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Going on offense at the Thanksgiving dinner table

Written on November 21, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Fox "News" Watch, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

Peaceful looking Thanksgiving dinner

Each Thanksgiving, we see tips for Democrats on how to react to conservative Uncle Charlie when he starts raising his Republican Fox News talking points at the holiday meal. However, most such tips are reactive, and assume that our conservative relatives get to set the table first by initiating the conversation based on their talking points. We know that it’s tougher to prevail in political discussions that are framed by your opponent. Instead, how about going on offense and bringing up your points first, thereby tilting the field of debate in your favor? Here are some possible points to bring up at the Thanksgiving dinner table tomorrow:

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Tags: Barack Obama, Blue Wave, Democrats, Donald Trump, Fox News, House of Representatives, Jamal Khashoggi, Republicans, Robert Mueller, Russia, Saudi Arabia, stock market, Thanksgiving, Vladimir Putin, Yemen

Democrats to focus on Republican corruption for 2018 midterm elections

Written on May 23, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Messaging Maxims

Democratic U.S. Senators, here led by Sen. Cory Booker, protest 2016 Republican healthcare bill.

According to recent news reports, the Democratic Party has agreed upon a theme for the 2018 midterm elections: the corruption of Donald Trump‘s administration. The Democrats reportedly will call this election theme, and their own proposals, “A Better Deal for our Democracy.” This builds on the Democrats’ announced theme from last year, “A Better Deal.” Both slogans hark back to Democratic proposals from decades past, including the “New Deal” and the “Fair Deal,” as well as recall Trump’s best-selling book, “The Art of the Deal.”

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Tags: 2018 Elections, Ben Carson, Democratic Party, Donald Trump, EPA, HUD, midterm elections, Republican Party, Scott Pruitt

Sexing up that boring word ‘infrastructure’

Written on May 11, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Good Government, Messaging Maxims

Millau Viaduct, France

The word “infrastructure” puts people to sleep. It’s up there with “tax tables” in the attention-getting zone. However, few things are more important to America than having modern, well-maintained roads, bridges, airports, rail systems, electrical grids and Internet backbones. As Donald Trump and the Republicans have dropped the ball in this area, Democrats have a great issue to run on in the 2018 and 2020 elections. First, however, the Democrats could inject a little sex into the dry terminology on this issue.

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Tags: 2018 Elections, 2020 Elections, Congress, Democrats, Donald Trump, electric, highways, infrastructure, Internet, Net Neutrality, rail, Republicans, roads

Why the end of the Trump Shutdown is good for Democrats

Written on January 22, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Fox "News" Watch, Media Watch, Republican Messaging

National Park closures during 2013 government shutdown

Today, Senate Democrats and Republicans agreed to end the federal government shutdown (known as the “Trump Shutdown”) and keep government running until February 8, by which time Congress hopes to vote on a new long-term spending bill. In return for their agreement, Democrats got a six-year extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that Congressional Republicans had let expire last September. Furthermore, the agreement includes a promise by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to hold a vote on codifying the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which Donald Trump ended last September. The agreement can be seen as a net win for Democrats, and they should portray it as such.

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Tags: Chuck Schumer, Democrats, Donald Trump, Fox News, framing, government shutdown, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, Senate, Trump Shutdown

Democratic framing guru says stop talking about Trump’s tweets

Written on January 9, 2018 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Media Watch, Messaging Maxims, Republican Messaging

Thinking about Twitter

This blog was founded on the principles of Dr. George Lakoff, former Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley and the sometimes official, sometimes unofficial messaging and framing guru of the Democratic Party. Last November, we covered an intriguing question Lakoff raised in his blog: “Why are you a Democrat?” Therefore, we are especially interested in Lakoff’s recent piece, where he tells Democrats to stop sharing, repeating and talking about Donald Trump‘s tweets.

