TPP: Election 2004 and DU Influence

[troublemaker]

Skinner recently wrote, “For years the three admins have tried to figure out how to harness the massive potential of a place like this, and we have repeatedly found ourselves frustrated.”

That got me thinking about an experiment/project using DU as intellectual and creative resource. (As a kid I spent a whole afternoon trying to trisect an angle just because the books said it was impossible.) The basic idea is to put a little of our creative thinking out there is a form that’s sufficiently focused and concise to maximize our exposure and influence.

We are all smarter than DU because DU can’t act or even make up its mind about anything. We are all dumber than DU in that the combined entity of DU would kick our ass in trivial pursuit or a history exam. DU’s chief asset is intellectual diversity. DU cannot come up with THE right answer but DU can generate a list that contains the right answer. That’s significant. Multiple choice questions are a lot easier than essay questions. And any end-users of our suggestions will be picking what THEY think is the best approach. (Ideas are always more influential when people feel they came by them themselves.)

So here’s a proposal. This isn’t the last word on the topic. It’s a starting point. DU is a complex dynamic system so none of us can predict where anything here might lead. The key is to get this little thing rolling so that it will be tested in the DU mindspace and be free to evolve into whatever it evolves into. As a certain Vermont governor is fond of saying, “don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good.”

DU Talking Points Project: Take a narrow very specific question or RW talking point that Democratic surrogates do not handle well (ideally something taken directly from a transcript) and open it up for suggestions of how it should have been answered.

The subject line should begin TPP: (for talking points project) so that anyone who wants to try this can recognize the threads, and so they’re easy for people outside DU find(and hopefully be influenced by)Here’s an example:

TPP: KERRY’S HEALTH PLAN AND MALPRACTICE REFORM

Wolf Blitzer said to Jane Democrat, “If Kerry’s healthcare plan is so great, then why do rich trial lawyers support it?”

Jane Democrat said: “The politics of failure have failed. It is time to win again.”

Please reply to this main post only with a better answer of 50 words or less. In this context “better” means politically better; more likely to help Kerry win. The only limitations are brevity and political value. Political value is different from academic or scientific value. We all know that just because a thing is true doesn’t mean swing voters will believe it, so answers should be both true and plausible. Sometimes questions are best answered by other questions. Humor is sometimes an important part of effective communications, so zingers are okay if they would appeal to average swing voters.

This post is part of an experimental project to try out a way to maximize the potential impact of our collective wisdom. If we junk up this thread too much it will be less useful to everyone, so in this particular thread please stick with this voluntary format. The cleaner we can keep this thread the more likely it is to be read by people in a position to do some good with it. Constructive critiques to individual answers should be posted only as replies to that specific answer. The idea is to generate the most effective answers not the most original, so it’s cool to borrow language and arguments from other people’s answers. Bush Must Lose!

The idea is that we will naturally accumulate some of these TPP threads that an interested outsider can find quickly and read easily. It’s not that Tad Devine is going to be spending all his time checking on what DU thinks he shoulda said. At first our best hope is that bloggers and alternative media people and low-level campaign workers might find the threads interesting. People might pull them together and post them on their own sites. They might fax TPP threads around. If the information is easy to use they can absorb it and be influenced by it and use ideas gleaned here to influence a wider circle of people, etc..

And perhaps someday soon a person who will be interviewed on a small talk radio show might spend a few minutes beforehand to take a look at DU to see what the TPP posts say about a particular issue or controversy that her DNC fax doesn’t cover adequately. And so on…

I don’t want ego or personality to play a role in any of this, so I am NOT going to post an actual TPP thread myself until other people have gotten the ball rolling. The format of TPP threads should be consistent, but that doesn’t mean it should be what I say. This isn’t my project. I’m just tossing one little pebble in the DU pond and stepping away to see what the ripples look like.

Bush… Must… Lose!

[Sparkly]

1. I love it!!

Great idea!!

[Old and In the Way]

2. I like it!

It should have it's own subforum....maybe under the Campaign 2004 umbrella.

[stray cat]

3. email addresses to contact media

Our battle to a large extent is with the media that picks up on Bush campaign talking points on purpose or more often unwittingly and gives them credibility and free air time. Could DU post an email list of some of the major media personalities to make it easier to contact certain shows quickly?

[troublemaker]

4. That list is stored in the activism forum

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=106&topic_id=8816&mesg_id=8816

[CBHagman]

7. Here are a couple to get started.

To the Washington Post:

[email protected]

To Keith Olbermann on MSNBC:

[email protected]

You can fill out a form on both the MSNBC and CNN websites, however, and skip having to log in to your e-mail.

[Cheswick2.0]

5. kick

I think this is a great idea and would like to see what people can come up with.

[buycitgo]

6. send stupid back to the chickenranch

befo' cocktail kick

[Guaranteed]

8. Kick

Again, this is genius. And pertinent.

[dmr]

9. I think this is a great idea

I'm sorry to see that others have not jumped in here with this. Maybe it's the week-end.

