The Convention of Chicago of 1968 was the beginning of the long Right wing night that has covered America for about 40 years. The result of such a conservative revolution has been a pro-campaign contributor policy disguised as pro-business, a less competitive America among developed countries and a wider disparity between rich and poor, where social mobility is each time harder. Carter's weak administration just consolidated and validated that trend. Reagan raised taxes after promising the opposite, backed crooks in Latin America, left us a painful recession, a record fiscal deficit and just benefited from the inherent contradictions of the Soviet economy and policies followed by previous presidents since Truman. Nevertheless, Reagan is the iconic symbol of the Right wing and no fact seems to affect such positioning. Positioning, one of the many tools of political marketing, focus on the minds of its target market...
Introduction
The Convention of Chicago of 1968 was the beginning of the long Right wing night that has covered America for about 40 years. The result of such a conservative revolution has been a pro-campaign contributor policy disguised as pro-business, a less competitive America among developed countries and a wider disparity between rich and poor, where social mobility is each time harder. Carter's weak administration just consolidated and validated that trend. Reagan raised taxes after promising the opposite, backed crooks in Latin America, left us a painful recession, a record fiscal deficit and just benefited from the inherent contradictions of the Soviet economy and policies followed by previous presidents since Truman. Nevertheless, Reagan is the iconic symbol of the Right wing and no fact seems to affect such positioning. Positioning, one of the many tools of political marketing, focus on the minds of its target market. Those minds are dominated by values, prejudices and other preconcepts and so do not work rationally most of the time. Worse, those minds could be led to make inexistent connections that could at the end resist any piece of contradictory evidence if their emotional motivation remains loyal to the seductive false associations that seduced them in the first term. Reagan is just one example; the absurd slogans and justifications for the war in Iraq and the absurd demonization of immigrants rejected in America because they were not born in the castes of birth rewarded by a law as Anti-American as the Jim Crow are just other two examples.
Nevertheless, many anti-war activists seem willing to repeat the mistakes of 1968 and not even the defeat of Lamont to Lieberman has made them conscious that even a good joke on the name of Petraeus could backfire if the emotional basis of the positioning of the war has not been put in doubt in the minds of the American public. If we do not realize that, we will please our base and win primaries but lose the general elections. Something similar has happened since 2004 with the so-called pro-immigrant leaders who, despite the continuous defeats, persist in marches and boycotts that only alienate them more from the mainstream. As if they were willing to validate the most bizarre accusations of Pat Buchanan, while the Right wing denounced them as a invaders not interested in share our language and values and whose loyalty was not for America, they began to march in Spanish with defiant slogans and Mexican flags, isolating themselves from a mainstream already poisoned for decades of misinformation and now also offended by so-called pro-immigrant leaders not only unprepared to offer an informed and reasonable pro-immigrant strategic and legislative proposal but also unwilling to do so.
Cindy Sheehan and the defeat of 2004 (08/30/2005)
Let me write as a Democrat. In the last week of November 2004 I sent a letter saying what in my opinion went wrong. I volunteered for Kerry and I still think he was a good candidate (though probably Hillary will be the best option for 2008). He clearly won the debates in a moment in which the issues, including national security and the war, were in our favor but he lost. To mention a point in the issue Bush looked strong, a poll showed that of those supporting Bush, 20% were thinking (on November 4!) that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11. The figure was 7% among those supporting Kerry. Madrid had already been attacked and people continued repeating that thanks to the war in Iraq we were not fighting the terrorists at home as if al Qaeda were a regular army or Spain had not been part of the Coalition of the Willing (After London, people continued repeating the same nonsense). Important pieces of information like the Duelfer report had already been made public. Nevertheless, people did not want to know, which is worse than not knowing.
My question then was "So what happened?" How the gay marriage took more covers that the worse lost of jobs since Herbert Hoover? How, while the Administration misused the Color Code System (admitted by Tom Ridge himself), the immigrants became a threat to the national security even among the Hispanics who a few months before had shown precisely the opposite attitude?