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Tags: Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Democrats, Donald Trump, framing, George Lakoff, Hillary Clinton, Hillarycare, Law of Attraction, Obamacare, Republicans, social media, The Secret, Twitter

DCCC releases Thanksgiving dinner table talking points

Written on November 21, 2017 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Messaging Maxims, Republican Messaging

Thanksgiving dinner table: calm before the storm

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the official arm of the Democratic Party seeking to elect Democrats to the House of Representatives, has released its annual “Know Your Stuffing” Thanksgiving dinner table talking points. This year’s DCCC guide, sent by email to supporters and available in .pdf format, is billed as a “guide to surviving Thanksgiving with your Republican family.” The DCCC guide, which has a friendly graphical format, has been kept simple, covering just four topics, in the form of suggested Democratic responses to the following political statements expected by Republicans around the Thanksgiving dinner table this Thursday:

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Tags: Affordable Care Act, climate change, DACA, Democratic Party, healthcare, immigration, Obamacare, Republican Party, taxes, Thanksgiving

The great Republican hoodwink

Written on October 20, 2017 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Republican Messaging

Donald Trump on the golf course, again

Donald Trump‘s approval numbers — as low as 32 percent — are the worst ever for a president at this point in his term. Likewise, Trump’s handling of the hurricanes this season dropped 20 points to just 44 percent after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and, instead of focusing on helping the people there (who are Americans), Trump took to the golf course and then criticized them. What’s amazing, though, is that Trump’s approval among Republicans is quite high. Why the disconnect?

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Tags: 401(IK), Affordable Care Act, birther, climate change, Donald Trump, gun control, guns, healthcare, House of Representatives, Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico, racism, Republican Party, taxes

Instead of getting distracted, drive the narrative

Written on October 12, 2017 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Media Watch, Messaging Maxims, Republican Messaging

Puerto Rico devastation from Hurricane Maria

Back in February 2011, we published Messaging Maxim #1: Go On Offense. Perhaps some folks need a refresher course. In that post, we wrote, “If you’re fighting a political battle on the other side’s rhetorical turf, you’ve already lost.” At the time, such advice was referring to phony cultural issues like “Ground Zero Mosque” and “is President Obama a Muslim?” that Republicans had ginned up and repeated everywhere they could (see Messaging Maxim #2: Rinse and Repeat). With their herd mentality, the mainstream media then picked up these issues and focused their broadcasts, cablecasts and column space on them.

Fast forward to today. Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing the same thing again, and it’s working. Currently, the phony cultural issues are: “Kneeling NFL Players” and “Harvey Weinstein.” To those, you can add, “NBC and CNN Licenses.” By next week, expect different cultural issues.

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Tags: California fires, climate change, CNN, Colin Kaepernick, culture war, Donald Trump, election, Facebook, gun control, guns, Harvey Weinstein, healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Hurricane Maria, Instagram, jobs, Las Vegas, NBC, NFL, NRA, President Obama, Puerto Rico, Republican Party, Russia, social media, Twitter

The Democrats and the power of Why

Written on September 5, 2017 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Messaging Maxims, Republican Messaging

Democratic Scrabble

Much has been written about the Democratic Party’s new economic theme which it unveiled in July. This new theme is called “A Better Deal.” Unfortunately, a lot of the feedback for the Democrats over their new messaging has been negative. Much of the criticism centers around the fact that “A Better Deal” is not an organic, positive slogan or underlying message, but rather a comparison to Donald Trump and the Republicans. Indeed, the terminology plays off of Trump’s first and most famous book, “The Art of the Deal,” as well as Trump’s frequent use of the word “deal” in both business and political situations. There is a reason why we came up with Messaging Maxim #8: Don’t use the other side’s labels. Doing so is like playing on the other team’s field, with the other team’s rules. It gives your opponents an advantage and has an air of “me too” desperation. Why couldn’t the Democrats come up with their own, more original and inspiring theme?

The solution may lie in what’s called “the Power of Why.”

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Tags: Apple, Chuck Schumer, Democratic Party, Democrats, Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Republican Party, Republicans, Simon Sinek, TED

The allure of the phony Republican anecdote

Written on March 17, 2017 by Messaging Matters in Democratic Messaging, Democratic vs. Republican Presidents, Good Government, Messaging Maxims, Republican Messaging

Surf and Turf, a staple of food stamp recipients’ diets according to GOP.

Humans are a storytelling species. Thus, it’s no surprise that narratives — essentially, ongoing story lines — are an important part of successful political communication. In Messaging Maxim #4: Feed the Narrative, we mentioned that it is valuable to:

craft a true but negative story about your opponents’ ideas, actions or positions, and then look for statements or actions by them that you can point to as furthering that narrative.

Republicans are very good at constructing narratives (for example, “Scary Brown People”); however, many Republican narratives are false. That’s why you will see the GOP using anecdotes, i.e., possibly false or possibly true stories involving as few as one person, to further their phony narratives, rather than citing any meaningful facts, evidence or accurate math.

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Tags: anecdote, food stamps, narrative, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan, Scary Brown People