Democrats should psychologically prepare themselves for a wave of undercover “sting” operations designed to elicit damaging video or audio from the staff or volunteers of Democratic organizations. In today’s warped media environment, a single, entirely unrepresentative video clip obtained from one individual in one local office can discredit and damage a national organization with hundreds of branches and thousands of staff.
In the case of ACORN, some local offices threw the undercover videographers out. Others called the authorities. Others essentially laughed in their face. All that didn’t matter a bit. One damaging video clip and the entire organization was profoundly damaged.
Democrats should count on the success of this sting operation stimulating a large number of imitators. The targets will not only be official Democratic organizations but pro-Democratic groups and supporters.
Common sense can prevent 99% of these sting operations from succeeding. All con artists – which is what the conservative “sting” videographers really were — rely on the tendency of people to be polite and avoid friction whenever they can. We are not usually aware of it, but most of us tend to “go along” with what other people say rather than disagree with them. A skillful con-man (or con-woman) can manipulate these responses with ease to get people to agree to things they would never ordinarily endorse – just think of the way time-share salesmen or dubious door-to-door charity solicitors get people to buy condos or make donations. After the sting is over, the mark always kicks himself or herself and says “geez, why the hell did I do that.”
The trick to resisting this kind of manipulation boils down to two simple rules: be mentally prepared for it and be ready to politely but firmly resist pressure to do or say things in order to “just go along.”
Here are a few specific tips:

• Do not “play around” with unfamiliar people who initiate conversations regarding activities that are illegal or morally wrong. Remarks like “oh come on, don’t be so uptight, we’re all just kidding around here” can easily be edited out of a video, leaving only what appears to be damaging evidence of inappropriate behavior.
• If something seems funny or odd, alert your superiors and co-workers. Get other people to observe.
• Use your own cell phone to record yourself rejecting attempts to elicit damaging admissions e.g. “I’m here with two new walk-in volunteers who are asking for our help in committing an illegal act. I’m telling them that we don’t do that kind of thing here.”
• Make notes after an event that seems suspicious.

Remember: if you represent a Democratic group or organization, in the age of YouTube and cell phone video you’re basically on camera all the time.

In recent months not only Democrats but many other Americans as well have become increasingly dismayed by the growing irrationality and even downright delusional thinking that appears to be taking hold among many conservatives and Republicans.
The most recent evidence of this trend was a September poll of New Jersey voters that not only showed 33% of self-described conservatives accepting the notion that Obama was not born in the United States but 18% also agreeing with the statement that he is “the Anti-Christ.” The appearance of this view in a northern industrial state like New Jersey indicates that these kinds of beliefs can no longer be dismissed as geographic peculiarities of rural areas or the South rather than as a significant component of modern American conservatism.
Despite the concern, however, there has actually been little serious discussion of how opinion polls might be used to track the growth of genuinely delusional thinking in American politics. It is true that ever since many commentators began using the number of people who accept the “Birther” narrative – that Obama was not actually born in the U.S. – as a shorthand measure of conservative and Republican irrationality there have been similar attempts to demonstrate that an equal number of Democrats believe false “Truther” narratives about the 9/11 attacks. As we will see, however, these discussions have all been based on survey questions that do not accurately distinguish between genuinely delusional beliefs and non-delusional ones and, in the specific case of the “Truther” narratives, also ignore key polling data that does not support the “one extreme equals the other” point of view. As a result, these discussions are useful primarily as ammunition for partisan political debates and not as a basis for serious social analysis.
In contrast, in order to use public opinion polling to seriously attempt to track the growth of delusional thinking in American politics we need to first consider two questions.

1. Can peoples’ responses to survey questions be used to detect psychologically disordered thinking?
2. Can survey questions reliably distinguish between views that are so irrational as to be genuinely “delusional” in a clinical sense and those that are merely extreme or implausible?

The answer to the first question is actually not difficult to determine. In psychology there are a number of “self-report” questionnaires that use people’s response to written questions to gauge characteristics like paranoia, hypochondria and other psychological disorders. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), for example, is widely used and – although far, far from perfect – has been found to be sufficiently predictive for use in a variety of screening and assessment settings.
The key to answering the second question, on the other hand, is to carefully focus attention on beliefs that are genuinely “delusional” — a term which is defined as “a rigid system of beliefs with which a person is preoccupied and to which the person firmly holds, despite the logical absurdity of the beliefs and a lack of supporting evidence”
The current version of the DSM-IV — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines a Delusional Disorder as follows:

“A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everybody else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.”