I answered myself then "The answer is: Karl Rove". Tool used: repositioning, as it is known in marketing. Labels as ‘unpatriotic’ helped to hide many of the news they didn’t want people see. The Washington Post and the New York Times reviewed their position about the war too late but we did not put an alternative in the hands of people [1] and the result was that much distorted information began to take place in their minds and many slogans came later to reinforce it. This repositioning bet used disinformation to try to reshape the worst of what already was in the mind of his target market. As McCarthyism misused patriotism and the Anti-Saloon League misused religion during the Prohibition, Rove misused both patriotism and religion and gave them immigrants and Muslims as easy scapegoats. How can you make it happen? It depends of the moment. The treaty of Versailles was used by Goebbels to misuse German patriotism and the easy scapegoats were the Jews. In our case, the moment was 9/11, a tragedy do deeply felt that can overcome our reason. What happened to the average of the Republic of Weimar to accept that the Jew book seller of the next street was guilty of the defeat of Germany during World War I? Thus, when information began to circulate during the presidential campaign, most people didn’t want to see it and felt more comfortable repeating the new slogans. People wanted to believe that the Public Law 107-243 (war authorization) and the in(famous) 87 billion supplemental were the same thing though clearly they were not and both facts were misused for the flip-flopper attack. Repositioning is a very risky bet but we gave them the time and the opportunity to success.
Could giving more information now get the same results? No. How can we make people look for information again? First we have to make them accountable for their 2004 vote. We have to show them the faces of the John Q, of the people left behind who will suffer due to that easy vote; we have to show them the faces of our dead soldiers in Iraq, including those who were illegal immigrants. We have to make them doubt of that mix of prejudices and misinformation dressed as common sense and values. Now we have a name for one of those faces: Cindy Sheehan. Cindy Sheehan and the Downing Street memos, in that order, should be the key for a triumph in 2006 and 2008.
Rove needs to discredit Sheehan. To do so she is asked questions on issues from Guantanamo to the schedule she proposes to withdraw from Iraq as if she were an intelligence analyst or a military strategist instead of a mother with a cause and then Rove take her answers to discredit her. What have we done about it? Nothing. They picture her as the Jane Fonda of Iraq and we denied her three times. What should we do then? Call to the battleground the people who can take those questions, like Wesley Clark. In the June 16, 2005 House Judiciary Committee Democrats Meeting, chaired by Representative John Conyers, Cindy Sheehan had a seat at the side of John Bonifaz, Ray McGovern and Joe Wilson. Because she was not alone, she did not have to take any kind of questions at the risk of giving an answer that could be misrepresented [2]. That is the kind of support we need to give her now, while we show other faces challenging the Republican ‘common sense’ in other issues. If we do not understand this, we are doomed to repeat the story of 2004: to win the debates and to lose the elections.
Afterthoughts on Sheehan, the results of 2006 and the so-called pro-immigrant leaders (09/11/2007)
Democrats, afraid of being labeled as unpatriotic and incapable of getting an alternative symbol, distanced as much as possible from Sheehan so losing an opportunity to gain ground on the war issue in terms they can control. It is true that the antiwar movement lost control of itself during the Convention of Chicago of 1968 and the result was the victory of Nixon but Cindy Sheehan represented in 2004 less of a risk than running on finishing the war on 2006. Sheehan represented in 2004 the opportunity of running on accountability for the war while educating people on the sad true: There are no good options for Iraq in the short term. Unfortunately that opportunity was not taken and Sheehan, forsaken, got involved in embarrassing situations and even began demonstrating again Democratic leaders, worsening the trauma of 1968. This trauma was also reinforced by the results of Connecticut, where Lamont lost to Lieberman despite winning the primaries with the support of the anti-war movement. Running on finishing the war in 2006, promising what you could not deliver without known casualties, has only led to a risky victory in a mid-term election, to control a Congress whose popular approval is now lower than Bush’s or the previous, Republican controlled Congress. Lesson: We need to show people the faces of those suffering due to their easy votes so they feel guilty for having let themselves be seduced by the Right wing. At the same time we have to pass from the easy slogan to the hard education about the real options of Iraq so Republicans will not capitalize on the next elections on the tragedies they created in the first place. Accountability is an issue that will hardly favor Democrats if they continue making easy promises and being shy on discussing the paternity of the war.
