Background statement
A lot of the soul searching by Democrats in the aftermath of the national 2024 loss turns on the realization that the party’s messaging has not been effective. There are two main complaints coming from the many after game quarterbacks. The first is that Democrats’ attention to the social and political demands of special interest groups has turned off the electoral majority. The majority are white Americans, people who think they are white, and people who wish they were white.
The argument from white voters goes that special interest groups (women, Blacks and other minority groups, LGBTQ people, and immigrants) in their demands for equitable, meaning fair, treatment by the country have suppressed the rights of white people (We’re victims of reverse racism!); that their attention seeking methods have demonized white people (We’re being denied our free speech!); and that they have not legitimately earned their claims to status and privilege (They’re just undeserving DEI hires!).
The second major complaint is that Democrats favor big government, which Republicans equate with inefficiency, the deep state, and “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Republicans believe the private sector is a better problem solver generally and that taxes should be minimized in favor of people paying the private sector for solutions, national security being the major exception. The counterargument is that government assures social stability and fairness through necessary regulation of bad or ignorant actors.
Underpinning both of these concerns is a fundamental difference of opinion on the proper role of government. Should government try to assure all people’s happiness or should people take responsibility for their own happiness and, of course, their unhappiness? In regard to national issues, should the Federal government legislate for equal treatment across the states or should individual states take care of their own problems? At the state level, the same big versus small government issues pertain. In either case, it’s the baseline principle of the Constitution to establish a “more perfect union.” How does a lumping Federal or state government achieve that differently from a splitting Federal or state government?
The Declaration of Independence, which lacks the legal clout of the Constitution, declares that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights belonging to all men. But those three terms cover a lot of potential group. We have to go to the Bill of Rights in the Constitution to get some specifies. Our elected representatives take an oath to the Constitution, so we have some guarantee. Unfortunately, the specifics even in the Bill of Rights are vague enough that every right through the centuries has been subject to differing interpretations. Here the courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court, are the guides and they have the authority to take a specific interpretation and make it law or change their minds and strip a right of a particular interpretation. When we’re still in the formative stage of proposing changes to our catalog of rights, opinions will differ. It’s the role of the various factions of the electorate to express their desires and to advocate for them. The way to express this falls under the general rubric of messaging.
In the rest of this article, I’ll lay out a conception of what messaging might look like for a county level, progressive, political organization attempting to establish a messaging campaign to push an agenda.
A messaging campaign comprises two components: 1) conceiving and drafting a message statement and 2) communicating the message to one or more audiences. The goal of the campaign will vary with the audience, but generally speaking the overall goal will be aimed at solving some problem or redressing some hurt; that is, to influence the electorate or its representatives to vote a particular way.
The concept of a message will be spurred by an identified problem. For a political organization, that problem involves some way to benefit the citizenry by removing a hazard and/or by putting in place some beneficial program.
The message statement has to acknowledge some reality and so needs to cite pertinent facts, statistics, opinions, and beliefs from sources that the intended audience will find credible. Even this seemingly reality based part isn’t always straightforward, since people can have different takes as to whether some claim is a fact (my truth versus your conspiracy theory) or an opinion (my good sense versus your deranged thinking), whether a belief is morally justified or just some hidden prejudice (some people are just inferior versus all people have potential), whether a statistic has been interpreted correctly (stats provide proof versus stats are just lies with math).
Once the organization has accumulated its baseline information, the next step in developing the message is to craft it. Here the point is to understand the intended audience and to draft the core material in a way that engages that audience. This is a matter of style and tone. Should you be angry or composed, authoritative or conversational, confrontational or solicitous, wordy or succinct? You can initially be as forceful as you can be, but if your message goes out to some public channel, it will likely go through an editorial smoothing out and toning down.
The second part of the campaign is to communicate the message. You’ll choose a media outlet that’s appropriate to the audience you want to reach, submit your crafted message, and wait for feedback. Truth be told, you’ll likely get little feedback, unless you’re so well known that you fit into the ‘influencer’ category. Most of us don’t, for which we should actually be grateful. Heavy is the crown because nasty are the trolls!
But if your message does strike gold, you’ll likely open other opportunities to present it, perhaps across different media. For example, if you started with an op-ed piece to your local newspaper, you might get calls to deliver it through a podcast, or a radio interview, or social media, or a panel discussion, or a YouTube video, or a book deal, or a syndication to other papers. In other words, success can entail a larger commitment to the message, as well as more time on your part.
The odds of this happening because of a single message are small. It’s the cumulative impact of many coordinated messages from a team of people over a significant period of time that will make a messaging campaign successful and open up those opportunities.