In diagnosing a delusional disorder there are three generally used criteria:

•certainty (held with absolute conviction)
•incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)
•impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre or patently untrue)

Obviously there is often not 100% agreement among clinicians in diagnosing a particular delusional disorder, but there is generally a commanding consensus.
With this framework in mind, let’s examine both the “Birther” and the “Truther” narratives:

Read more…

(This is the third part of a three-part TDS Strategy Memo. A PDF version of the entire memo is available here)
Immediately after Obama’s inauguration, there was a widespread sigh of relief and a collapse into exhaustion among huge number of Obama’s supporters. Responding to this sentiment, and occupied with the transition, the DNC and OFA made relatively few attempts to organize directly “political” activities and events or to build a formal network of “real-world” local organizations in the first several months of the Obama administration. The general view was that “everyone needs a break.”
This, however, reflects a severely limited definition of what constitutes “political” activity. In democratic countries around the world many political parties routinely support a wide range of grass-roots community activities that are not explicitly “political” but which play a significant role in maintaining their political support. They sponsor local soccer teams, hold street fairs, run youth clubs, manage pool halls, arrange holiday trips and organize hobby groups. Small businesses that support the parties put permanent banners in their windows and build their customer base around a sense of community cultural loyalty to the political party.
During 2008, the Obama campaign began to evolve in this direction. The “Yes We Can” campaign took on characteristics of a social movement rather than just a traditional political campaign. The explosion of creativity expressed in music, art, videos and other media were inspired by Obama but reflected more than simply a campaign to elect an individual candidate. There was a clear feeling that Obama represented a cultural movement of the young rather than the old, of the urban, hip and educated rather than the small town and traditional. The Obama campaign became a broad social movement united by a common outlook, sensibility and identity. The Republicans were the past and the Democrats were the future.
It is now vital that Democrats reignite this spirit and energy and find the ways to carry it into daily community life. To be specific the Democratic community needs to launch a renewed “Yes We Can” movement – not a narrowly “political” campaign to support Obama’s specific proposals, but a broad cultural response to the negativity, nihilism and divisive “real America” chauvinism of the Republicans. It must express an outlook and perspective that is based on hope for the future and openness to change.
There are two different sub-groups to whom this must be addressed – Obama’s natural constituencies and the broader group of “persuadable” voters who are open to his message. Each requires a distinct approach.
The first sub-group is Obama’s natural constituencies and social environments

•College campuses and urban America – Some key steps in building a revitalized “Yes We Can” movement include building rapport with rock bands and DJ’s (e.g. by providing free items like specially developed high-quality designer clothing), sponsoring free rock concerts and art shows, Setting up special film screenings, book signings and neighborhood street fairs, engaging with the major social networks through art and music as well as narrowly “political” discussion and sponsoring sports teams in urban marathons, bicycle races, skateboarding and roller skating events.
•Stores and businesses (e.g. coffee houses, bicycle shops, environmentally friendly products stores, independent bookstores) – some key steps include encouraging “Yes We Can” sales days, happy hours, special events and neighborhood parties and developing business-connected give-away “goodies” for display and distribution (coffee cups, chocolates, tire gauges, natural soaps).
•Ethnic, political, social and community organizations. Some key steps include piggybacking on existing events and activities, incorporating “Yes We Can” motifs into ongoing programs and participating in organization-sponsored volunteer activities under a “Yes We Can” umbrella.

