I can’t seem to shake off James Carville’s wokeness comments. The only thing that spoke to me is the truth that Democrats do have a messaging problem, but it’s not wokeness. Framing the message has always been a component the problem, but wokeness isn’t the issue.
Simple framing requires a simple problem, simplistic thinking, no regard for nuance, disclaimers or exceptions to their new [simple] message. It’s been my experience that conservatives embrace these simple messages and swat away objections with denial, derision or disgust in no particular order. If that doesn’t work, do an about face and deny you ever associated with the original message.
“Wokeness” was an idea that conservatives spread all over my social media accounts. I remember as a kid Ann landers wrote Wake Up and Smell the Coffee, which was a book about seeing situations in reality and effectively doing something about it. Today’s memes say, “Wake UP!’ or liberals will [do something bad].” Liberal reply, ‘I’m quite awake , thank you very much and your fear is unfounded” (too many words, too nice, too wonky, fake is a better word for unfounded). So, the response morphed into, “I’m woke! Eff off!” or maybe something more polite. It’s not about ineffective communication as it is about a lack of respect. I have example after example of conservatives calling for the death of all Democrats. Not voting them out of office, but calling for one party rule and the death of the Democratic party by killing all their members. What aboutism aside, I see this call on the right a lot, but none of my progressive and liberal friends call for the death of all Republicans. It’s a problem our media doesn’t have a moral compass to compel them to call out the real threats of authoritarianism.
Some see “wokeness” as bad grammar, therefore a bad idea. They associate wokeness with removing monuments to tyrants, losing access to gun ownership, the belief that we live in a post racial America and preserving unserving traditions (Fiddler on the Roof style) and seeing this as always a bad thing. Others see Wokeness as peeling back the white wash. It’s about calling out the unfairness in our language, terminology, institutions and traditions through pictures, film, music, and food and food branding in particular. It’s about identifying bad public policy that leads to preventable deaths. It’s about tossing out the stuff that doesn’t serve us well and making new traditions. It’s radical, but was predicted 60 years ago when demographers realized the U.S. was going to become a majority minority nation by 2050.
Enter James Carville into the arena. He sees wokeness as a problem. He was brilliant in messaging in the 1990’s, but today, not so much. My point to Mr. Carville is if you can’t improve the message don’t make it worse. If you don’t like the term woke or wokeness, then fix it. If you can’t fix it, then sit this one out.
The Dem messaging problem relates to complexity. Mothers Against Drunk Driving is a simple message that rallied just about everyone behind the concept in the 1980s. Today, the message of all children should get a free education from age 2 to 20 is a simple message. I do not understand why it doesn’t pull a universal crowd. It affects working doctors, lawyers, teachers, retail workers and ditch diggers alike. It’s the details. Not everyone wants a free government sponsored education. Free for millionaires, too? How do you deal with the tone deaf (at best) or racist (highly likely), “I’m for a free education for those who deserve it”? No one is really covering the fact that due (in part) to stagnant wages and high costs of having children, the Americans birth rate is way down. I’m with Bernie on this, child care sucks the money out of the family budget and the people who care for our children are seriously underpaid. If we want a strong America we need to deal with quality child care and stamp out student loan debt while we’re at it. Free education for everyone used to be a winning message. Not today. The flip side is filled with people who do not value education.
Dems do have a messaging problem challenging the self-limiting idea that life and the economy is about a zero sum game. The problem is that roughly 100 million Americans fear of what a majority minority America means for white Americans. It’s a fearful belief that fairness to all means white people will have less. It’s about how you see racism, misogyny and classism in America. It’s about believing everyone can grow up and be a millionaire while denying the reality that the zip code you grow up in is the major predictor of the success of you becoming a millionaire. It’s about seeing new solutions. It’s about realizing life is not a zero sum game. It’s recognizing the false idea that if women get a break, men get screwed. It’s about realizing giving a living wage to women expands the household buying power pie, which helps the men in their family, too. To this end the Biden agenda is working with the average person in the street — they like what they are hearing. It’s not working well with the U.S. Senate which is looking backward instead of forward.
This idea of pursuing one message that everyone in a polarized society can latch onto is oxymoronic. “One size fits all” in reality only fits a few well and maybe half to two thirds well enough. That leaves a third looking anywhere from not good to ridiculous on both ends. We desire simple, but reality gives us exceptions to every rule. Ever heard “This is a gravity issue”? Another variant is, “You can’t argue with gravity — you’ll lose every time”. Try that simple gravity argument on a physics major who knows gravity is considered a very weak force of nature, “Then, why can you pick up a pen or book? Ride an elevator? Pick up food to put in your mouth? If gravity is the immutable force you say it is, why can I pick this up?” (As they twirl the pen in their hand in the air.) They’ll follow up with ‘Sure, it’s a bad idea to walk off a roof, my point is people successfully defy gravity all the time.” This simple law of natural force taught to first graders through a story about Isaac Newton’s apple falling off a tree grows into a complicated multidimensional concept which has earned more than a few people a PhD in physics. The simple idea of gravity works well enough for probably 75% of the population and another 10-15% will let it slide — it’s ridiculous to those who were taught better. The Dem message machine must learn how to successfully defy the gravity of fearful conservatives dragging us down.