The so-called pro-immigrant leaders continue persisting in the mistake despite the poor results of their marches and boycotts. As a result in 2007, when the support for comprehensive immigration reform reached more than 70%, the only real result they got were the defeat of the Kennedy-Kyl bill, the criminalization of the employers ignoring the letters of the Social Security Administration on the validity of Social Security numbers, additional $3 billion for internal and border enforcement and countless anti-immigrant regulations at the local and state level. This could hardly be called a success. Nevertheless, these so called leaders have decided that what they need are more marches and boycotts. The anti-war movement should take note here and in the Connecticut case that what pleases the radical wing is not the most effective in terms of final results.
After abortion, immigration is probably the issue the Right likes to run on the most. As in the case of Iraq, the anti-immigrant cause has been built on lies for decades but, different from Iraq, you can get results on immigration in as soon as two years and so inflict a grave damage to the credibility of the same Right that still supports the war in the name of the flag. Changing the standard from one of rewarding caste to one of deserved residence [See my previous article] could let as show the mechanisms of assimilation of the new standard that safeguard the key elements of our culture so discrediting the cataclysmic predictions of the Right [3]. The new standard could also reduce illegal immigration to a marginal problem inside the United States and at the border as it closes the opportunities for new waves of illegal immigration resulting from gross discrepancies between the number of visas and the labor demand in the low skilled labor market [4]. You can always increase fees to increase the administrative resources you need to process the application of illegal and new immigrants. Immigration offers not only the chance of making promises on which you can reasonably deliver but also offers the opportunity of making people feel guilty for letting themselves be seduced by the easy rhetoric of the Right so opening their minds for an educative campaign on the widespread lies of the Right on this issue. A success on immigration is easier to achieve than a success on Iraq or health care and, discrediting with results the lies of the Right, it can open the minds to other progressive causes in a more positive way. This positive way has to be informed and flexible. It has to be informed so people do not feel deceived and reverse their support once the real timing or undesirable side effects we did not tell them anything about begin to show up. It also has to be flexible to connect with the mainstream and avoid successful primaries and unsuccessful general elections. For this positive way to materialize, though, we need to create emotional doubt and we have enough suffering faces to show. We just need a case we can win and that case is immigration if we pass from the band aid to the deserve residence approach.
End notes
[1] I then proposed to put in the hands of the people a free selection (Excerpts, not articles) of the news hidden by the media in a small format, like that of the Express (the free publication of the Washington Post you can pick up while passing by the bus stop). Something you can read while riding the bus. I repeat, not with what we say (typical format of the mail used for propaganda), but quoting what independent and serious sources were saying to those who could reach the page 50 of some papers. Furthermore, it was a cheap way of reaching more people. One example: the Washington Post revealed connections between the Swift Veterans for the Truth and the Bush campaign, but how many people watch TV and how many people read the whole Washington Post?
[2] A week ago Karl Rove himself visited the camp of demonstrators supporting Bush at the doors of Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, as a counter-manifestation to Sheehan. How many times have you seen Rove doing such a thing before? Tell me whether Cindy Sheehan is important or not for Rove. Today I see in C-SPAN that FEMA does not want photographs of the victims of the Katrina hurricane shown in the media as this Administration resisted for much time that the media showed the photographs of the dead in Iraq (Added in 09/08/05)
[3] Actually, those cataclysmic predictions are more likely to happen in an enforcement only scenario as a growing Hispanic community, alienated by the Right and seduced by mediocre leaders with the Latin American ways of making policy and politics, could lead to unfortunate cultural and political changes in 40 years, when that community will be able to determine elections.
[4] Even the Reagan’s quasi-amnesty of 1986, that paid no real attention to the issues of character and assimilation, reduced the levels of illegal immigration during its first two years. Nevertheless, it did not guarantee that the number of visas kept pace with the needs of the market, so creating the opportunities for new waves of illegal immigration after those two years.