The first step in this process is to organize a major, coordinated re-launch of the “Yes We Can” campaign. Such a re-launch could begin with a national competition to create a comprehensive set of new music, new graphics, new logos, new art, new videos new slogans, new teashirts and posters for a renewed “Yes We Can” campaign. Such a contest can have dozens of awards for the best entries in specific genres (posters, videos, music etc.) and within specific states. The competition could be planned to culminate in a major live and online event with top stars, music and the awarding of serious prizes.
The success of a renewed “Yes We Can” campaign would ultimately depend on its generating ongoing “bottom-up” spontaneous grass-roots activity. There could be a closer ongoing connection with OFA and the DNC than would be advisable with the “Democratic Minutemen”, but the campaign should still not be administratively controlled by any official Democratic organization. Rather the renewed “Yes We Can” campaign should be loosely coordinated by a broad voluntary coalition of well-known figures in music and popular culture following the models of the “Live Aid”, “Farm Aid” and “We are the World” campaigns. In all of these cases a few well-known and passionately committed individuals took the lead in organizing their peers around a social issue campaign and stitched together an informal steering committee structure to make decisions.
The second sub-group a renewed “Yes We Can” campaign would need to target are the more open-minded, moderate voters in “red state” America

•Businessmen and women
•Blue-collar workers
•Religious voters
•small town voters
•Southerners

Despite the media images and clichés, not all voters in these categories are conservative. On the contrary, depending on the specific issue as many as half or more may actually be relatively “moderate” and open to Democratic candidates and to messages that are framed in the language and concepts of their broad cultural perspective. The 2006 election demonstrated that there are substantial numbers of “red state” voters who can be won by “heartland Democrats.”
In the current situation — in which Obama is struggling against declining poll numbers and stiff opposition — imagining an outreach campaign to this group may seem totally impractical. But such a campaign cannot be ignored until late in 2011 if it is to have any chance of influencing the election in 2012.
Conclusion
The predictable first reaction to a set of proposals of this kind is to argue that initiatives of this nature are important but must be postponed until the immediate challenge of passing a health care reform package is successfully completed.
This reaction is understandable but wrong. The setbacks to the health care campaign that occurred in August were in significant measure the result of the failure to begin systematic long-term organizing in January. By the time a health care reform package is passed this winter, new challenges will have already emerged that seem equally urgent and which seem to offer equally compelling reasons to delay long-term organizing once again. The result is a vicious cycle in which systematic long-term organizing never gets done.
Consider a simple and somewhat ironic fact: it is today much more difficult to launch a long-term campaign of this nature than it would have been in January when Obama’s popularity was at its peak and grass-roots enthusiasm was still high. Equally, six or nine months from now, it will in all probability be harder to launch such a campaign than it is today. At that time, hindsight will clearly suggest that September 2009 would have been a much more propitious time to begin such a campaign than “now” – whenever “now” happens to be.
The major problems that emerged for the health care reform campaign in August were severe and require careful rethinking of Democratic strategy. But the problems are not limited to the specifics of health care as an issue or the legislative strategy that was chosen to enact a bill. The setbacks also exposed profound weaknesses in the basic Democratic message strategy and in the strategies for mobilizing mass support and for building long-term pro-Democratic community institutions.
These problems affect the foundation of every future legislative campaign and every future election. Democrats must begin now to remedy the weaknesses exposed by this summer’s setbacks in the struggle for health care reform.

(This is the second part of a three-part TDS Strategy Memo. A PDF version of the entire memo is available here)
Democrats must face the unpleasant reality that that from now on any significant local or national political meeting anywhere in America is going to be attended by conservative activists who are mobilized and directed there through a pyramid of online social networks. At the apex of this pyramid is Freedomworks and directly below it is a second tier of a dozen other lobbying organizations.
Immediately after the April 15th Tea Parties it appeared that the local activists who had been mobilized might attempt to form permanent “bottom-up” grass-roots committees in communities across the country. Instead, the rather different framework that has emerged is a kind of permanent “on-call” cadre of activists across the country – individuals who are willing to download talking points and slogans from the online social networks and be directed to local meetings in their area or to national protests in Washington D.C.
The simple but unpleasant fact is that in every one of these local political town halls or other community meetings that is not contested, the conservative point of view will dominate. Therefore Democrats have no choice but to build their own version of this kind of online social organization — a “Democratic Activist Corps” or corps of “Democratic Minutemen” – dedicated activists with a similar “on-call” capability.
At first glance this would appear to be the responsibility of Organizing for America, but in fact, for two reasons, that organization is actually not well suited to manage this task.

