Raise My Ire

Someone emailed me these, and a dozen other bumper sticker ideas. Good reminders that stats, policies, ideologies all need to be “packaged” in the right framing.

I particularly like this last message. I can hear a very effective populist message emerging on this meme, one that should be worked into campaign speeches:

“Republicans and their supporters keep saying ‘We want to take our country back.’ I think we all know what that means. Don’t’ we?

They want to take us…

• Back to a Time… when insurance companies could deny coverage for pre-existing conditions or drop your coverage when you get sick.

• Back to a Time… we could create and escalate huge wars without paying for them.

• Back to a Time… when the richest Americans were given unfair handouts in the form of sophisticated tax loopholes while hard working Americans saw critical services cut.

• Back to a Time… when we had a “me, me me” society of selfishness and we didn’t look out for our neighbors and make sure every had a chance to attain the American Dream.

• Back to a Time… when big banks got loads of government cash and giant tax breaks which they either hoarded or used to pay unprecedented bonuses instead of helping working Americans with small business loans or a way out of bad mortgages.

• Back to a Time… when the EPA was given strict orders not to enforce laws that protect our children from harmful pollutants dumped into our air and water by big corporations

What else do they want to take us back to? Add to Comments below please.

Frames and Brands, Politics democrats, frame the debate, political framing, President Obama

As the political conversation turns from health insurance reform legislation to reforms of the financial industry, Democrats should be considering how to properly frame this debate.

Here’s my beef: the term “regulation” is a dog. It’s another wonky, insider term. For the average nightly news viewer, it’s meaning is not nearly as clear (or positive) as will be needed to build widespread public enthusiasm for reform.

So what would be a better choice? What would fit better than “regulation” in the following thoughts:

“The financial meltdown was primarily caused by deregulation.”

“The key to protecting our economy going forward is to put new regulations in place.”

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Frames and Brands democrats, financial reforms, frame the debate, framing, regulation

The trend continues. Long way to go, but this is great news for our country.

Economy Economy, jobs, recession

I love Anthony Weiner. This get’s good and feisty:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Health Insurance Reform health care reform, Health Insurance Reform, health reform bill, political issue framing

asdf

Health Insurance Reform Moveon.org, public option

A picture can truly tell a thousand words.

Help the cause: http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/recoveryanniversary/

Politics Bush Administration, job losses, jobs, Obama Administration

Politics fox news, jon stewart, Sean Hannity

I’d really like to see the Democratic majority in congress starting framing the filibuster as obstructionist. I hear press and even lawmakers talking about how 60 votes are “needed” to “pass” particular bills.

No, 60 votes are needed to break through the obstructionist Republicans’ effort to block a vote from ever happening at all.

Remember the fight over judges a few years back? Remember the “nuclear option”? Republicans knew how to play it.

Remember “up or down vote?”

Politics

Keith Olbermann is quite proud of what he feels is his role in rebranding the public option as “Medicare for Everybody.”

In his segment tonight called “repackaging a public option,” Keith covered the forward progress of legislation that would include a robust public option. He credited this progress to the rebranding of the public option as “Medicare for Everybody.”

And with a little pat on his own back, he claimed a chunk of credit for this. Tonight, he played a clip from his (must see) 1 hour Special Comment on healthcare last week, in which he said the following:

The public option is, in broad essense, Medicare for everybody. Frame it that way, sell it that way, and suddenly it doesn’t seem like a threat…MEdicare for everybody: it might not be literally true, but instead of terrifying, it would be reassuring, and the explanations and caveats would be listened to, and not shouted down as anger and fear.

When I heard this one his show last week, I was grateful that this message was getting some real media muscle behind it. You see, I called for essentially the same thing, here on RaiseMyIre.com…on August 19.

In that post, I talked about the need to re-frame and re-brand the public option, and I made some suggestions for a new name. One was Medicare for All: The Term “Public Option” – Bad Framing.

The reason I bring this up is not to do a little back patting myself. My thinking at the time, and I think it comes through in the post, is that it was too late THEN to be thinking about this kind of branding.

Framing needs to happen before the fight starts, not after you’ve been bloodied. Its not a late game strategy. It’s pre-game. And if you can do it right, it IS the game.

I’m used to the Democrats not getting this. But Keith too?

(The Countdown segment tonight: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/33422929#33422929)

Frames and Brands countdown, health care reform, Keith Olbermann, Medicare for All, political framing

Schadenfruede, anyone? I admit, I enjoyed this.

Politics George W Bush, Rachel Maddow

This is beautiful.

