Mediaboss Marketing

As offensive as it may sound to todays sensitive ears, it was only 11 years ago that a young and rising U.S. senator wrote the following about immigration:

When I see Mexican flags waved at pro-immigration demonstrations, I sometimes feel a flush of patriotic resentment. When Im forced to use a translator to communicate with the guy fixing my car, I feel a certain frustration.

That senator was Democrat Barack Obama from Illinois.

The quote comes from his 2006 autobiography, The Audacity of Hope. After getting our attention with that blunt description of his feelings, Obama goes on to argue against following those feelings as some people do, to justify denial of rights and opportunities to immigrants to become Americans.

I had forgotten about that quote until I ran across it in an important essay posted by liberal analyst Peter Beinart in The Atlantic this past week, as Democrats tried in vain to win a couple of congressional seats in traditionally red districts in Georgia and South Carolina.

Titled How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration, Beinarts piece describes a Democratic Party trying to recover from President Donald Trumps upset victory, yet too hung up on the culture wars commonly known as political correctness.

Of course, one could just as easily say the same about the Trump eras Grand Old Party, too gridlocked, so far, by its own internal right-vs.-far-right conflicts to pass major legislation, despite its control of both houses of Congress.

Still, Republican gridlock is thin consolation for the Democrats long losing streak in President Obamas years. His two presidential victories distract us from Democratic losses of more than a thousand state legislative seats and governorships and two-thirds of the countrys legislative chambers.

In some ways, I think Beinart is too hard on the Democrats in accounting for such losses. I trace the collapse of compromise on immigration to 2008 when I saw Arizona Sen. John McCain, on his way to winning the GOP presidential nomination, booed at the Conservative Political Action Conference convention for advocating comprehensive immigration reform. He later abandoned that cause, and efforts by both parties to revive it have failed.

Yet lets give credit where it is due. Republicans were singing the blues in similar fashion when Obamas elections in 2008 and 2012 and other Democratic victories threatened the long-term future of the Republicans as a national party. Instead, grass-roots groups like the tea party movement scored victories at the state and local level that have led to the GOPs current dominance.

Which brings me back to how Obamas quote illustrates how he managed to win twice what Hillary Clinton twice lost, the presidency. His feelings of patriotic resentment sound like an honest description of a concern that many people share. It is through expressing such sincerely held feelings, even at the risk of being called racist, that honest dialogue can begin and, one hopes, lead to useful compromise.

In the best of all possible political worlds, candidates from both parties calm such irrational fears by educating voters with facts, not just alarm. Unfortunately we do not live in that best political world these days. Instead, we are treated to Trumps craven slander of undocumented immigrants as an invading tide of murderers and rapists.

Yet, if you dont allow candid discussion of real issues, phony hot-button issues will take center stage. Think of the difference it would have made if Hillary Clinton had expressed, as her husband used to say in his 1992 presidential bid, how I feel your pain.

Todays post-Trump Democrats are divided. One side says they must abandon identity politics that appeal to every left-out group but working-class and middle-class whites, who feel left behind by economic and cultural change.

The other side says, no, giving voice to traditionally left-out women and minorities is a core belief and essential to the turnout the party needs to win elections especially when they dont have a big draw like Obama on the ballot.

I think both sides of that debate are right. Democrats have been most successful when they have given voice to bread-and-butter working-class concerns, regardless of race or tribe. They can do it again, if they really want to win.

Read the rest here:
Democrats must return to bread-and-butter issues - The Philadelphia Tribune

Sign Up for

Our free email newsletters

Here's the thing about politics: Everybody thinks they can do it better than the professionals.

In that sense, it isn't surprising that a couple of super-rich Silicon Valley entrepreneurs would come along thinking they can "disrupt" an entire political party. As this story in Recode tells us, Mark Pincus and Reid Hoffman are ready to save the Democrats:

Pincus, the co-founder of Zynga, and Hoffman, the brains behind LinkedIn, want to force Democrats to rewire their philosophical core, from their agenda to the way they choose candidates in elections the stuff of politics, they said, that had been out of reach for most voters long before Donald Trump became president.