First, Organizing for America cannot avoid following a very broad, “big tent” approach because of the huge, extremely heterogeneous group of people in its database. In order to avoid schisms and conflict among its members, it must stick to the most elementary and widely shared views. This is reflected in the rather bland slogans it recommends e.g. “Health Insurance Reform Now: Let’s Get It Done!”, “Stand up for Reform”, “Standing Together for Health Insurance Reform”
Second, because it is directly connected to the DNC and the Obama administration, OFA has to conduct itself in a way that does not reflect negatively on Obama. This makes it necessarily very cautious and highly averse to direct conflict and confrontation. This is reflected it its preference for organizing what are essentially non-confrontational “pep rallies” of its supporters rather than directing them to directly engage and challenge opponents of reform.

Given the huge, ten million member e-mail base of OFA, these choices are not necessarily wrong. OFA is metaphorically speaking a political oil tanker, only able to move and turn only very gradually and cautiously. But as a result of these two characteristics it is impractical to expect an organization like OFA to be able to successfully direct a Democratic counterpart to a fierce and combative organization like Freedomworks that has complete freedom of action. It is therefore preferable to organize a “Democratic Activist” or “Democratic Minutemen” network outside the formal structure of government or the DNC, just as Freedomworks and the other conservative online activist groups have done.
Although the issue agenda of such an organization will be the same as the official Democratic organizations, to be effective its ethos must more closely resemble that of a passionate social movement and its staff must be composed of people with the background and perspective of union or civil rights organizers – men and women with both the passion and the experience to tackle a bitter, well-financed and determined adversary.
Freedomworks has a 14 person Washington staff, six full-time field coordinators or state directors and an annual budget of 8 million dollars. Its economic model is based on obtaining contributions from the industries that derive benefits from its grass-roots organizing activities. To effectively compete with this, Democratic organizations like unions, environmental and other social issue groups, professional associations and similar pro-democratic forces will need to contribute substantial in-kind resources — of staff time, office space, supplies and technical support — to a Democratic Activist Corps of this kind. Even with significant in-kind support, however, a core of paid, full-time employees and a significant operating budget will still be needed.
The key demographic target for an “on call” activist network of this kind will be mid-sized, second and third tier cities and towns. The major American cities and urban areas already have more than sufficient pro-democratic organizations and social networks to mobilize activists when necessary for meetings, marches, demonstrations and so on. At the other end of the spectrum, modern conservatism is disproportionately concentrated in small towns, urban fringes and rural areas – so much so that in many cases any effective competition is simply impractical. It is in the mid-sized cities and towns across America where significant numbers of Democrats live but where there are relatively weak pro-Democratic organizations and institutions that an online social network of committed Democratic activists could make a substantial difference.
The April 15th tea party movement claimed that they held events in over 1,000 cities and towns and Nate Silver documented events in around six or eight hundred. Because of the more concentrated geographic distribution of the Democratic coalition this project can aim to achieve lower numerical targets. The project should, however, set clear timetables for creating “on-call” networks in first 50, then 100, and ultimately about 200 smaller U.S. cities and medium-sized towns. If possible, at least the first two and preferably all three of these goals should be achieved before the 2010 elections.
Also, by next spring, some of these Democratic minutemen will also need to receive a certain amount of training in non-violent methods because by that time it is virtually certain that there will be young right-wing “skinheads” and other quasi-military groups openly participating in anti-Obama demonstrations. The strategy of intimidation and physical aggression employed by such groups can best be defeated by disciplined non-violent tactics

(This is the first section of a three part TDS Strategy Memo that will appear this week. A PDF version of the complete Memo is available here)
Three of the critical mistakes that led to the setbacks in the campaign for health care reform this summer actually preceded the launch of the health care campaign itself and were not the direct result of the specific legislative and political strategies the administration employed. They were rooted in decisions made in the first month or two after Obama took office.
They were:

1. A failure to create a clearly defined “core” message expressing Obama’s basic agenda and general philosophy of government.
2. A failure to immediately begin organizing an effective mass mobilization for that agenda.
3. A failure to begin building ongoing social and cultural community institutions to support that agenda.