For years, the US Chamber of Commerce has not been particularly helpful in the efforts to slow the negative effects of climate change.

Well, they held a press conference this week announcing a reversal of that position. The PR man leading the presser stated “”We at the Chamber have tried to keep climate science from interfering with business. But without a stable climate, there will be no business.”

Except, it wasn’t the Chamber. It was a hoax. The Chamber has not reversed its position, and this prank calls attention to that.

From MotherJones. com: The Yes Men Punk the Chamber
From TalkingPointsMemo.com: Yes Men, Activist Group, Teamed Up On Chamber Hoax

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Politics Chamber of Commerce, climate change, The Yes Men

 A concise, understandable explanation of single payer health care.

Thanks to John Gabree’s Impractical Proposals blog for bringing this to my attention.

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Health Insurance Reform health care reform, Health Insurance Reform, single payer health

Throughout the last few months, I’ve ranted here about how the Obama Adminstration and the Democrats need to stop playing defense on health care.

They were constantly defending and debunking the absurd attacks against them and against reform.

And as George Lakoff has so brilliantly pointed out many times, negating the frame will only reinforce the frame.

So long as we’re talking about how there aren’t death panels…we’re still talking about death panels.

We need to go on the offense. To put the Republicans on the defensive. To make them spend some time trying to negate our frame.

I’ve ranted. Others have ranted. Still nothing. We get the White House debunking website. Ugh.

And then….along comes Alan Grayson, congressman from Florida.

Who? Right, I know. I’ve never heard of him before last week. And now he is my new Favorite Person.

His speech on the House floor starts at about 2 minutes into this video. It blew me away!

Health Insurance Reform Alan Grayson, framing the debate, George Lakoff, health care reform, Health Insurance Reform, political framing

A commentary and book review of sorts from the YourBrainOnBooks blog:

If you liked Don’t Think of an Elephant (2004) by George Lakoff, …

and I did…

you will appreciate this 2008 expansion on his thesis. The Political Mind is a generally accessible account of how recent research in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and linguistics informs current understanding of the way brain activity and metaphors unconsciously shape our political thought.

For example, conservatives refer to the “public option” in health insurance reform as a “government takeover” of the health care system, thus framing the debate in terms of an oppressive federal governement overpwering and restricting the feedom of individuals and private insurers to function at will in the open marketplace. Lakoff’s advice to health reform advocates might be not to accept this frame by trying to refute it, but rather to replace it with a different frame, such as consumer protection and empowerment through individual choice and market competition

Read more: http://yourbrainonbooks.blogspot.com/2009/10/political-mind.html

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Politics democrats, dont think of an elephant, George Lakoff, political issue framing

For several months, I’ve noticed conservatives, first media personalities then politicians, pushing the meme that President Obama has accomplished nothing so far. Zippo.

It’s patently absurd. The Obama adminstration has attacked more and (more significant) issues in 10 months than the Bush adminstration did in years.

The adults are back in charge, and they are making huge accomplishments.

And their critics know this. Their playbook says to forget about the opponents’ weakness: they must identify their strength and attack it until the opposite is widely believed.

The administration has shown they are aware of this game. They seem to understand how this negative framing can be extremely harmful to their agenda.

For instance, after the disastrous August for health insurance reform, the president called a joint session of Congress. But 3 or 4 days prior to that address on health care, he gave a rousing speech on Labor Day that was almost entirely about the economy and the accomplishments of the adminstration to get us out of the recession.

If the general frame is that our president is doing a great job, then people will tend to favor specific issues. And the Right knows this.

As Rachel Maddow pointed out with guest Rick Berman (wow, btw, what an interview. she is a giant. more later), a comon tactic of conservative PR is to “shoot the messenger.” That is, attack and lower the perception of credibility of the speaker, and in doing so, you’ll lessen his or her ability to get anything done that requires public support.

They are using this against President Obama now.

And you know a frame is having success when it starts to become conventional wisdom. That is, more and more people just assume the premise is true, and then use it in conversation, jokes, etc.

And there is no better example of this than when the frame becomes the foundation of a Saturday Night Live sketch.

Last week, SNL opened the show with an Obama sketch. The whole joke of the sketch was premised on the belief that the president has accomplished absolutely zero.

Let’s keep an eye on this. I hope the adminstrations is. They need to combat the frame.

And NOT by negating it.  The second they go out and day “It’s not true that we haven’t accomplished anything” they give credibility to the critics’ frame. They need to reinforce their own frame.

Politics framing, political issue framing, President Obama, Rachel Maddow, republican framing

Am I the only one that sees a connection between the recent diplomatic successes with Iran and the move to scrap the missile defense system in Europe?