That's the guiding principle behind Win the Future, a new project by the tech duo that's launching in time for July 4. The effort called, yes, WTF for short aims to be "a new movement and force within the Democratic Party, which can act like its own virtual party," said Pincus, its lead architect, during an interview.

Think of WTF as equal parts platform and movement. Its new website will put political topics up for a vote and the most resonant ideas will form the basis of the organization's orthodoxy. [Recode]

Zynga, in case you were unaware, is the game company that had its biggest hit with Farmville. LinkedIn, as you surely are aware, is the company that allows people you neither know nor care to know to send you emails asking you to join their network, even though you thought you canceled your membership five years ago.

Let me pause at this point to say that I would never make an unequivocal defense of the strategic acumen of Democratic Party insiders (ahem). They screw up all the time. They get things wrong, they make mistakes, they miss opportunities, and they get caught in old ways of thinking. But that isn't because they just haven't been "disrupted" by Silicon Valley yet. It's in large part because politics is complicated and defined by uncertainty.

One of my core beliefs about Washington is that, as the screenwriter William Goldman said about Hollywood, "Nobody knows anything." To clarify, there are many things about which people know a great deal, but predicting political outcomes is incredibly hard, given the massive number of variables and unexpected events that affect who wins an election or whether a consequential piece of legislation passes. That's what makes it interesting, but it also means that even people who master the mechanics of politics can fail.

Yet everyone thinks that if they were in charge, their side would always win. (And yes, this applies to people who work in politics themselves. Ask any mid-ranking campaign staffer why his candidate lost and the answer will inevitably be, "If only they had listened to me!") Everyone who watches the news thinks that they understand what it's all about, because they've learned the basics. That's particularly true because journalists spend so much time talking about strategy what rhetoric politicians are using, which voter groups they're trying to appeal to, who's up and who's down. Watching those kinds of reports makes you feel like you've gotten a glimpse behind the curtain and seen the hidden gears and levers.

The problem is that even if you grasp all the mechanics of the process, that doesn't mean you have a secret key that would transform your favored party's fortunes. But if you're rich, you probably think you do. Everyone around you is constantly telling you how brilliant you are, and on the occasions when you meet politicians, they listen avidly to your ideas, making you feel that they are amazed by your insight. (You may or may not be aware that they have a lot of practice at this particular kind of interaction, and are also eager for you to give them some of your money.) You walk away thinking that you totally rocked that senator's world when you told her about your idea for a new message her party should use.

The history of rich guys thinking that the fact of their wealth makes them political geniuses is about as long as the history of rich guys investing money in politics. Ask any party operative or political non-profit executive about it, and they'll roll their eyes and tell you stories about the ludicrous ideas some major donor has dropped on them. But nobody says to the donor, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard," because that would insult them and then the money would stop coming in.

Silicon Valley gazillionaires may be particularly prone to believing themselves to be political geniuses, because their community has an ideology about its own brilliance. They disrupt everything, using their incomparable minds to shatter the old ways and replace them with a shining and limitless future! Of course, sometimes it's actually true. But other times you're not Jeff Bezos remaking shopping or Larry Page and Sergey Brin changing our relationship to information you're just a guy who made millions on a time-wasting game people (used to) play while they were bored at work. And there were a thousand people just as smart as you who didn't have the right luck or timing.

But let's not be hasty. Perhaps WTF has some ideas so revolutionary that they can truly remake our politics. Let's see:

Participants can submit their own proposals for platform planks and if they win enough support, primarily through likes and retweets on Twitter, they'll become part of WTF's political DNA, too. Meanwhile, WTF plans to raise money in a bid to turn its most popular policy positions into billboard ads that will appear near airports serving Washington, D.C., ensuring that "members of Congress see it," Pincus said.