There were understandable reasons why these failures of strategy occurred and why they were in significant measure unavoidable – Obama took office in the most chaotic economic circumstances of any president since the Great Depression. The point is not to assign blame but rather to accurately identify the critical tasks that have still not been accomplished and to develop a strategy for achieving them
Introduction
On inauguration day, Obama began his term amid the most dramatic expression of grass roots enthusiasm for a president in living memory – an unprecedented groundswell of support not just from African-Americans but from an extremely broad coalition of the young, the urban, the educated and other groups. The masses of people who traveled to Washington on January 20th or who gathered in other places across the country to celebrate Obama’s inauguration reflected a popular energy and degree of identification with a political figure and a political campaign that had not been previously exhibited since the Roosevelt era.
Within a short time, however, the widely shared feeling that the Obama campaign had not just been a standard political campaign but rather the dramatic beginning of a dynamic mass social movement began to sharply decline. By the time the April 15th “tea parties” rolled around there was barely any sign of spontaneous and energetic grass roots activity among Democrats – there was no nationwide outpouring of local community social activities like “support Obama” rock concerts, street parties, theme evenings at restaurants and clubs or special events to draw people together on an ongoing informal basis. There was no wide viral promotion of new post-election symbols like buttons, tea shirts or bumper stickers carrying forward the “Yes We Can” spirit and linking it to an emerging social movement organized around an agenda for change. There were no tables at shopping centers, people handing out leaflets on street corners or new post-election pro-Obama signs on lawns or lampposts or bulletin boards.
As long time grass-roots organizer Marshall Gans and Peter Drier noted in a Washington post op-ed:

Once in office, the president moved quickly, announcing one ambitious legislative objective after another. But instead of launching a parallel strategy to mobilize supporters, most progressive organizations and Organizing for America — the group created to organize Obama’s former campaign volunteers — failed to keep up… Organizing for America, for example, encouraged Obama’s supporters to work on local community service projects, such as helping homeless shelters and tutoring children. That’s fine, but it’s not the way to pass reform legislation…
Meanwhile, as the president’s agenda emerged, his former campaign volunteers and the advocacy groups turned to politics as usual: the insider tactics of e-mails, phone calls and meetings with members of Congress. Some groups — hoping to go toe-to-toe with the well-funded business-backed opposition — launched expensive TV and radio ad campaigns in key states to pressure conservative Democrats. Lobbying and advertising are necessary, but they have never been sufficient to defeat powerful corporate interests.

The DNC did send out letters. Organizing for America did invite its members to meet in small groups and gatherings and reminded the people on its e-mail lists to visit the OFA website. But the energy and scale of these efforts were deliberately low-key. The DNC letters were in essence standard fundraising appeals and the OFA events were quite specifically designed as “insider” activities for loyal supporters and not as energetic outreach to the general public.
The conservative opposition to Obama’s agenda, on the other hand, created a unique public event in the April 15th Tea Parties, developed a new nationwide set of internet-based social networks and widely popularized a broad ideological framework and perspective with which to attack the entire Obama agenda and administration – the notion that the individual elements of the Obama agenda were actually part of a general movement toward “a government takeover ”, “socialism” or “fascism” and represented an aggressive attack on traditional American values and institutions.
Democrats responded to this threat with an uncoordinated mixture of sputtering outrage, bemused ridicule and point by point refutation of more specific accusations. The charge of “socialism” seemed so absurd that a thoughtful attempt to refute it seemed unnecessary. There was no serious national communications strategy devised to clearly answer the simple but vital question “OK, if the Democratic agenda is not socialism or “government takeover” then exactly what is it?”
This underlying Democratic weakness at the levels of both communications strategy and grass roots organizing led directly to the near-total breakdown during August. The opponents of health care reform were mobilized, organized, armed with basic talking points and backed by professional communications and PR firms. Grass-roots Democrats were looking around in vain for someone to offer leadership and direction.
By late in the third week of August the Democrats had cobbled together a sufficient response to meet the conservative offensive and slow the media narrative of massive public opposition to Democratic plans. But the substantial slide in Obama’s job approval left the campaign for health care reform substantially weaker than it had been in the spring.
At this point, the urgent need is not only for short-term organizing to regain the initiative on health care reform but also for longer range efforts to build a nationwide movement that that revives the “Yes We Can” spirit of Jan 20th and transforms it into a sustained and active social movement to support the overall Democratic agenda. To do this Dems need to do three things.