I'm not sure what to write as a come-back to the above, but for Wolf or anyone else who throws in the trial lawyer factor is using a Republican-made diversion. My take is any response made should be to ignore the trial lawyer remark and discuss that this is about the American people. And if Wolf presses on about the lawyers, then a question should be asked why he would detract something so important to all Americans - because this is what healthcare actually about! OR ask him what exactly he wishes to discuss: is it health care or is it about the Republican's issue with trial lawyers? The two do not go together, so our guys shouldn't even bother answering until they know why or what exactly Wolf wants to discuss (of course we already know why, it's the planting of negative seeds about Kerry in the minds of voters).

Mother Jones latest (September-October 2004) issue has an article by Stephanie Mencimer entitled Trial and Error, discussing how the Republican's have put their millions together to create think tanks just to demonize the trial lawyers. The non-profit National Center for State Courts have found that the issues raised by these think tanks are false, or at best misleading; in fact tort filings and tort awards are declining.

Anyway, I got my Mother Jones in the mail today, and is not yet available online so here's 4 paragraphs typed directly from the magazine:


In January 2003, President George W. Bush gave a speech in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in which he declared that the American health care system was broken. Too many people, he said, couldn’t get medical care when they needed it. The solution was "Getting at the source of the problem, which are the frivolous lawsuits.” The political subtext, at a time when the Democratic presidential hopefuls – including former trial lawyer John Edwards – were gearing up, was clear: One White House aide explained that the speech was part of “Whack John Edwards Day.”

The White House has long been laying the groundwork for a campaign against the North Carolina senator, who made his fortune representing people with injury claims against doctors and corporations. Bush and other Republicans have blamed lawsuits for everything from rising health care costs to unemployment; with Edwards on the Democratic ticket, the GOP – and its allies in the corporate world – have dramatically turned up the volume. Treasury Secretary John Snow fired the first shot, two days after John Kerry announced his selection: “An abusive lawsuit has never created a single job, except for personal injury lawyers,” he told an audience in Maine, “but baseless and excessive suits have killed many.” Vice President Dick Cheney struck the same chord at a July 12 fundraiser in Pennsylvania, saying, “For the good of this economy, we need to end lawsuit abuse. Junk and frivolous lawsuits put people out of work.” The Bush campaign has also unleashed a new TV ad, attacking Kerry for missing a vote “to lower health care costs by reducing frivolous lawsuits against doctors.”

- snip -

Michael McCann, the director of the Comparative Law and Society Studies Center at the University of Washington says anti-lawsuits rhetoric works in spite of the facts because it feeds into well-established stereotypes. “The image of the irresponsible plaintiff is right up there with the welfare queen," says McCann. "That’s why Americans respond to this – because it’s a morality tale.” Pollster Frank Luntz once told Republican members of Congress that “it’s almost impossible to go too far when it comes to demonizing lawyers.”

But talk of court system run amok doesn’t just make good campaign slogans. It’s also a prodigious fund-raising tool, as Bush has known ever since his first race for governor of Texas, in 1994. With encouragement from Karl Rove, then a consultant to Philip Morris, Bush embraced tort reform as one of his top three campaign issues. As a result, Rove later told the Washington Post, “Business groups flocked to us.” Tort reformers also worked hard to put Bush in the White House. In 2000, one of the Bush presidential campaign’s cochairs was Ralph Wayne, the president of the Texas Civil Justice League, a tort reform group whose board members include executives from Halliburton, Dow Chemical, and other major oil and chemical companies. Wayne told reporters that three-quarters of the league’s members supported Bush’s 2000 bids.

more ...

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

10. Nominated. A simple TPP example: "Flipflopper" GOP TP.

Personally I think the easiest way to respond to this is to point out the various shrub flip flops. Neutralizes the issue. Many, many links to sites documenting these posted at this site.

If this were going to be utilized by the DNC or Kerry or Moveon type machinery, they would have to select out the better and least ambiguous flip flops (like "war/peace president"). Some on some of the lists I've seen aren't very good.

[NJCher]

11. fabulous idea

And I want to participate! I would like to do some research on corporate welfare vs. welfare queens. I want graphs and charts showing how much we spend on corporate welfare vs. how much we spend on "welfare queens."

dmr, your post was very illuminating. I read a lot on this and you had several points in there that I didn't know. Also, I like your strategy of keeping issues separate.

Also, another thing I could contribute is editing. I would like to see a very simple, easy-to-read bulleted format that a person could pull info from in the matter of a few minutes.


Cher

[dweller]

12. kick

:kick: back to the top!

great idea.
dp

[democratreformed]

13. I have a project for DU.

Last Friday, I received a parody of "The Ant and the Grasshopper". The moral of the story (at the bottom) was "Vote Republican". I'll bet you can imagine the story. If not, I'll pm it to you. I have to go to class right now but will be back about 12:30 central time.

I want to make up an "ant and grasshopper" parody with the moral being "Vote Democrat". I worked on it some this weekend, but wasn't happy with what I came up with. It was too rambly and long. All us incredible DUers should be able to come up with something short and sweet.

Here's the original story:
~THE OLD VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building
his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool and laughs and dances and
plays
the Summer away. Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the
cold.

MORAL OF THE ORIGINAL STORY: Be responsible for yourself!


I'm not posting the new one on here, but, like I said, I'll pm it to you if you want. Leave a message here and I'll do it when I get back.