Why it is so easy for Republicans to Derail Obama's Health Care Agenda
Some people may be amazed at how easily the Republicans are being able to derail Obama's health care agenda. Some people may think back to Hillary Care and wonder if the same thing is happening. In a word, yes. In several words, not really.
What is happening is something Democrats really need to understand if they're ever going to get any legislation of merit passed EVEN with a majority, and EVEN with a filibuster proof majority. What's amazing is that the Republicans aren't doing anything new; they're playing a card right out of mass communication theory, and they're doing it really well, even if the majority of THEM have no idea why what they're doing is really working.
What they're doing is so easy to do in this country because of one simple reason that so many people don't seem to understand. Getting people to say no is much easier than getting people to say yes. Many, MANY studies have been done on persuasive tactics, and one of the agreed-upon conclusions in so many of these studies is that if you want to be the victor in a debate over a complex issue, which health care is definitely a complex issue, choose the negative side. Republicans have become experts at negative campaigning now for decades. How many elections have we seen that weren't "vote for me" but "don't vote for the other guy"? It's become so successful that even Democrats are doing it, although I suspect that neither side realizes why it works; they're just glad it does.
It plays into the distrustful perspective of most Americans. We don't trust anyone, even though the majority of us would never admit that to anyone, including ourselves. This makes it so easy to take the negative side and then beat down the issue with ridiculousness because the beauty of such a tactic is what the health care people (and Proposition 8 people who wanted to stop the amendment against gay marriage in California) don't understand. You see, the trick is to make up ten ridiculous statements about the issue you want to defeat. The other side spends all of its energy defeating each one of them, and might successfully defeat 8 of the 10. But that's where the beauty comes in. It only takes ONE to defeat the issue, and when you cloak something into conspiracy clothing, the logical stuff can be defeated, but it will always leave ONE or TWO issues still clouding the issue. And that's what causes the negative to vote against it.
So, they can claim that health care reform is going to kill your grandma, and you can refute that by saying it's stupid, but they're still going to win because one person believes Obama wants single payer, even though the person might not even know what single payer is, and one other person thinks that doctors will quit the medical profession. Neither one of those things will likely happen, but you don't have to convince both people on both issues; only one has to slip through in the myriad of issues that you throw into the negative possibilities.
I'll let Democrats in on a little secret of how to negate the negative offensive. Responding to EACH allegation is only going to lead to defeat. It's like a debate team that spends all of its 1st affirmative time impacting their arguments with so many examples and arguments that the negative has to spend all of its time just making sure they don't forget to address the 10,000 arguments that were brought up. In debate, you collapse their arguments into similar sounding arguments so you can address 1 through 5 as one argument, 6-10 as another, and then so on. Otherwise, you end up collapsing from straight out exhaustion.
The response to the Republican campaign is not to appeal to the arguments, as the Democrats keep doing (hello being shouted down in your own town halls, Democratic leaders) but to do what I call appealing to the audience through a stronger narrative (or counter-narrative) so that the ground is never given to the other side to keep arguing on their own ground. A Cheshire cat offensive is never going to allow you to give a constructive counter-offensive, or even an adequate defensive, because it will keep changing its argument to make sure that you never have a chance to get back any ground.
What you have to do is show that their foundation never had merit to begin with, that the two of you are not even arguing the same dilemma. If the Republicans argue that the issue is "doctors quitting", the response is NOT to poll a bunch of doctors and look for some who say they won't quit. The response is something along the lines of "Insurance companies are evil and want to kill patients to save costs" or whatever. The point is: You have to be on the ground yourself making arguments, not trying to land on the battlefield that's already being waged in your name in countries you aren't fighting to protect.
There are two examples that show how this should be done (one obscure and one that shocks me that no one seems to even give it any attention). The first is my favorite example because I did work on it, and that's the 1991 August coup in the Soviet Union. Yeltsin beat the hardliners by showing that his vision of Russia's future was more believable than the one concocted by the Soviet hardliners. End of story: Yeltsin wins and hardliners get thrown out of government. The second is the actual election between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary was trying to make the whole issue about a great past (the Clinton era) while Obama was trying to make the issue about a better future that would emerge with him at the helm. Obama's rhetoric defeated that of Clinton's no matter how hard she tried to make her brand stick. We got Obama as a result, and that narrative carried through to an election that was literally the second part of his offensive against Hillary. McCain never had a chance.
That's what's needed now. The Democrats, or the Obama team, needs to construct its own rhetoric of a positive future rather than let the Republicans win by running on negative campaigning, about the only thing they know how to do these days. Otherwise, we'll end up with no health care reform and thousands of dissertations about how no one saw it coming.
Stumble It!
What is happening is something Democrats really need to understand if they're ever going to get any legislation of merit passed EVEN with a majority, and EVEN with a filibuster proof majority. What's amazing is that the Republicans aren't doing anything new; they're playing a card right out of mass communication theory, and they're doing it really well, even if the majority of THEM have no idea why what they're doing is really working.
