Here's an Idea for Liberals: Propaganda

[Nevilledog]

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'Weird Alex' Pareene
@pareene
Some political scientists recently invented the concept of propaganda and found that it works

Here’s an Idea for Liberals: Propaganda
After every election, Democrats seem to talk about how they failed to craft a clear message. So how about bombarding people with a new kind of campaign ad?
newrepublic.com
6:07 AM · Jun 12, 2021

https://newrepublic.com/article/162723/liberals-propaganda-democratic-autopsy-ads


What does the Democratic Party stand for? What do voters think the Democratic Party stands for? How can Democrats communicate to voters that they actually do stand for things? These are vexing questions for Democratic politicians and the people who run their campaigns.

While Republicans in the age of Trump prefer not to dig too deep into their own failures in elected politics, relying instead on House districting and the very nature of the Senate to guarantee their political dominance, Democrats are continually looking for some strategy or message or type of candidate that can win reliably or defend marginal seats. After elections, they regularly ask why whatever they tried last time failed.

Two of these analyses have surfaced in the past week. On June 6, the New York Times reported on a 2020 post-election analysis produced for Democrats by “Third Way, a centrist think tank, and the Collective PAC and the Latino Victory Fund.” On June 8, NBC News covered a new strategy memo produced for the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, based on focus groups conducted by Lake Research Partners. These documents were both ostensibly created to help Democrats get elected, but they are also both really designed to absolve some people, and blame others, for Democratic failures, while arguing that success will come from doing what the groups paying for these reports wanted to do anyway.

You can read both documents for yourself and decide which is more convincing. The two analyses agree on one key point: The Democratic Party failed to define itself, and what it is for, in the mind of much of the electorate. They diverge in an interesting way on the topic of how Republicans brand Democrats. Both treat the vast conservative propaganda apparatus as a sort of natural feature of the landscape. One side argues that its power can be overcome with good deeds, the other that it must be starved of ammunition.

*snip*

[soothsayer]

1. Agree. Don't need a perfect message, just repetition

Lots of it

[ck4829]

2. +1. Messages that use alliteration, juxtaposition, and other techniques also work wonders too

Last edited Tue Jun 29, 2021, 12:08 PM - Edit history (1)

Critical Race Theory

[brush]

10. Just label the GOP the insurrectionist party over and over and over. 24/7

[EYESORE 9001]

3. Propaganda is not synonymous with lies

although that’s how it’s been portrayed since the Soviet and Nazi eras. I’ve advocated for repetition of a coherent message for years now. Bonus when you can say, truthfully, ‘prove it wrong.’

[Bettie]

6. Find a message and hammer it until

it becomes part of "things everyone knows".

[Hortensis]

4. This is the same hit job New Rep has been doing on the Democratic Party

for years. The New Republic itself is part of the problem it supposedly decries. Well left of the giant liberal progressive mainstream, readers are no less likely to learn what the Democratic Party stands for from Justice Democrats as from them. And don't get them started on "Hillary."

I once subscribed to a previous iteration, but through subsequent business failures and new ownership, mass resignation of outraged staff, and more new ownership, the theme that Democrats always defeat themselves, deserve to lose, and really should lose still sells.

[betsuni]

8. Yes.

"Democrats schedule votes intended to fail in order to create news stories about Republican intransigence ... and perform oversight hearings primarily in order to get particular members on television news."

WTF

[Hortensis]

13. WTF, for sure. People who'd believe that pure garbage are

as deluded as those on the right who imagine we're plotting to force socialism on the nation. I've heard that this rag has become even worse than 2016, and that certainly suggests it. I'd never have paid for that.

[stopdiggin]

5. and yet, the millions that HAVE found their way

to the party? You actually think you like the idea of some environmental protections? Civil rights? Social justice? Voting franchise? Consumer protection? Reproductive freedoms? Food safety? Water quality? Public lands?

What WE stand for -- is all the those things that the other guys so clearly DON'T.

It's a pretty good message!
----- -----

[betsuni]

7. That doesn't make any sense.

Democrats do concentrate on party, it's anti-Democrats that make it about personality and demonize the individual. From one side they're called radical socialists and from the other corrupt immoral centrist neoliberal status quo.

I still don't know what people are talking about with the "messaging" thing. Republican voters know what Democrats stand for. "Obamacare," government, environmentalism, unions, higher taxes on the wealthy, business regulation, helping the poor, education, immigration, equality, civil rights, women's rights, racial justice, public libraries and parks.

What's wrong with these people who claim not to know what Democrats stand for? Could someone please explain this to me? What the hell.

[Bev54]

11. It is one of those things they have been saying for so long

they cannot stop, kind of like cursing. John Kasich is famous for saying that every chance he got on TV. It is a load of bull and tiring.

[betsuni]

12. Thank you!

I often think I'm the only one who thinks it's bull.

[gulliver]

9. A lot of Dems won't get the message in this article about Dems not getting messaging.

Kind of ironic. Excellent article.

Good quote: "These political scientists independently invented party propaganda, exposed Americans to it, and discovered that it can be effective, especially with constant exposure. Conservatives don’t need to learn to do this: It’s how their movement sustains itself."

Yep. Dems need to say who we are constantly, independent of the MSM.

[muriel_volestrangler]

14. Though the New Republic article doesn't say this explicitly, it has to be constant

From the Politico article it gets the story from:

With this approach, we began to observe partisan change. At relatively high levels of dosage (only six ads—not much by the usual standards of a presidential campaign), people changed their partisan identification ever so slightly after seeing the ads. The highest dosage level increased Democratic identification by 4 percentage points immediately after exposure, with about half that amount still being statistically detectable two weeks later.

Our ads didn’t just affect partisan identification. We also found that showing people higher doses of party-promoting ads shifted whom they planned to vote for in coming elections and affected their evaluations of then-President Donald Trump. Partisan identity is usually understood as a root cause of political behavior. By moving it, we also appear to have moved real-world political decisions.

Our effects eventually faded. More than a year after our studies, we contacted our participants once more. This time, we couldn’t detect any effects. People’s partisanship had snapped back to where it was before we began our research.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/06/04/political-science-campaign-advertising-party-persuasion-491804

2% after 2 weeks isn't great. The paper is here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3838299 . I couldn't find information about voting intention (rather than partisan identification) after a year.