Losing The Narrative Battle: Progressives Need To Turn Pro

On the other hand, perhaps the reason the progressive message is perceived as weaker is simply because the progressive theory of governing really is weaker.

“The progressive movement lacks the professional media training and support infrastructure conservatives use to train and retain such media spokesmen.”

I just don’t buy this. Much of the mainstream media (with the exception of Fox, of course) solidly backed Obama in ’08, and the marketing of “hope and change” was good enough for them to declare him the best candidate ever. I watched as Katie Couric grilled the republican ticket derisively but gave Joe Biden a pass when he declared that FDR had been president in 1929 (Hoover was) and had APPEARED ON TELEVISION (not yet invented) that year! Active members of the current democratic power structure- Donna Brazile, Paul Begala, James Carville- even appeared as analysts during CNN’s election coverage. It was clear to me that the media was pro-progressive for that election cycle.

I don’t think the progressive movement on the national level is failing because it isn’t savvy enough. I think it fails because it is supposed to. After all, “progressive” means fairness and equality and sustainability. That doesn’t serve the goals of the corporations and huge power brokers that now pull our strings. (And will pull them even more openly thanks to the recent Supreme Court decision equating money with speech!)

We have to come to grips with the real possibility that we are being PLAYED by the supposed two parties. (It seems to me this dynamic, although present from the mid ’60s on, really solidified during the Reagan years.) The democrats say things that we like at election time, but they nearly always fail to deliver. We call it ineptitude, lack of media training, wanting bipartisanship too much, getting outsmarted by evil Joe Lieberman, etc. The republicans promise things we generally loathe, and they almost always deliver, with the dems rolling over and pleading helplessness. We have to at least consider the possibility that they are ALL members of the one corporate party and that they put on this liberal vs. conservative show for us just so we won’t pick up torches and pitchforks and storm the gate.

If I laid out this theory for you about China or Russia or Iran, you might say, “Hmmm…I can see that would explain a lot. It makes sense.” But when the same scenario is offered for the US, most people laugh and roll their eyes at the crazy conspiracy theory. But to borrow a phrase from Sinclair Lewis: “It CAN Happen Here.”

In my opinion, for the true values of progressives to succeed, progressives on the local level need to remain separate and skeptical to some degree from the state-level and national-level parties. In my view, Organizing for America has been a real detriment because it has taken what should be local donations and energy and continued to funnel them to the national level. I still get emails from them asking for money almost every time Obama makes a speech!

We have to build something strong and real in our own communities and let that spread out and push upwards. The national media spokespeople, no matter who trains them, will never truly be on our side.

Gordon, did you expect this topic not to deteriorate rapidly, even to the extent of attracting Buggs out of the wall>

But you asked for a serious answer and I will give you one:

Progressives tend to over-nuance things into a morass of shades of gray, making real problems so complex they never get solved, endless debating the whichness of why.

What’s the result? Example, the Democrats had a 60-seat supermajority in the Senate and still could not pass health care reform after months of trying.

Another example: President Obama has blown a what was at least a reasonable mandate for change into running Jimmy Carter a close race for becoming the most ineffectual one-term president in the last 100 years.

While the GOP is by no means perfect, they tend to get their message across more coherently than the Democrats (as stated above). My first reply was flip but not less true – maybe your message is weaker.

No, do not reject this logic out of hand. If you keep (to use the cliche everyone loves so much as applied the current administration and Congress) keep “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat” then the following possibilities exist:

1. You are lousy communicators.

2. You are wrong.

3. All of the above.

I do wish you luck on the city council, Gordon, but you guys are making the same mistake as on the national and state levels – i.e. overly complicating simple problems into an unsolvable unsolvable morass of a zillion special interest groups pulling you hither and yon.

Did I mention lots of free parking downtown as a simple solution yet?

Still… I really do wish you good luck, Gordon. You’ll need it.

By the way, where do YOU park for the city council meetings?

the Democrats’problem is that the only thing voters wanted last election is someone who is not Bush, but they got instead a more eloquent version of him.

Good post, Tom! Money is a perennial problem for progressives precisely because they’re on the side of those who don’t have the money. $11 million a year is a pile to you and me but to someone like Charles Koch it’s pocket change (he’s worth $17 billion -2008 estimate).

I recall reading where a progressive organizer referred to the Tea Party bus, saying “we never had a shiny new bus with flashy graphics at any of our rallies.”

There’s nothing wrong with progressive ideas about governance, but the opposition is implacable and well supplied, and cynically willing to wreck the government if that will keep it from being used to progressive ends; hence the strategy of appointing saboteurs to run programs they don’t believe in, like Bill Bennett in Education or Christine Todd Whitman at the EPA. To our conservative readers, imagine if Obama had appointed Jane Fonda as Secretary of Defense: it’s like that.