Tag Archive: President Obama

Talking Political Messaging with Alan Grayson

I had the opportunity to speak to former Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson of Florida recently, and asked him about political messaging, something for which Grayson is very well known. Grayson’s most famous speech, the one that put him on the political map, is the one shown in the video above, from the floor of the House of Representatives during the height of the debate over President Obama’s Affordable Care Act in September 2009. In his speech, Grayson said:

It’s my duty and pride tonight to be able to announce exactly what the Republicans plan to do for health care in America… It’s a very simple plan. Here it is. The Republicans’ health care plan for America: “don’t get sick….” If you have insurance don’t get sick, if you don’t have insurance, don’t get sick; if you’re sick, don’t get sick. Just don’t get sick.… If you get sick America, the Republican health care plan is this: “die quickly.”

During the Political Discussion Next Thanksgiving Dinner, Go on Offense

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Before the past few Thanksgivings, some media outlets have run pieces advising readers or viewers on how to respond to right-wing, Fox-concocted talking points that one or more relatives might regurgitate at the dinner table. As the above video from this past November 23 indicates, Ed Schultz invited Occupy Wall Street hero Jesse LaGreca on MSNBC’s “Ed Show” to do just that. Jesse does a good job using logic, facts, and figures to respond to the right-wing talking points raised by Ed. However, if you’re simply being reactive rather than proactive in these situations, you’ve already lost the political argument.

President Obama Gets the Message

President Barack Obama gave a stunning speech yesterday in front of the “functionally obsolete” Brent Spence Bridge connecting Ohio and Kentucky. The President’s speech touting his American Jobs Act marks a sharp turnaround from the cool, professorial, unemotional Barack Obama that America has become used to, and which many voters dislike. This time, as with his recent speeches to promote the American Jobs Act, Obama is doing almost everything right regarding effective political messaging:

The Power of the Echo Chamber

The Republican communications machine includes a powerful echo chamber, comprised of Fox “News”, right wing talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, etc.), Republican elected officials and their surrogates, and others. Almost all of them are on the same page with the same talking points on a daily basis. Thus, Republican words and phrases, carefully crafted to benefit Republicans (e.g., “job creators”, “Obamacare”, etc.), get repeated through the right wing echo chamber and get absorbed into the mainstream. As a result, these words and phrases often become the basis for our political debate, giving the Republicans a huge home field advantage.

The Democratic echo chamber, in contrast, is tiny. There is little apparent effort, from the Obama White House or elsewhere, to coordinate a daily message using simple talking points, or, if there is, it has been a miserable failure. Likewise, there isn’t much of a discernible communications machine through which to echo that message through television and radio hosts, and then through viewers and listeners themselves.

That’s why a recent example of a Democratic talking point repeated by someone in the mainstream media was a pleasant surprise. President Obama said on the Tom Joyner Morning Show radio program on August 30 regarding anticipated negative reaction to his jobs plan by Congressional Republicans:

If Congress does not act, then I’m going to be going on the road and talking to folks, and this next election very well may end up being a referendum on whose vision of America is better.

Then, just a few hours later, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said on MSNBC‘s “Hardball”, on the same subject:

Well, I think for the next 15 months, both sides can take their case to the American people and let them decide.

While Robinson’s language was not identical to Obama’s, it was very close, and the idea was exactly the same. Thus, it appears that Robinson heard President Obama on Tom Joyner a few hours earlier and sought to echo the President’s sentiment. If Democrats want to compete with Republicans, they will have to create a messaging echo chamber, and do much more of this.

Republican-Generated Controversy over Common Plays into Republican Hands

President Obama invites progressive black rapper Common to read poetry at the White House, and the folks at Fox “News” explode. It was perfectly predictable, since Fox and the Republicans have been waging a race-based cultural war on Barack Obama since Obama began running for President. That race war has included Reverend WrightVan Jones, ACORN, the “New Black Panther Party”Shirley Sherrod, and others as proxies for Obama in the Republicans’ “Scary Black People” strategy.

This time, the war on Obama (using Common as the proxy) was launched by Fox and Republicans contracted to work for Fox, including Sarah Palin and Karl Rove. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly then challenged Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” to a debate on the subject of Common, and Stewart took the bait. Many progressives are cheering, saying that Stewart will clean O’Reilly’s clock with the facts. Bad idea. Once such a debate is being held — on O’Reilly’s Fox “News” home turf, of course — Fox, O’Reilly, and the Republicans have already won.