You might have heard that the Democrats are the party with no ideas. That's a great talking point, but the problem is, the Democrats have plenty of ideas. So what do you do if you're a journalist, and the facts get in the way of your convenient little storyline? You ignore the facts, of course!
John Cole points us to a New York Times article from Sheryl Gay Stolberg:
Democrats Outline Agenda
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- It has become fashionable in Washington to portray Democrats as the party without a compelling message. Congressional Democrats, eager to pick up seats in November but so far unable to capitalize on Republicans' vulnerability, fired back on Thursday, offering a sweeping agenda.
In back-to-back talks at the National Press Club, the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate Democratic whip, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, promised initiatives on education, health care and jobs, and a stronger, more secure nation, if voters put Democrats back in power.
The two outlined what Ms. Pelosi called a "Democratic innovation agenda" that included encouraging scientists and engineers to become teachers, support for small businesses to help them offer health care to employees, and revamping the new Medicare prescription drug law to give the federal government authority to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices.
Ms. Pelosi promised doubling the nation's budget for basic research in the physical sciences. She declared, "Our agenda guarantees that every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years."
Mr. Durbin, stepping in for the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who canceled because of a scheduling conflict, called for a "small-business health benefits plan to give employees of small businesses the same kind of health care that members of Congress enjoy today for much less than what these businesses now pay."
Well, that sounds like a pretty decent article, doesn't it? Except I rewrote it to sound like something a real journalist might say. Here is the REAL article, the boldface type indicating stuff I omitted earlier:
Democrats Outline Agenda, Mostly Sparing the Specifics
WASHINGTON, Jan. 26 -- It has become fashionable in Washington to portray Democrats as the party without a compelling message. Congressional Democrats, eager to pick up seats in November but so far unable to capitalize on Republicans' vulnerability, fired back on Thursday, offering a sweeping agenda that was long on vision and short on specifics.
In back-to-back talks at the National Press Club, the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, and the Senate Democratic whip, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, promised initiatives on education, health care and jobs, and a stronger, more secure nation, if voters put Democrats back in power.
The two outlined what Ms. Pelosi called a "Democratic innovation agenda" that included encouraging scientists and engineers to become teachers, support for small businesses to help them offer health care to employees, and revamping the new Medicare prescription drug law to give the federal government authority to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices.
Ms. Pelosi promised doubling the nation's budget for basic research in the physical sciences but did not say over what time period. In the Internet era's version of the Herbert Hoover era's promise of a chicken in every pot, she declared, "Our agenda guarantees that every American will have affordable access to broadband within five years."
Mr. Durbin, stepping in for the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, who canceled because of a scheduling conflict, called for a "small-business health benefits plan to give employees of small businesses the same kind of health care that members of Congress enjoy today for much less than what these businesses now pay." He did not say how much that would cost.
Of course, it's fair to ask how much a proposal will cost, when it will be implemented, and so forth. That's what we expect journalists to do. What we don't expect them to do is decide that if a speech doesn't contain each and every detail of a policy proposal - in other words, if the speech doesn't bore the audience to death - they're going to spin it as "lacking specifics."
Are the Democrats short on specific ideas? Right there in this article, we see several specific policy proposals:
(1) Encouraging scientists and engineers to become teachers;
(2) Allowing Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices;
(3) Doubling the budget for research in the physical sciences;
(4) Universal broadband access within five years; and
(5) giving small businesses access to Congress' health plan.
And that's just from a snippet of these two speeches by Pelosi and Durbin. Can anyone honestly say, based on reading this, that the Democrats have "no ideas" or "no specifics"?
But Ms. Stolberg already knew the article she wanted to write. And so when the Democrats said how much something would cost, she pointed out that they didn't say how log it would take. When they said how long something would take, she criticized them for not stating the cost. And when all else failed, she took a cheap shot with "a chicken in every pot." And where does she go with this?
So Democrats have been recently lambasting what they call the "Republican culture of corruption" in Washington. Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Durbin sounded that theme again on Thursday, though Democrats and independent political analysts agree that if the party expects to pick up seats in November, its candidates must do more than criticize.
I cannot imagine how anyone could be so breathtakingly stupid as to go through a list of all these Democratic proposals for improving the country, and then come back with the non sequitur "Democrats need to do more than criticize." Even my dog could see they are going well beyond mere criticism!
Two points here, friends:
First, the media is not our friends. You know this already, but it bears repeating. The Democrats are going to have a long, uphill struggle to get their message out over a constant refrain from the GOP and their friends in the media that "the Democrats have no message." Keep fighting. Use the power of the blogosphere and keep pressuring the media when they fail to give Democratic ideas equal time. Make them fear the consequences of not giving us a fair shake.
Second, this demonstrates the importance of framing and the concept that a good storyline will always win out over the actual facts. When Republicans say, "Democrats have no specifics," they're lying, but it's still a catchy storyline, suitable for a sound bite. And if you repeat a storyline enough times, people start to believe it, journalists start to write stories that bolster the storyline. This is how politics is played and there's no getting around it. It is critical that we develop and promote our own storylines, because otherwise, no one will take time to listen to the facts.
"Culture of corruption" is more of a slogan, but it's close to a storyline. "Republicans just aren't competent at running a government" is another storyline, and it's one we should repeat and repeat and repeat. That way, every time something happens that illustrates Republican incompetence, we get to refer back to the storyline, and people hear it over and over and they start believing it. And at that point, even if the Republicans do something competently - hey, in theory, it could happen someday - the storyline will still prevail over the lonely counterexample.
Thanks for reading my diary. Keep fighting!