I heard a criticism of Democrats today that I can't get out of my head.

[AP]

Today on NPR (I think) I heard some guy say that Reagan changed politics by making the Democrats the "me too" party. He said that before Reagan, the Republicans were the "me too" party. The Democrats said they believed in regulating corporations, and protecting workers, etc., and the Republicans responded, "me too, but only less."

He said that Reagan turned that around. He said that Republicans put on the table things like, "we believe in smaller government and cutting taxes" and the Democrats became the, "me too but only less" party.

In that analysis is an interesting comment about how parties make their issues the ones that frame the public's perception of politics.

I don't blame Clinton for thinking that it only made sense to make the federal gov't smaller and more efficient if that's what the Republicans were running on (because that takes away the Republican's argument, and it's OK so long as you're not making the Fed. gov't so weak that it can do its job of protecting the best interests of a majority of its citizens). But I think, even if you do things like that, you still have to make sure that Americans are looking at things through the right frame.

How did 'smaller government' every become more important to Americans than 'protecting people who work for living' or 'having a competitive, wealth-creating economic landscape which is kept on a level playing field with equality of opportunity through effective but not unduly burdensome regulation'? I think if the Democrats let that happen, they really screwed up.

Now, on the bright side, I agree with Clinton's analysis of the 2000 election. He said that Bush basically ran on the platform that he'd do everything Clinton did but with a smaller government and lower taxes. So, after Clinton co-opted the issues, he turned the Republicans into the "me too" party.

And it actually worked. Bush didn't win that election.

Nonetheless, I wish that Americans really cared more about the core values of the Democratic party -- building up economic, political and cultural power in people who work for a living -- and less about reducing the size of the government so much that it can't stop the flow of power to people at the top of the ladder.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

1. "I heard some guy say"

Is HIS opinion ONLY... it doesn't make it The Truth! It might have a resemblence to some actual 'fact', but sorry, you can't sum up the fine actions & reactions of the political tides to a sound-byte!

Don't become a FoxNews-itis carrier!!!!! (y'know, the I-heard-a- broadcaster-say-it-so-it-must-be-true illness that is killing Critical Thinking in America)

[AP]

8. Huh? I was only presenting it as opinion. But it's an important lesson in

framing the issues.

If Democrats ended the 70s with people thinking that it was important for the government to protect people who worked for a living, and twenty years later we're talking about how small we can make the government, I'm not sure we're putting up a strong enough bulwark against fascism.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

20. The Dems are in a no-win situation

Okay, sorry if my post came across as directed harshly, it wasn't! Guess I needed to put a <wink> or <nudge> in there.

Actually the Natl Dem party is experiencing what happened in the Deep South in the 60's.. 70's.

Dems were pro Civil Rights.. turned off many Southeners...

NOW dems are still Civil Rights, Womens rights (abortion), & gay rights.

NOT that the Republicans Party will really do ANYTHING about those rights, but they'll rattle the cage and say 'bad Dems come over to our side' and watch the scurrying.

Sad, really.

We think politics are about issues and items. But no, they're more about FEELINGS of the masses.

[trotsky]

2. The most aggravating thing is

when you survey people about almost every issue - abortion, environment, corporate regulation, etc., etc. the population is overwhemlingly liberal/Democratic. Even when you frame your questions very specifically, like "Would you be willing to pay higher taxes to support <X>?" you will get answers in the affirmative.

But when you use generic questions like, "Is the government too big?" and "Do you pay too much in taxes?" people shift into Republican mode.

Very interesting dichotomy going on there.

[Yupster]

9. I don't think people see the connection

between taxes they pay and benefits to society.

Many times they've seen their taxes go up and things get worse anyway, so

what they hear is would you rather pay more taxes or less taxes?

Regardless of whther you pay more or less, the government is going to waste the money either way, and

if there's something they really want or need, they'll just do it regardless of the taxes anyway.

That's why we have a $ 500 billion defecit.

So, why pay the extra money?