WTF is also eyeing more audacious efforts: Initially, Pincus had planned to solicit feedback at launch on recruiting a potential challenger to Democrats' leader in the House, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, in a primary election. That idea is on hold for now but Pincus and Hoffman are still trying to solicit candidates to run elsewhere as so-called "WTF Democrats." For Pincus, one of his early targets: Stephan Jenkins from Third Eye Blind. [Recode]

Whoa whoa whoa ads on billboards??? You just blew my mind. How is it nobody ever thought of that before?

As for the guy from Third Eye Blind, I've got nothing against him. He should run for office if he wants! But perhaps "I heard this rock star talk about politics and he didn't sound like a complete idiot so maybe he should be my congressman" isn't some kind of revolutionary idea that will transform America into a post-partisan utopia of clear thinking.

To repeat, there's no reason to think the Democratic Party couldn't use reform. For starters, they need to make a much heavier investment in grassroots organization that's sustainable between elections. And Silicon Valley could certainly help (perhaps shoring up the party's cybersecurity might a start; you might remember that was something of a problem in 2016). There's precedent here, too: Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 campaigns benefited hugely from tech industry people who built powerful tools for volunteers to connect and organize.

But if you think that American politics is going to be completely upended once we create a new political version of Farmville or LinkedIn (or Uber or Snapchat or Kayak or anything else), then you're probably going to be disappointed. But don't let me stop you there are probably worse ways to waste your money.

More here:
Silicon Valley can't save the Democrats - The Week Magazine

By Ron Klain By Ron Klain July 5 at 7:25 PM

Did Democrats ignore or worse, condescend to white working-class voters in 2016?Did many of these voters back Donald Trump because of his promises to restore economic growth for small towns and in manufacturing and mining or because they resented rising prospects for minorities and women?Can these voters be returned to the Democratic fold with sharper economic messaging? Or does appealing to them require an unthinkable retreat on issues of social justice and inclusion?

These questions have divided Democrats since Election Day. But who really condescended to working-class voters in 2016 and what should replace such condescension today?

The most damning piece of evidence for the Democrats condescended claim is Hillary Clintons statement last September that half of Trumps supporters were a basket of deplorables.I was with Clinton the next day, and it was clear how much she regretted that formulation.Worst of all, the focus on this comment drowned out the real point of her remarks:that Democrats had an obligation to understand and empathize with Trump supporters in the other basket people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, [and] nobody cares about them.

Far from condescending, Clintons campaign spoke truth to these voters: Our economic future is Stronger Together.Americas best hope to remain an economic superpower is an inclusive economy where immigrants start businesses and create jobs, where everyone can make meaningful contributions to an innovative economy and where the United States masters the economic opportunities that come from challenges such as climate change.That message may not have appealed to some working-class voters, but it isnt condescension its honesty.

By contrast, Trumps economic message has been a kind flim-flammery where the carnival barker lavishes compliments on his audience while whispering to his sidekicks, Can you believe they are buying this?He extolled the virtues of Buy American while building his own projects with imported Chinese steel.He made immigrants the scapegoats for a wide array of economic problems, while applying for special visas to import foreign workers for jobs at Mar-a-Lago.

It was Trumps campaign that reeked of condescension when he told working-class voters that he alone could make sure that jobs shipped overseas come back. Trumps presidency is erected on faux populism, as he claims to look out for forgotten people while saying that only rich people are qualified to formulate economic policy and using the presidency to promote his familys businesses. Appealing to working-class voters on false promises and flawed premises is not showing them respect:It is a condescending belief that with enough bluster and showmanship, you can get away with anything.

Democrats should respond to this not by writing off white working-class voters, or by mimicking Trumps divisive rhetoric and hollow promises but with a combination of honest talk and a new social and economic contract for the working class.

The honest talk starts with unapologetically reminding Trumps working-class voters that immigrants like their own ancestors have always made America greater, bringing new energy, ideas and job-creating businesses to our country.It means telling them (as President Barack Obama did), that the time has passed when you didnt have to have an education ... [and] you could ... get a [good] job.It means rejecting economic nostalgia, and embracing technology and innovation; when these forces are shaped by the right policies and a fair tax system, they can create a stronger middle class in our country, as they have during earlier periods of economic transformation.

