There are few things I enjoy as much as going to a live performance. When my favorite artists drop a new album and go on tour, I start looking for tour dates. Some artists can tour without an album based on a long catalog of greatest hits and you still show up. After all, I’d go see Paul Simon or Paul McCartney in an instant. When an artist tours with so-so material or without a new release, it’s pretty difficult to pony up the ticket price and feel as though you’re getting something out of the show.
This spring, the Democratic party tossed together a “Unity Tour” hoping to fill spots with old fans and new and encourage them to get involved in the Democratic brand. The problem is, with the last election not selling so well with the fans, and a significant gap before there is a new release, no one is quite sure what the end goal is: is this a greatest hits tour without a lot of greatest hits, is it a chance to introduce new styles, or is it just a contractually obligated small arena run to make sure the mortgage payment gets made?
In Popstar: Never Stop Stopping, characters learn that some fans wanted the band. Some wanted something new. But no one was quite prepared for, well, a confusing mix of both.
The Democratic Unity tour was exactly that. With the tour now in the books, it’s time to step back and try to figure out what we were hoping to accomplish, what went right and what went wrong.
In 1990, David Proctor forwarded the communication theory of Dynamic Spectacle, in a paper titled: “The dynamic spectacle: Transforming experience into social forms of community”. As a matter of rhetorical criticism, Proctor looked at the way in which communities form and build a shared narrative. Bonnie J. Dow looked at these issues in a political context differently, with her paper "The Function of Epideictic and Deliberative Strategies in Presidential Crisis Rhetoric". Without being overly academic, the point is that in order to have communication build a successful community, there has to be some audience agreement on the message or purpose of the spectacle at hand.
The Unity tour, in the end, had significant structural problems from the beginning. For some of those in the audience, the Unity tour was about promoting localized candidates and energizing the Democratic brand. For others, this seemed like a kick off to a Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. Other audience members thought this was an opportunity to gather and figure out what to do next, immediately, in opposition to Trump and the Republican agenda.
The communicators themselves, though, offered very little clarity, and rarely an action step. Without it, the Unity tour offered a confusing mish-mash that was neither fish nor fowl and was easy to derail. This doesn’t mean that the origin of the idea itself was invalid; we should commend Tom Perez, Keith Ellison, and all who participated in taking a new approach to reach out to Democratic party members everywhere. But the planning and the way the idea played out? Spectacularly off kilter.
Hindsight is 20-20. Only until after you’ve tried something in many ways do you realize: this was probably not a good idea. But let’s talk about the good ideas that we did miss as a result.
With Legislature still in session, and Trump in the White House..
Imagine your favorite recording artist. When they go out on tour, outside of a new album, what else is important? Normally, a new single that’s a hit is key to promotion. In Popstar: Never Stop Stopping, pictured with this diary, we come to find out what happens when an artist goes on tour with an unpopular album and fans wanting to hear original work. This gets made fun of in TV shows and movies often, “Play Freebird!”
We are too close, however, to the election of 2016, and with session ongoing, anxiety about whether or not there is a hit out there remains. As a result, the Unity tour at times risked appearing like a party sponsored Indivisible/PSN event, geared toward letting people vent anxiety about what comes next. Unlike an indivisible event, though, which is built around finding immediate tasks for the attendees to work on, many of these events resulted in debates over what the process would be going forward. For probably the first time in decades, Americans want to get involved, now. They want to understand the process. The DNC Unity tour, though, failed to offer them the action steps of what to do next. In markets where it did, the action steps to get out and vote for specific candidates were not necessarily helpful for the candidates.
Brand realities: The Democratic Party and Dynamic Spectacle
After the race for DNC Chair, the Democratic party stepped back and made a structural assessment that brand crisis management was in order. This is not abnormal for major corporations, and something Chair Tom Perez specifically discussed, calling it “The Turnaround”. This approach appealed to a lot of DNC members, myself included, because the difficulties of rolling out a turnaround is an unbelievable management task, even with a unified corporate entity, let alone a political party.
In the case of the Unity tour, though, the party seemed to mistake literal spectacle for a unifying spectacle. In order for a rhetorical act to help unify a community or build that connection, and establish social change, there has to be an acceptance of what the goal actually is with the act. This is a key component in Proctor's theory.
While Proctor and others apply Dynamic Spectacle to political and social movements, in the case of a political party you often look at events which have been utilized by a party or organization to encourage people to rally around, and the rhetoric that spawned it.