What they're doing is so easy to do in this country because of one simple reason that so many people don't seem to understand. Getting people to say no is much easier than getting people to say yes. Many, MANY studies have been done on persuasive tactics, and one of the agreed-upon conclusions in so many of these studies is that if you want to be the victor in a debate over a complex issue, which health care is definitely a complex issue, choose the negative side. Republicans have become experts at negative campaigning now for decades. How many elections have we seen that weren't "vote for me" but "don't vote for the other guy"? It's become so successful that even Democrats are doing it, although I suspect that neither side realizes why it works; they're just glad it does.
It plays into the distrustful perspective of most Americans. We don't trust anyone, even though the majority of us would never admit that to anyone, including ourselves. This makes it so easy to take the negative side and then beat down the issue with ridiculousness because the beauty of such a tactic is what the health care people (and Proposition 8 people who wanted to stop the amendment against gay marriage in California) don't understand. You see, the trick is to make up ten ridiculous statements about the issue you want to defeat. The other side spends all of its energy defeating each one of them, and might successfully defeat 8 of the 10. But that's where the beauty comes in. It only takes ONE to defeat the issue, and when you cloak something into conspiracy clothing, the logical stuff can be defeated, but it will always leave ONE or TWO issues still clouding the issue. And that's what causes the negative to vote against it.
So, they can claim that health care reform is going to kill your grandma, and you can refute that by saying it's stupid, but they're still going to win because one person believes Obama wants single payer, even though the person might not even know what single payer is, and one other person thinks that doctors will quit the medical profession. Neither one of those things will likely happen, but you don't have to convince both people on both issues; only one has to slip through in the myriad of issues that you throw into the negative possibilities.
I'll let Democrats in on a little secret of how to negate the negative offensive. Responding to EACH allegation is only going to lead to defeat. It's like a debate team that spends all of its 1st affirmative time impacting their arguments with so many examples and arguments that the negative has to spend all of its time just making sure they don't forget to address the 10,000 arguments that were brought up. In debate, you collapse their arguments into similar sounding arguments so you can address 1 through 5 as one argument, 6-10 as another, and then so on. Otherwise, you end up collapsing from straight out exhaustion.
The response to the Republican campaign is not to appeal to the arguments, as the Democrats keep doing (hello being shouted down in your own town halls, Democratic leaders) but to do what I call appealing to the audience through a stronger narrative (or counter-narrative) so that the ground is never given to the other side to keep arguing on their own ground. A Cheshire cat offensive is never going to allow you to give a constructive counter-offensive, or even an adequate defensive, because it will keep changing its argument to make sure that you never have a chance to get back any ground.
What you have to do is show that their foundation never had merit to begin with, that the two of you are not even arguing the same dilemma. If the Republicans argue that the issue is "doctors quitting", the response is NOT to poll a bunch of doctors and look for some who say they won't quit. The response is something along the lines of "Insurance companies are evil and want to kill patients to save costs" or whatever. The point is: You have to be on the ground yourself making arguments, not trying to land on the battlefield that's already being waged in your name in countries you aren't fighting to protect.
There are two examples that show how this should be done (one obscure and one that shocks me that no one seems to even give it any attention). The first is my favorite example because I did work on it, and that's the 1991 August coup in the Soviet Union. Yeltsin beat the hardliners by showing that his vision of Russia's future was more believable than the one concocted by the Soviet hardliners. End of story: Yeltsin wins and hardliners get thrown out of government. The second is the actual election between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hillary was trying to make the whole issue about a great past (the Clinton era) while Obama was trying to make the issue about a better future that would emerge with him at the helm. Obama's rhetoric defeated that of Clinton's no matter how hard she tried to make her brand stick. We got Obama as a result, and that narrative carried through to an election that was literally the second part of his offensive against Hillary. McCain never had a chance.
That's what's needed now. The Democrats, or the Obama team, needs to construct its own rhetoric of a positive future rather than let the Republicans win by running on negative campaigning, about the only thing they know how to do these days. Otherwise, we'll end up with no health care reform and thousands of dissertations about how no one saw it coming.
Labels: Politics
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 4:28 PM
1 Comments:
At 7:24 PM,
amboycharlie said…
Duane,
Perhaps what you don't understand is that the Democrats won't do what you suggest because they are only interested in giving the appearance of being for health care reform. I read some time ago, I don't know where, that health insurance companies employ 11% of the American workforce. Much of that may have gone to India since then, I don't know, but I doubt it, because that would lessen the lobbying power. But when you're talking about an industry that large, with tentacles in every state and a vast majority of congressional districts, well, guess what. I'm no Repug, but the Dems are cynics. Why do you think Hillary was never interested in single payer, and Obama won't back it either? They could win the debate if they wanted to, the question is do they want to? Or do they just function as the steam release valve on the oligarchy's pressure cooker? Giving us all enough relief to keep things from exploding.
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