A new social and economic contract for the working class would include replacing the confusing mishmash of higher education plans with a clear program to make four years of education after high school free and universal.It should include defending and then building on the Affordable Care Act so that every American has health coverage without fear or doubt.It should ensure that benefits such as unemployment compensation and workers comp are available to all, whether they are employees or contract workers.It should make affordable child care a right (not a scavenger hunt) and life-long skills training an American area of excellence.

But like any true contract, this set of benefits must be paired with obligations. This includes an uncompromising insistence that the economy it creates will be inclusive and that, with a program in place to restore economic opportunity for those who have been left behind, there can be no excuses for resentment of Americas growing diversity.It also includes acceptance that young people will have to get education after high school, working adults will have to continually improve their skills, and some long-beloved occupations will be replaced with new jobs. The nostalgia for an America where brawn alone was enough to create a middle-class life and where a comfortable stagnation was revered as tradition must be abandoned.

Candor, not condescension, is the Democrats path to unmasking the false promise of Trumpism and reclaiming working-class voters in 2018 and beyond.

Excerpt from:
To win the working class, Democrats need to start talking straight - Washington Post

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has sent out some tester bumper stickers for the midterm elections that have been met with about as much warmth as a fender bender. One reads: Democrats 2018. I mean, have you seen the other guys?

Slogan suggestions were sent out via email to DCCC subscribers on Wednesday, prompting several people to share the less than inspiring ideas on social media.

The National Republican Congressional Committee was quick to jump on the negative attention the bumper stickers stirred up, writing on its website: After Nancy Pelosi and national Democrats were roundly mocked for their ridiculous stickers, we decided to help them with one of our own.

It added: Nothing encapsulatestheir party better than our "Democrats 2018: We win moral victories, not elections" sticker.

Other, less criticized slogans suggested by the DCCC included: She persisted, we resisted, and make Congress blue again.

Subscribers were asked to vote for their favorite bumper sticker, with the winning slogan to be picked after the polls close at midnight tomorrow.

The Democrats have faced criticism that the party appears to be rudderless following Hillary Clintons surprise election loss in November.

Indeed, pundits on both the left and the right have voiced concerns that the party has no clear leader. For many, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi did not give a satisfying answer in March when questioned on the subject by CNNs Anderson Cooper.

Nonetheless, the party is gearing up for the 2018 midterm elections, with very early predictions looking favorable for the Democratsquestionable bumper stickers notwithstanding.

Of the previous 20 midterm elections, the presidents party has lost seats in 18 of them, CNN reported, with an average of 33 seats lost per electionmeaning history clearly favors the opposition party.

The rest is here:
Democrats 2018: New Slogan Could Be, 'Have You Seen The Other Guys?' - Newsweek

Photo Credit George Tames/The New York Times

This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive more briefings and a guide to the section daily in your inbox.

After Democrats lost yet another election last month this one in a House race near Atlanta the historian Daniel Williams urged the party to confront its religion problem.

That problem centers on a generational and racial divide between a largely secular group of young, white party activists and an older electorate that is more religious and more socially conservative, Williams wrote. Put simply, outside of a few progressive districts, secular-minded young activists in the party are unable to win voters trust.

In yesterdays Times, the historians Annette Gordon-Reed and Peter Onuf offered a surprising suggestion for where Democrats can find a solution to their religion problem: Thomas Jefferson.

To be clear, Gordon-Reed and Onuf arent claiming to be offering political advice; theyre talking instead about broader civic values. But I was struck by the connection between the Jeffersonian values they describe and the Democrats modern-day religion struggles.

Jefferson infused his political philosophy with Christian values, even though he was not a deeply religious man in the traditional sense.

See more here:
Jefferson's Lesson for Democrats - New York Times