[AP]

10. I think that's what this quote today captures.

The Republicans (no doubt with the assistance of the media whores) have decided not to fight on the logic of all those individual issues, because they know they can't beat logic.

Instead they just reframed the issues -- the picked the biggest picture: taxes and the size of the government, and then made people think that those were the most important issues. And they made sure the debate about those issues didn't connect up with the smaller issues.

It's great that Gore still really could have won even with that frame, but c'mon. Would that race even have been that close if the Democrats were able to reframe the issues better during Clinton's years?

(I think the media perhaps more than Clinton might be responsible for not allowing the Democrats core values to be a bigger part of the frame.)

[Vickers]

3. No, the RW is the "Me, not you" party

Didn'tcha get the memo???

[VolcanoJen]

4. Laura Ingraham said today that Reagan's greatest legacy...

... is that he single-handedly crushed Liberalism forever.

:mad: :grr: :mad:

[redqueen]

5. I heard that as well and he has a very valid point

It seems to many "Reagan Democrats" here in TX that the Dem Party stopped advocating for any but the most divisive issues.

The DNC ought to be investing heavily into how to market the ideals that made this country strong. The RNC has done so with the talking points they've used to enrich their 'base', quite successfully.

Way past time to stop being the 'us too but not as much' party.

[AP]

12. I don't think that's true at all. Clinton won two terms, and they had to..

...steal the WH in 2000.

That's not very crushing.

[redqueen]

14. You're right

I should add the disclaimer that the above comments are anecdotal and based on my experiences in Dallas, Texas. People in the rest of the country are nearly guaranteed not to be as steeped in RNC talking points.

Thanks for the reminder. :)

[ClassWarrior]

6. I don't think it became more important...

How did 'smaller government' every become more important to Americans than 'protecting people who work for living' or 'having a competitive, wealth-creating economic landscape which is kept on a level playing field with equality of opportunity through effective but not unduly burdensome regulation'? I think if the Democrats let that happen, they really screwed up.

I don't think it became more important to Americans, AP. I think the so-called-liberal-media worked overtime to remove "protecting people who work for living," etc. from the national debate. We need to reinsert it to turn things around again.

[AP]

13. Yes. I do agree with that.

[redqueen]

16. This is what I was trying to say above

our message is not getting out.

[kofijoe]

7. I do think Americans care....

I just think the repubs do a better job of marketing and packaging their agenda than dems do. Repubs, on many key issues, have an easier position to sell - "lower taxes", "less government", "strong military". These are easy things to agree with when you don't think about it in a cost/benefit framework. The dem position is nuanced because we also look at the costs and consequences of each of those positions - "lower taxes, why sure, but what is the impact on the fiscal solvency of the most basic safety nets we have in place, and on the budget." "Less government, yes, but do you know what would happent to air/water quality if we just whacked the EPA (which GW has kinda done), "Strong military, sure, but that doesn't just mean new weapons systems, it also means taking care of our veterans and providing adequate pay to service people." You could go on and on. Of course there are some core differences between the parties, but by and large I would argue that the repubs have "bumper-sticker" policies while dems have "billboard in small font policy ideas". In a country where people have notoriously short attention spans, well, you do the math.

[AP]

19. Taking just one of those: smaller government.

Why can't the Democratic response to smaller government be: "Yes, we want small and efficient government, but the government is the referee and the groundskeeper and the stadium manager in our society. We will never reduce the power of the government so much that we can't guarantee that consumers and workers don't have a level playing field and equality of opportunity when dealing with employers and with people trying to sell them things. Furthermore, we need a government that is at least sufficiently finaneced to protect compeition BETWEEN employers and manufacturers and service providers so that one, extremely powerful interest can't overwhelm other competitors."

Or something like that.

[kentuck]

11. And Democrats ended up with leaders like Tom Daschle....

A good man but hardly the type to fight in the mud and trenches as required by such an opposition.

[Armstead]

15. That analysis is correct. The GIPO message was HALF-TRUE.

The genius of the Republican Party was to take one half of reality and make it the whole of reality.