The Sanders campaign is certainly an example built around this idea. But unlike a candidate, a party has to build a vehicle that encourages involvement. For the party, the Dynamic Spectacle truly is Trump and the opposition of his presidency.
This is the problem with having a tour: in order to build that spectacle, the audience has to buy into a crystallizing event or universally accepted goal. No matter how much Sanders advocates love Sanders, he will not be on the ballot in all fifty states, at least not anytime soon.
This is why for many, the Unity tour came across as Sanders 2020, this is the mental desire of an audience to create a spectacle for themselves if one is not provided. Our minds like narratives, and if there isn’t an easy to grasp one, we build one for ourselves.
Did we miss an opportunity?
Again, hindsight is 20/20. Did the Democratic party miss an opportunity? Absolutely. While the Unity tour was going on, the Democratic Party had races in several locations like Kansas, Georgia, Montana, South Carolina, California; and localized special elections in many states around the country.
One of the agreed upon issues the party faces is building a bench. While some are bitterly mad at the Democratic party, a cost-benefit analysis needed to come into play as to how to seem as though the party was operating on sound financial and corporate reasoning.
For eight years, state parties, who in this example are basically franchises of the national brand, have been starved. People bypass funding to the state and local organizations to give direct to candidates, which is fine, or to the national organizations.
As a result, the farm team, your state organizations, are like Old Mother Hubbard, the cabinet is pretty bare.
While DNC events went off around the country, state parties under the current State Partnership Program funding program, languish with minimal resources. Several state parties have signaled they are in a freeze as to hiring policies, waiting to see what changes Tom Perez and others may bring to their budgets, in hopes they can bring in more people or provide better candidate experiences.
Nowhere did this become a lightening rod like Kansas 4th. In 2016, at the advice of many, the state party went “all in” spending heavily on behalf of candidates in hopes of winning, a hope that was rewarded. Quick turnaround for a special election in 2017, though? It’s too difficult for a small organization to quickly turn around that fundraising.
State organizations in Montana and Kansas have directly asked for help; and either none came or it comes pretty late. In some cases, the ask is quite small. The truth: had the DNC injected $20k into a state party in Kansas, it would have avoided weeks of negative stories. Equally as important, it might have prevented stories which continue to highlight the weaknesses of the farm teams with regards to monetary resources.
In other words: put your money where your mouth is, because people are paying attention. With a call to a new fifty state strategy, there will be individuals who highlight everything you do wrong, and not give you credit for what you do right. In that PR environment, small cash injections are the cheapest way to avoid bad publicity and build good will. Whether you win or lose, you build a narrative you can sell, a dynamic spectacle.
Imagine how different the tour had gone if leadership had said: these special elections were all difficult; but we sent staff directly to work in these districts, or we sent small money, or we sent direct resources early.
The Unity Tour was a bad idea. But don’t judge yet.
Again, I’m going to give a lot of credit to Tom Perez here. The Unity tour did not work out as a public relations boon that the party may have desired. But it reflected a change in policy and an attempt to try something.
There is something to be said for making an effort whether it works or not, because it gives you something to learn from the next time. Tom Perez seems intent to try new ideas and to make an effort to create a growing community.
What happens next is up to us, the voters.
Monday, Apr 24, 2017 · 10:14:54 PM +00:00
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Chris Reeves
Update:
Some have interpreted this (falsely) as some sort of attack on the energy in the room or Senator Sanders. Nothing could be further from the truth. The point of this piece is to say that the marketplace wasn’t at a point where a Unity tour was very more than a quick release with little left behind structurally to assist.
Over the last few weeks we’ve had open debates over the weakness of state parties, the lack of national support into special elections, etc. Criticism voiced even by people like Senator Sanders.
My comment here is that, in trying to change the way we operate, we didn’t change at all. The Unity tour was a quick rah-rah with no set messages, but in an era where we have committed to the 50 state strategy, we had a listening tour that hit a small number of states and did little to influence the direction of the 50 state strategy, the health of state parties, or support for special elections.
My summary is this: going for a rah rah rally can excite people for a night. Meanwhile, sending $20k you spent on a tour stop to a congressional election prevents weeks of bad publicity. Sending direct support into states ongoing generates good publicity.
And those things aren’t just good publicity for the sake of it, it is because you are doing what it takes to try and win races. And the party must be about rebuilding our state infrastructure and winning races, and not just about rah-rah events where the PR story isn’t always positive.