The messaging problem is rooted in an audience that craves simplicity and is dependent upon agreeing with the proposed idea. If the idea gets a visceral “Yes!” response, then any and all inconvenient truths will be summarily discarded. The audience that has the visceral, “Hell No!’ or the more woke, “Hell to the No!” response will pick apart the simple message. “It’s the economy, stupid” worked very well thirty years ago. The targeted universal audience agreed with it and it worked. The caveats and pick aparts failed. “$15 Minimum wage” message works very well for the 39 million Americans earning $20/hour or less. It doesn’t work as well for the 30% of households earning more than $65,000 per year. When the message is modulated to how the working Moms and the teens in those households would add thousands to the family income and improve their lives if they were paid $15/hour and the message is better received — they accept expanded pie metaphor. The problem is that it takes more words, more willingness to learn a new idea, it’s about stimulating intellectual curiosity in people who don’t like to think about complex issues. Telling the small business owners who can hardly make it paying minimum wages that everyone will be in the same boat including their competitors will help. The $15 minimum wage doesn’t work at all with the top 5% of U.S. earners and it doesn’t work well with people who toady up to those who have the power to make their economic life miserable. Upton Sinclair’s observation still holds: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”.
Dems do have a messaging problem about institutional racism. It’s simple racism is wrong and even the most entrenched GOP operative will say this. It’s the complex details. Ask any member of the GOP about racism and they’ll go to offensive great lengths embracing the Party of Lincoln, but get down to specifics like how profile policing, cash and bond bail, punitive fines, fees, minimum wage laws, non-compete clauses for employment, mandatory mediation targets low income, black and brown people and….well, their good standing in the GOP is dependent upon their not understanding institutional racism. Go into how the Party of Lincoln’s ideology aligns more closely to the current Democratic Party and explosive denialism will ensue. The GOP power elite is dominated by people who benefit by exploiting in one way or another low income workers that are largely comprised of marginalized communities of “others”, POC, native Americans, LGTBQ. These are people who cannot comprehend the concept of discarding the zero sum game in favor of growing a bigger pie. No simple message is going to penetrate this wall of willful obtuseness.
Defund the police means to me, spend more money on Community Centers, Cultural Centers, Social Services, Public Mental Health, public parks, jobs programs, libraries and expand child care and elder care services so kids have something to do, people in need can get a hand up and parents can go to work and the elderly have situational support. It’s about funding grant programs to help house poor people maintain their properties. It’s about supporting civilization. It’s about calling out the false socialism tag and calling out the conservative authoritarian tilt. Public funding pays for our civilization and quality of life. Broken down roads, bridges, lack of broad band and a shaky electrical grid doesn’t help America stay strong. Spending money to improve our communities brings Jobs and prosperity for most of us and does make America strong.
Defund the police is about making funding contingent upon successes. It’s about defining policing successes. It’s about telling the police to focus on crimes that hurt lives like murder, assault, burglary, identity theft, smash and grabs and stop enforcing the crimes created solely for the city to increase revenues from fines targeted toward the low income and minorities. It’s not wrong to demand better behavior, standards and metrics out of our police officers. Solve more cases. Make no more false arrests, overturned convictions due to intimidated witnesses and excuses for bad policing. Take away police officers’ license to kill. Hire a social worker instead of an officer to deal with those situations where people are having trouble dealing with their feelings — something the police are very bad at doing. Better training on teaching an officer to calm situations down without using the words, “Calm Down!”. End comply or die attitudes. Train collaborative techniques. Teach respectful leadership.
Again, this message is received well among 90-100 million or so Hispanic and black Americans as well as the LGBTQ, families of the mentally ill, low income communities who are overly policed to the point of occupation and not enough white allies. Defund the police to those who’ve never been abused by the police and have never been afraid of the police sounds like scary anarchy. Maybe James Carville fits in this category. He doesn’t relate and he’s rejected this message. Defund the police to a covert or overt racist is a non-starter. To the covert or person who doesn’t recognize their racism it doesn’t make sense because they can’t/won’t see it. To the overt racist, Defund the Police means eliminate the primary means to their racist ideal. The conservative political hack has no problem with manipulating the people into thinking Defund the Police means rolling back their safety, while glossing over the fact that our current policing policies make everyone less safe. What’s the simple message in response to a cynical ploy like this? It’s not simple. This is a 400 year old problem that isn’t going to get fixed with a 3 word slogan. It takes a willingness to see how holding back selected groups of people holds us all back.
James Carville wants to go back to the days when “it’s the economy, stupid” worked. We can’t replace it with ‘It’s in the details, stupid’. It was ok to call people stupid back then, not so much today. It’s still about the economy. It’s about an economy that includes the people who were left out 30 years ago. They are filling in the blanks Carville intentionally left out with his simple, unwoke message of old.