of the recent and distant past.
People of good heart can do this. People who adopt the tactics of the enemies of life cannot.

"Watch out now, take care, beware of greedy leaders, who take you where you should not go." George Harrison

[stvwlf]

MUST SEE:
"ha ha ha" Daily Show interview with Frank Lutz and Samantha Bee reveals GOP tactics in action

http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thedailyshowwithjonstewart/videos_corr.jhtml?p=bee

on that page, select "The Hall of Same"

[wtmoore]

this situation calls to mind the delimma of Eliza's father in "my fair lady". when mr. doolittle confronts prof. higgins about his relationship w/ liza and asks for money because he sees it as a fair trade...his daughter for a few pounds so he and his buddies can have a few pints. higgins inquire's "have you no morals?" doolittle's reply? "nope....can't afford 'em guv'nor"....

how long will it take for the bush fiscal policies to affect the supposed "moral values" voters who wake up and realize they have become the american "doolittle's", forced to balance their desire for abstract "morality issues" and their desire to support their families? care to guess how quickly they will jetison those precepts when the baby goes hungry because the bushies have driven our economy into the tank?

[John Byrne]

When you teach language as a form of instruction and direction as opposed to a form of expression, then these scams are always ready to be used. It is worth noting that the republicians are only able to pull this trick after generations of moulding America into its ideal, where everything, including has a market price. Where cash and personal liquidity becomes paramount, what else could happen but the destruction of other values. After backing Americans into a position where everything in life is a scramble, only a few can develop beyond becoming hard and cold enough to ensure the personal wealth and security that your economy requires. Everyone else will adopt the posture that their peers and ambitions demand. You cannot appeal to reason when fear its sitting on your shoulder and while reason must be defended logically, fear has never had that handicap.

Sure, in the short term, following such an example of further fracturing the language in the hope of triggering a response would get results, but only at the expense of perpetuating and entrenching this system.

If you cannot play by their rules, play better by your own.