1. Develop one simple, standardized “core” message that clearly defines the basic goals—as well as the limits — of Obama’s agenda
2. Develop a deeply committed and highly organized group of volunteers specifically dedicated to advocating that core message in meetings and discussions wherever they occur.
3. Develop local activities that can mature into enduring local community social and cultural institutions – institutions that can support a renewed “Yes We Can” movement and allow it to grow.

Read more…

The D.C. fire department has clarified that the estimate of 60,000-70,000 that one of their officers provided ABC news is not an “official” estimate, a clarification that many on the right have chosen to interpret as permission to add at least one zero to the numbers above and then argue about how many times to multiply the result.
Here are several things for Dems to keep in mind.

1. The reason that there are no “official” estimates of the attendance Saturday is because of Louis Farrakhan’s lawsuit back in the mid-90’s against The National Park Service over the estimates of the “million man march.” This is why the major papers are all sticking to the vague statement that “tens of thousands” marched. Any more precise estimate would be just asking for a blizzard of nutcase lawsuits that would probably involve issuing a subpoena for an original handwritten copy of the managing editor’s birth certificate as well as the basis for his estimate.
2. Anyone with a spreadsheet who looks at the time lapse photos and some of the close-up overhead shots of the crowd passing along Pennsylvania Ave. (the latter can be found at TPM, for example) can do a ballpark calculation of the maximum possible size of the crowd. For example, densely packed rows of 40 people marching shoulder to shoulder like Russian troops in a May Day parade and passing a fixed point every 3.5 seconds would cumulate to about 160,000 people in 4 hours. Take a look at photos and videos of the marchers showing the actual size of the gaps and spaces that existed, find out exactly how long the march really lasted, and make your own downward adjustments from there (In fact, it was methods similar to these – or else per square foot calculations – that were actually how the “unofficial” estimates of 60,000-70,000 were made)
3. Don’t be too annoyed at the wildly exaggerated numbers that Freedomworks and the bloggers are tossing around. They may temporarily boost the spirits of the marchers, but in the long run the manic delusions of grandeur they induce will create more problems than they are worth. As a general rule, neither commanders nor soldiers should go into battle thinking they have ten times more troops than they actually do – it doesn’t, to put it mildly, generally lead to tip-top strategic planning.