Face it, government can be a pain in the ass. No one likes paying taxes. They don't like being told what to do. They don't like insensitive rigid bureaucrats and regulations. They don't like having to pay undeserving people to sit on their butts. They don't like getting skunked from a job because they aren't a minority.

That is neither liberal or conservative. It's human nature. Liberals, despite our ideologies, often feel the same thing on a gut level when we have to deal with such impositions on our lives.

That became a Perfect Storm for liberalism in the 1970's because things had gotten really messed up. The regulatory culture had run amok, the welfare state had become too big and government solutions were too often ineffective or burdensome. And the economy was going haywire.

The GOP took that opporunity to capitalize on people's resentments and fear of Big Government. Reagan said government is the problem, not the solution. The GOP expanded that to indite all of liberalism. When conservatism was aligned with the power of Big Business, their message became perceived as the mainsytream. "Greed is good" became the new mantra.

This resonated with people. Unfortunately, this led to impotence and fear on our side. As a result, the Democrats and liberalism were put on the defensive, and forced to scurry to find a way to defend our philosophy.

Alas, the Democratic Party went AWOL in the aftermath. Instead of correcting the excesses of liberalism, and defending it, too many liberals and Democrats became "me too" conservative Republicans. In the process, many jumped into the same back pocket of Big Capitalism with the Republicans.

In the 90's Clinton and the Democrats had a golden opportunity to turn the tables, and push the pendulum back to the left, via the center. However, they didn't put their heart into it, and instead continued a kinder gentler form of moderate conservatism. They allowed monopolies to be formed unchallenged.

Today, the undercurrent of pent up frustration of liberals and progressives is finally coming to the surface. That is why the primaries were so important, and why the remainder of this election will be important, regardless of the outcome.

The big question is whether the leadership will channel this, and put muscles back into liberalism, or will remain mute on the issues that are much bigger than Bush.

Just as Republicans took hold of the "Big Government is the problemn" zeitgeist of the 1970's, we need to clarify the reality that today Big Business is the problem.

[Bandit]

17. How many Democrats will say "Me Too" to

Eliminating the "Fairness Doctrine", Sabotaging Environmental Policies, Huge tax hikes for the poor while giving huge breaks for the wealthy, Eliminating Social Security, Eliminating Dept of Education, Eliminating Medicare, Stopping any Universal Health Care, Eliminating Minimum Wage, ETC. ETC. Our problem is not me too it is "Can You Hear Me?" We need to restore the Fairness Doctrine and figure other ways to get our voice heard. Then the Republicans will be hollering "Me Too"

[AP]

24. The problem with some of those things on that list is that they aren't

even at the forefront of the discussion.

I don't think the Democrats say me too to some of those things. But the fact that republicans have made tax cuts and small government and national security the leading issues, when a Democrat says "not me" to one of those issues, the public says "so what? we vote on these other issues" without understanding how those issues connect.

Another problem though, with which I do agree is that the entire goverment has become so corporation-friendly (look at how Majette, a Dem won her seat! look at Al Gore and Joe Lieberman) there just aren't that many democrats who want to upset the apple-cart of easy corporate profits, and they want to cut corporate taxes just like the Republicans. They are "me too'ers" in their heart. It's not hard for them to say 'me too.'

[ramapo]

18. Some validity

The Republicans have outmaneuvered and outpoliticked the Democrats since Reagan came to power.

The Democrats were their own worst-enemy pre-Reagan as there was out-and-out warfare against Carter. Part of that could be attributed to Carter being more conservative than the party in general at that time.

The Republicans took a couple of simple mantras and have hammered away for 30 years.

I think Americans really do care for the core values of the Democratic party. It's just that Democrats have a lousy record of articulating, implementing, and living up to those values.

[HFishbine]

21. Three Words

Democratic Leadership Council.

[Mountainman]

22. The way I remember it was that voters believed that liberal programs

didn't do what they were designed to do.

For what ever reason people began to think that the government was not able to fix all the social ills.

