Shall we adopt a fear-based strategy to promote health care reform?

[backscatter712]

I suggest this for two reasons.

One, fear works. Ask the Republicans - why do you think they're always trying to scare people.

Two, unlike the GOP, we don't have to bullshit. All we have to do is tell the truth. There's plenty of REAL reasons to fear the results of failed health care reform.

Bullet points:

• Medicare will go broke and seniors will lose their health care if nothing is done!
  
• Insurance company death panels, the REAL death panels, will condemn your loved ones to die if they get a serious illness, and they find an excuse to avoid paying. Remember Nataline Sarkisyan!
  
• Health care costs continue to climb at double-digit percentages every year. Before long, nobody but millionaires will be able to afford health care. Employers will be forced to dump their employee's health benefits, and nothing will be available to replace them. We'll all be uninsured, forced into bankruptcy in the event of illness, and begging for indigent care at emergency rooms.
  

That should be enough to get started.

[mix]

1. 45 million had those fears before this debate started...

...fear is intrinsic to the issue, given that we are talking about life and death...the right has been able to pervert this fear for its own ends while the Democratic leadership has failed to use the legitimate fears of millions to change our broken health care system.

[billyoc]

2. Yes, exploit Blue Dog fear of unemployment.

[polichick]

5. LOL - great minds! I was typing and didn't see your post. nt

[polichick]

3. Yeah, we should scare the Blue Dogs into working for the people...

...as moveon and other progressive ("left of left") groups are already doing.

[RagAss]

4. No. We need a march. An big, loud march !

[polichick]

6. I don't think it would matter - the opposition would be there and reporters...

...would pretend the crowds were equal.

[mix]

7. I agree and I think they would be bigger than the ones against the Iraq War.

[Native]

8. Yes - it's the only way to deal with the illiterati. nt

[Better Today]

9. Since not reforming is actually a hellofalot scarier than reform, YES.

[leftofthedial]

10. FUD works

fear, uncertainty and doubt.

If you don't support Medicare For All right now, you will die and your children will starve.

[kenny blankenship]

11. Now you're thinking! Nothing overcomes systemic inertia, not to mention entrenched interests

without first mobilizing our PASSIONS. Changing the way this country plans for life and death is a monumental task- there can hardly be an issue more fraught with systemic inertia. Just questioning the present arrangement opens yourself to fears and suspicions. You will not succeed with a dry rational demonstration of the superior utility of a "new and better way." People have to hate the old way, which however it trods on them is something they've been accustomed to all their lives, and they must be led to desire the new.

Mobilizing passions is more important to leadership than technocratic competency. As George Lakoff says Republicans succeed in moving their agenda or obstructing ours because they present their case in emotionally charged language --in "loaded" terms--proclaiming their position is the only one justified by religious, patriotic, or familial value systems by their simple word choices. And they do so from the start, not just during the heat of a debate. Democrats tend to assume the audience is persuaded by rational arguments that Course B is more useful than our present direction, Course A. Course B, they always say, on balance, and with qualifications, will yield a superior benefit to same-old same-old Course A. And they always can't believe it when they lose. Either today's Democrats lack passion themselves because the policies they advocate benefit others, not themselves so their hearts aren't in it, or they are just making a fundamental mistake about the nature of mass persuasion. Since people first began studying rhetoric it has been understood: the larger the audience, the more important the appeal to emotion becomes.

[dflprincess]

12. We need to hammer home the message from "Sicko"

and make people realize that just because they have insurance and think they're covered, if they get really sick, they will wind up declaring bankruptcy and moving into the spare room at their kid's house.