Mitch McConnell's disinformation excellence
The GOP Senate minority leader's incessant lies show the importance of political marketing in furthering a legislative agenda. Democrats please take note.
It’s a drizzly, overcast day in Washington, DC, and I’m still having a hard time waking up, and it’s almost noon. Rather than write one long story today, I’m feeling like a series of snippets. So here goes….
Mitch McConnell perfectly illustrates Republican disinformation excellence.
In our podcast, UnPresidented, Cliff Schecter and I often talk about the importance of “political marketing.” Meaning, how do you sell your ideas to others in Congress and to the public at large. It doesn’t matter how good our ideas are if we can’t get them passed into law. (And its corollary: It doesn’t matter how bad Republican proposals are if we can’t convince the public to see that fact.)
Republicans excel at political marketing, in part because they believe that marketing matters, while Democrats often find the entire notion unnecessary, and even offensive: “If our ideas are good enough, they’ll sell themselves!” Except, they won’t. Especially when Republicans are willing to so blatantly lie, and do it in unison and repetitively for the long-term.
Two advantages Republicans have when selling their ideas: 1) The GOP noise machine (e.g., Fox News); and, 2) The fact that Republicans understands that effective political messaging is more than an one-off affair. You have to keep repeating your message over and over again, for weeks, months and even years, until it sticks.
I like to tell the story of a big-name progressive non-profit client I had in the early 2000s. Some big issue came up, and I urged them to launch an entire advocacy campaign surrounding it. Their reply? “We already sent out a press release.” Again, we see the Democratic notion that if an idea is so good, it will sell itself with one simple press release. What would Republicans do, if the shoe were on the other foot? They’d launch a multi-night invective on Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, talk radio, social media, and then every GOP member of Congress would scream and yell about the issue until it became a national story.
Anyway, here’s McConnell’s statement that got me thinking about this. They just lie so brazenly.
How Republicans use a kernel of truth to sell lies.
Continuing with our disinformation marketing lesson today, NewsBusters, a far-right advocacy group that attempts to undermine the media by accusing them of liberal bias, recently claimed to have shocking new data proving the media is in President Biden’s pocket:
Now, I’m not surprised that media coverage of Donald Trump’s first three months in office was more negative than Joe Biden’s, simply because Donald Trump was as inept as he was corrupt — all Trump did was produce bad news. But does that prove bias? Suggesting it does would mean that the media, in order to be “objective,” would have to publish 50% positive stories and 50% negative stories about every topic. But that’s not how objectivity works. Would it really be objective for the media to set a quota that half of its stories about Jeffrey Epstein, or the US Capitol Insurrection, be pro-pedophilia or pro- the violent overthrow of our government?
Also, some presidents, and presidencies, are worse than others. Trump was a walking scandal. Before he was even sworn in, Trump made a stir by defending Russian President Putin, while calling us “killers.” Trump went on to accuse the CIA of being “Nazis.” And then began his presidency with the firing of his National Security Adviser, for lying about secret back-channel communications with — you guessed it! — Russia. A few months later, Trump fired the FBI Director, and admitted he did it to undermine the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s secret ties to — you guessed it! — Russia.
So, yeah, it’s no wonder that there was a lot of bad news about a guy who’s bad news.
Even more about political marketing: How not to sell the Green New Deal.
A staffer for new Democratic House member Cori Bush shared the following on Twitter this morning, regarding the Green New Deal climate change proposal:
I suspect Cori Bush’s staffer was simply bragging about how great he thinks the Green New Deal is, because the plan includes reparations. But Saul isn’t crowing privately to friends, he’s doing it publicly on behalf of his boss and a huge liberal proposal. So the question arises as to whether rebranding the Green New Deal as “slavery reparations” is the best way to win over the American public at large, and swing votes in Congress, to the cause of fighting climate change.
I would suggest that it is not.
A Reuters poll last year found that only one in ten white people support reparations, and even among Black respondents, only half supported reparations.
But another poll, by Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, from 2019 found reparations were favored by 74% of Black Americans, but only 44% of Hispanics.
And finally, among Democrats, a Gallup poll in 2019 found 49% support for cash payments reparations, with 47% opposed (which I think is surprisingly high, for cash). Among independents, 32% supported, while 65% opposed. (Those last numbers are concerning, as independents are the swing voters we tend to need to win elections.)
Looking at the various polls, some of the discrepancy appears to come down to how you define “reparations.” If it’s cash payments, support drops. If it’s targeting programs to chronically underserved communities who were hurt by systemic racism in, say, banking and housing over the years, then people tend to be more supportive.
Regardless of where you stand on slavery reparations, we can all agree that the issue remains unresolved and hotly contested. Branding the Green New Deal as a reparations bill does nothing to aid its passage, and in fact hinders it by equating it with yet another controversial proposal. If you’re going to tie the Green New Deal — and climate change more generally — to another political idea, pick one that’s popular.
Thus endeth the latest lesson on political marketing.
Other interesting things
The My Pillow guy gets tricked into thinking Trump is calling while on live TV:
Syrian’s presidential election roster released:
Amy Coney Barrett is as corrupt as the rest of them:
82 freaking back flips!
And this made me chuckle:
Have a great week, everyone.
JOHN
PS I did a podcast with French-American food-writer Jamie Schler, in which she offers all of us a free copy of her new cookbook. The book offer is towards the end of the show. But in the meantime, here’s her chocolate chip banana bread recipe, from the same book, that I just made, and it turned out amazingly. The only banana bread recipe I’ve ever gotten to work. (I added a bit of cinnamon too.)
Let me know if you make it! JOHN
Great stuff! I think one additional reason Republicans are so good at "marketing" their ideas should be emphasized. They lie and smear and denigrate. It's a lot easier to say "people on welfare are lazy" than the progressive take on welfare ("it's complicated"!). When you don't care about facts and decency it's pretty to simple to come up with some catchy button-pushing minute of hate. Tackling real problems with real solutions? Not so easy. You're right about the Dems needing to work harder, but let's not give the Republicans too much credit. War is Peace!