Why Democrats Lose Texas Elections - Its NOT because we are too Liberal!

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by: lightseeker
Sun Jul 31, 2011 at 16:30:31 PM CDT
It started with this: [note the speaker is Jason Stanford who ran Chris Bell's campaign in 2006] Texas Democrats' conservatism widespread outside of Austin Texas Democrats are more conservative than anyone in Austin might imagine. Bryan Dooley, a Democratic pollster with Hamilton Campaigns out of Florida, says that Texas Democrats are more conservative than Democrats in Georgia, but more moderate than Democrats in Alabama and Mississippi. Yet most Austin Democrats have no problem demanding that their statewide candidates take positions to the left of Nancy Pelosi and think the reason we don't win is that we didn't yell loudly enough This , in a nutshell is the mindset of the consultocracy that has had such success over the last 2 decades in electing Democratic candidates [snark], both statewide and local. The support for this position includes statistics from 2008 polling. In particular, Stanford begins by pointing out that Texans had voted 3 to 1 in favor of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex unions a year before the 2008 elections. To run as a standard bearer for gay marriage would've been, in his opinion , suicide. He concludes with these pieces of evidence: Texas Democrats' conservatism widespread outside of Austin [In a statewide campaign in 2008] that polled Democratic primary voters, only 73% of them were actually Democrats.... The conservatism of Hispanics is clear us - and most surprising - we look at immigration questions in that 2008 poll. It found the third of Hispanics supported building a border wall, and that was the good news for liberals. Fully 35% of Hispanics voting in the Texas Democratic primary opposed preventive health care to illegal immigrants because it could provide an 'incentive for deals that children here.' That's right. More than 30 Texas panicked Democrats worried about anchor babies.

His final point is that Texas Democrats, especially Liberals , must accept "ideological diversity [just as we accept ] racial diversity. " Where to start? The stats he uses are 3 years out of date and the poll is unnamed , so good luck checking its validity.Worse, his analysis presumes that the political environment has remained largely as it was in 2008. It hasn't . Think New Mexico's draconian immigration laws and the national fallout. Think Rick Perry's lies about the $19 billion dollar hole in the state budget and the widespread pain and anger the consequential cuts have and will continue to cause. But, let's get to the heart of the matter. lightseeker :: Why Democrats Lose Texas Elections - Its NOT because we are too Liberal! His thesis in a nutshell is that Democrats lose because they don't run as Republican lite conservatives. First, hasn't this been tried over and over? Think Bill White's campaign and its results - failure! More fundamentally , it misuses the polling data. Polling data is not a road map for a campaign, it simply tells you the lay of the land, what issues voters feel passionately about. You then have a chance to find a way to connect what you believe as a candidate with these issues. You don't change your values, you don't give the issue as a free gift to the opposition. You talk about it smartly, with emotional honesty and you push back at their position. Westen, Drew (2008). The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (pp. 174-175). Public Affairs. Kindle Edition. The view of pollsters as master agenda setters who pick and choose issues for candidates is a natural extension of the dispassionate [rational mind/ maximize utility] vision of [the voter as a decision-maker] . If the way to win elections is to take the right stance on the right issues, maximizing candidates' utility to voters, then rational candidates will let the experts who have done the statistics tell them what the right stance and the right issues are. But from the perspective of the passionate mind[ed] [voter], candidates shouldn't be running on issues in the first place. Candidates should be running on principles, bolstered by a compelling personality, a compelling life story, a shared sense of values with their constituents, the emotional intelligence to identify and communicate these shared values, and some good ideas about how to actualize them. In other words, the job of a campaign manager is to manage the pubic narrative, the common sense vision of the issues . Put another way, their job is to shape and bend the public narrative and perceptions of the issues toward your candidate's positions and strengths. All the after the fact polls tell you is if you succeeded or failed. With a 20 to 30 year domination of the public narrative, why is it surprising that voters simply echo the Republican talking points, even Hispanic voters? What alternative language/values/ideas have the Democrats consistently provided and really driven home to Texas voters to use in understanding the "issues" form out perspective?

The greatest percentage of voters carry contradictory feelings about all the hot button issues. This is especially true of the occasionally attentive ones and even more so about the chronically uninformed. Good campaigns appeal to and turn on the progressive positions in voter's heads by their tactics and message and style. Bad ones lose control of the public narrative or just react to their Republican opponents. Westen, Drew (2008). The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (p. 174). Public Affairs. Kindle Edition. ...its easy to forget that the states that really determine elections are voters' state of mind... Of particular importance are networks of associationsbundles of thoughts, feelings, images , and ideas that have become connected over time. On virtually every contentious political issue...polls show a seemingly mixed pattern of results. Ask the question one way , you get one answer, ask it another way, you get a different answer... So , in the case of Chris Bell and so many other Democratic/Progressive candidates, the other side drove the narrative, the campaign consult/experts did the usual lousy job (for Dems) of challenging the narrative with a smart, emotionally compelling response and then they polled their own failures , interpreting the "opinions" in these polls as the immutable facts of Texas politics. In other words GIGO. What he/they are really polling is their failure to compete aggressively for control of the public narrative and the inevitably consequences of that here in Texas. That being the Repubs define the issues and drive the narrative, our guys say "Thank you sir, may I have another." as they get their assess kicked... In essence, what we have here is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Are these patterns written in stone? Can they be changed, challenged or modified? I say yes, the scholars I read say yes, but we will never know till we try..... Let me leave you with one final bit for Westen's book: Westen, Drew (2008). The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (p. 85). PublicAffairs. Kindle Edition. A central aspect of the art of political persuasion is creating, solidifying, and activating networks that create primarily positive feelings toward your candidate or party and negative feelings toward the opposition. The Republicans are tremendously adept at doing so, having spent billions of dollars over forty years on think tanks designed in part to hone the conservative message (i.e., shape associations to conservatism and its advocates) and to associate Democrats and liberals with taxing, spending, military weakness, special treatment of minority groups, low moral standards, and a host of other unsavory characteristics. And they have done so remarkably successfully, using procedures straight out of a textbook on associative networks...