This diary began as a comment to David Mizner's diary. In that diary, David asked why people aren't protesting in the streets given the fact that corporations--facilitated by free market politicians of both parties--drove the country into a ditch? I agree with David on his overall summary of what happened in the last 30 years. Economically speaking, free market conservatism has won the day, with both Republicans and Democrats increasingly embracing policies that favor corporations over individuals. It is fair to say that, economically, Democrats today are supporting measures the republicans advocated 30 years ago. Free market conservatives have been more effective at messaging than progressives. They have moved the economic overton window right, as progressives have moved the social equality (e.g., gay rights) window left.
So...what to do? I don't know for sure, but it would seem that progressives should accept that our current messaging sucks and do something else. If we can accept that statement, it leads to two questions.
What is the messaging of progressives now?
What should the messaging be in the future?
Let's start with now. If we want to identify the status of progressive messaging, we can identify the styles of progressive heros in the last decade: Michael Moore, Naomi Klein, Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow, Alan Grayson, etc. To be clear, I love these people. But obviously, they have failed at messaging. Their style and such is not working. What is their style? Some combination of reasoned rebuttal and bombast. Some have more bombast (Grayson, Olberman) others have more reason (Maddow, Sanders). The key point, however, is that what they are doing is not working. However much I love these messengers, their message is only reaching the choir.
I imagine that many will complain that our message has been buried by the MSM. That may be true. But, at the end of the day that complaint achieves nothing. We need a message and messengers that can cut through the right wing noise machine and convince those in the middle of the value of progressive positions. Our current message and messengers are simply not doing that on economic issues (though they do seem to be succeeding on social issues).
So how should progressives alter their message? What would new messengers do differently? I don't know. But perhaps we need to stop championing our current messengers and our failed messaging and really think about what will actually work. We seem very capable of preaching to the choir, but we seem to suck at preaching to the congregation.
I really would like to have everyone's thoughts on this. I am not trying to start a flame war about Obama, MSNBC, Olberman or the rest. I have made an observation, given the rightward movement of economic policy in the US over the last 30 years, I think it is undeniable that the progressive economic message has not gotten through. So what should we be doing differently?
I have one thought. As I have said, socially speaking progressives have been very successful in convincing the country to support progressive positions. So...what are we doing differently with social issues than we are doing with economic issues? What can we learn from the gay rights movement that we can apply to our economic messaging?