To repubs this was the death of liberalism.

Reagan did not have anything to do with that. It was in place before the election and it was why there were the so called Reagan Democrats.

I think that people were weary of stag flation, the after math of the Vietnam war and the civil rights movement. Before Reagan's election people just wanted a relief from all the struggle.

Reagan told voters to just forget about all that went before and become self centered and that became popular.

Not all of us bought into it. I never liked Reagan. He made greed a noble thing.

[ContinentalOp]

23. There's a nugget of truth in there,

which is that the right wing has been very successful at framing the debate. What's interesting about the quote you mention is that it successfully re-frames the topic of framing into a smear against democrats! Instead of using the technical language of "framing" they have turned it into a negative catchphrase by labeling democrats as the me-too party.

More about framing...
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/10/27_lakoff.shtml

[redqueen]

25. Another thing he said that amazed me...

He commented on how Reagan had strong convictions on economic matters. He said that Reagan wasn't a detail-oriented person, or analytical, but that he had convictions, and that that impressed people.

Say what?!

So... despite the fact that he doesn't know what he's talking about, people were somehow impressed because this guy believed strongly in something he had no deep understanding of?

*sigh*

[AlGore-08.com]

26. A passing comment about Clinton's analysis

You wrote: Now, on the bright side, I agree with Clinton's analysis of the 2000 election. He said that Bush basically ran on the platform that he'd do everything Clinton did but with a smaller government and lower taxes. So, after Clinton co-opted the issues, he turned the Republicans into the "me too" party.

I don't know whether Clinton discussed this, but what actually happened is much more subtle than that. After the Dem convention, when Gore's speech took him from trailing Smirk by around 12 points to about even with Smirk, Smirk changed his tactics. From then on, three days after Gore would make a policy speech, Smirk would make a policy speech with an almost identical plan, only laced with conservative buzz words, and without Smirk bothering to figure out how "his" proposal would actually work or how it would be paid for. This was the case of almost every subject. Smirk co-opted even the issues that sharply divide Dems and Republicans. For example, Smirk had his surrogates (his wife and Mom in particular) campaign that, although Smirk opposed abortion, they were pro-choice, and somehow that meant Smirk wouldn't actually threaten abortion rights. A lot of pundits and second level Smirk surrogates (celebrities etc) said that Smirk's anti-abortion stance was only election year posturing to keep the conservative wing of the GOP happy, and he would never actually threaten abortion rights.

This wasn't just about co-opting policy. Smirk took this tactic because the GOP had been spending the previous two years on a smear campaign designed to destroy Gore's character. So Smirk created a false choice: two candidates with "identical" policies, but one was morally repugnant and the other was a gonna bring honor and dignity back to the White House. Who wouldn't vote for Smirk under those circumstances?

The reason Smirk got away with it was because the media did such a miserable job covering the election. They ignored everything that Gore and his surrogates said about himself and Smirk, their history and their proposals, no matter how much evidence they had to back it up. And of course, they also ignored everything that they knew about Gore - - like his leading role in creating the Internet - - in order to mindlessly parrot the GOP smear campaign against Gore.

Even if Gore had said nothing to defend himself or expose Bush's real agenda, it would take about two minutes of actual research to discover that promises that Smirk was making in the summer and fall of 2000 were totally at odds with his history and ideology. If you spent three minutes researching it, you'll find that Smirk did the same thing when he ran for re-election as Texas governor - - pushed through a bunch of extremely conservative bills in the first part of his term, then worked hard to appear "moderate" for the second half of his term (although he didn't do anything moderate, he just made it look like he was one). But the vast majority of the press didn't bother to research that (or anything else in 2000). The "best" coverage of 2000 does conform to what Clinton reportedly said: the TV news would announce "Today, Vice President Gore announced a plan he said would save social security. Governor Bush countered with his own plan, which he said was better. In our next story - - "

As long as the media continues to operate so poorly, refusing to really research the candidates and their positions, the far right wing of the GOP will be able to do this. And they will get away with it most of the time.