First, the Bush adminstration’s stance on the system always caused tension with Russia.

Second, Russia’s reluctance to join our efforts to pressure Iran clearly empowered Iran.

It’s widely believed that the program would never function as billed, and I believe that the Bush administration knew that. It was part of their international tough guy routine, which in this case was more swagger than solid footing. And that kind of posturing just ticked off Russia, and created a dynamic where they weren’t particularly open to helping our interests anywhere else.

Last month, the Obama adminstration announced its intent to scrap the missile defense program. This brings Russia back to the table on a number of issues, I would imagine. One of them was clearly Iran.

This excerpted from an AP article on Sept 25:

Above all, Obama has rejected Bush’s unilateral approach to international matters, which infuriated many European allies and shrouded the Iraq war in questions about its legitimacy.

This week alone, Obama engaged in a series of multinational activities that Bush might have disdained. He became the first U.S. president to chair a meeting of the United Nations Security Council. He met privately, again, with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who later showed more willingness to press Iran to drop any pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Analysis: Obama welcomes help in confronting Iran

It looks to me like the Obama adminstration’s multilateralism has opened up many possibilities for the US and the world.

I would not be surprised if they’d been in talks with Russia for some time about the missile program, and had gotten Russia to offer cooperation on the pressuring of Iran as a precondition to ending the program.

To me, it looks like they are playing chess and seeing 10 moves ahead, where the Bush adminstration was hoping to win at checkers by holding a bat to the other player’s head.

Foreign Policy Iran, missile defense, multilateralism, nuclear weapons, President Obama, Russia

Here are a couple items out of the weekly New York Times / CBS News poll.

People are certainly getting more information:

How much have you heard or read about current proposals in Washington to reform health care — a lot, some, not much, or nothing at all?

______________A lot _ Some _ Not much _ Nothing at all _ DK/NA
6/12-16/09____ 22 ____ 50 ____ 23 ____________ 5 ______ -
7/24-28/09____ 32 ____ 37 ____ 23 ____________ 8 ______ -
8/27-31/09____ 33 ____ 45 ____ 17 ____________ 4 ______ 1
9/19-23/09____ 33 ____ 43 ____ 19 ____________ 5 ______ -

And they are moderately less confused than they were 3 weeks ago. Still feels like a ways to go, at only 37% saying they understand the issues. But maybe that’s higher than with other issue, historically. I don’t know.

Do you think you understand the health care reforms under consideration in Congress, or are they confusing to you?

_____________Understand _ Confusing _ DK/NA
8/27-31/09 _____ 31 ________ 67 ______ 2
9/19-23/09 _____ 37 ________ 59 ______ 4

The level of comfort is still much too low.

Do you mostly support or mostly oppose the changes to the health care system proposed by Barack Obama, or don’t you know enough about them yet to say?

Mostly support – 30 %
Mostly oppose  – 23 %
Don’t know enough – 46 %
DK/NA – 2 %

 More on this a bit later…

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Health Insurance Reform health care reform, Health Insurance Reform, NYT/CBSNews Poll

Health Insurance Reform health care reform, Health Insurance Reform, Will Ferrell

From the CREDO action network. There’s a petition that will go to Senator Reid.

It’s time for Harry Reid to step up to show leadership and pass the public option through the Senate.

A strong public option is overwhelmingly popular with the public, the House has the votes to pass a bill with a strong public option and President Obama says that he wants to sign a bill with a strong public option.

Yet in the Senate, some Democrats have been allowed to stall reform by fruitlessly trying to attract the votes of Republicans who want nothing more than to see any healthcare reform effort fail. It’s clear that getting even a single Republican vote would require unacceptably weakening the bill. Bipartisanship is simply not worth it.

It is Senator Reid’s job as Senate Majority Leader to corral his caucus and ensure progressive policies that can pass, do pass.

We have the votes to win on the public option.

Read the rest and sign the petition here.

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Health Insurance Reform Harry Reid, health care reform, Health Insurance Reform

A friend of mine asked me “as a business owner, and as sort of a fiscal conservative, don’t you think it’s unfair to insurance companies to have a government run insurance company competing against them?”

Here’s my short answer, and I’ll elaborate when I can.

Do I think its unfair? No.

We’re talking about serving those individuals who the insurance companies have chosen not to serve. For all those that the private insurance companies have rejected or denied, this is a new option. A place to go.

So, it’s hardly unfair to provide a service to people that the insurance companies decided they don’t want as their customers.

Health Insurance Reform health care reform, Health Insurance Reform, public option