In order to judge the significance of the conservative-led demonstration that took place in Washington D.C. this weekend, it is important to begin with a realistic estimate of the number of people who actually participated. This is unusually difficult in this particular case because Matt Kibbe, the President of the organizing group Freedomworks — understandably concerned as he was about the danger of liberal media bias — came up with the innovative solution of simply claiming that ABC news had estimated that1.2 to1.5 million people had participated – something the network itself most emphatically denied ever having done. Several conservative blog posts and tweets later this number had been carefully and judiciously narrowed to an even two million participants, making the demonstration larger not only than Obama’s inauguration – which shut down the entire transportation grid of Washington D.C. — but also the entire population – every man woman and child — of both Delaware and the District of Colombia. Say what you will about chairman Kibbe, whatever he may lack in empirical rigor, he certainly compensates for in audacity.
The only official estimate that was provided – by the Washington D.C. fire department – was that about 60,000-70,000 people participated, a number that was generally in line with standard crowd estimation techniques ( As it happened, because all the marchers were funneled through the narrow rectangle formed by Pennsylvania avenue between the white house and the capitol and time lapse photographs were taken, it was possible to use a number of standard “per square foot” and “flow per minute” crowd estimation formulas to roughly gauge the number of demonstrators. Both methods indicated a crowd size clearly below 100,000).
On the one hand, bringing 60,000-70,000 protestors to Washington is undeniably a substantial achievement, one that firmly establishes the existence of a new kind of conservative political organization – a composite organization that is a fusion of (1) a major TV network that provides popular political commentators and massive free advertising for a demonstration (2) a professionally managed coordinating organization (Freedomworks) that in this case provided $600,000 in direct funds, 14 full-time staff workers for logistics and planning and a robust, technically sophisticated web and social network infrastructure and (3) a set of decentralized social networks that enabled communication among the grass-roots protesters.
Although Freedomworks as an organization is as completely “Astroturf” as any firm in Washington, the large majority of the participants in the demonstration were undeniably “authentic” grass-roots conservatives – they were neither full-time Republican operatives nor members of traditional right-wing organizations. They generally paid their own way to participate in the demonstration and the vast creative and artistic panoply of their hand-made signs – which generally ranged from the histrionic and lurid to the clinically delusional – bespoke a perspective and sensibility that — whatever else it might be — could not seriously be described as regimented and obedient to any organization.
The demonstration apparently left most of the participants feeling optimistic and energized. “We are the real America” they confidently asserted to each other, and “the vast majority of Americans are now waking up” and joining the struggle to “take back our country”
The demonstrators’ sense of having reached an important milestone was not necessarily wrong, but among the organizers and strategists of the protest there was a different perception – that the critical objective of bringing a sufficient mass of protesters to Washington to actually intimidate wavering, “on the fence” members of congress had clearly failed. For this purpose the demonstration would have had to be at least in the 250,000-300,000 range, and preferably around a half a million. The demonstration needed to convince wavering members of congress that the protesters represented more than just the well-known conservative/Republican base and in this critical regard it simply did not succeed.
The consequences for the “Tea Party” (or, as Glen Beck has for some obscure reason renamed it, the “9/12 Movement”) are substantial. Mass demonstrations in Washington D.C that do not achieve their key objectives are subject to a form of diminishing returns. It becomes harder and harder to convince the same number of people to return to Washington for subsequent events. This is particularly the case with a new social movement like the Tea Party protests whose participants can become deeply demoralized when they begin to perceive that their efforts are actually having very little effect on the steady progress of health care reform and other Obama initiatives.
As a consequence, it is likely that by this November or December if not before the Tea Party/9-12 movement will begin to experience a major schism over strategy and tactics.
On the one hand, the more establishment elements of the movement will begin to focus on the 2010 elections. Freedomworks, for example, has already said that the next phase of its work will focus on organizing conservative activists at the level of congressional districts. But the choice of specific candidates will quickly create divisions between the “sensible” Republicans who want to win elections and the Glen Beck/Rush Limbaugh ideologues who will insist on doctrinal purity. Freedomworks will quickly find itself unable to straddle this divide and will be caught in the middle of bitter debates.
At the same time, however, a major sector of the Tea Party/9-12 movement – particularly those who see the conflict in stark Manichean terms – will reject any return to politics as usual. This group will divide into three overlapping but also competing sectors.

1. Groups proposing forms of civil disobedience. Schooled in protests at abortion clinics, these protesters will organize protests at IRS centers or government facilities of various kinds. They will propose that parents withdraw their children from schools or boycott civic activities that they perceive as partisan or ideological.
2. Groups threatening violence or intimidation. Various “skinhead” or other neo-Nazi/Klan oriented groups are already chomping at the bit to join protests under their own banners and wearing their own “macho” regalia (military-style boots, quasi-military dress). At the same time, an increasing number of “militia” types will seek to ostentatiously carry guns and assault rifles at protest demonstrations and “lone wolf” patriotic terrorists will increase the assassination of symbolic individuals and the bombing of “soft” symbolic targets.
3. Groups proposing withdrawal from mainstream society. As in the 1990’s, there will be an increasing number of “survivalist” communities sprouting up in remote areas, religious communities seeking to separate from the local governments and towns in their areas and a growth of “secessionist” ideologies proposing state or local withdrawal from federal jurisdiction – initiatives such as have been proposed in Alaska, Texas and — with Tim Paulenty’s recent effusions — Minnesota.

The likelihood of this kind of fragmentation is so high that conservative activists will likely look back on this summer as the high point of their movement – a time when there was a widespread sense of optimism and general agreement over a broad set of issues, tactics and goals.
To be sure, Republicans will desperately try to deny, conceal or ignore the tensions that will emerge. They will seek to convince Democrats that Republicans and the Republican Party should not be blamed for the opinions and activities of the conservative “fringe” even as they blow ideological “dog whistles” signaling the fringe so loudly that vast numbers of unfortunate household pets howl, bay and whimper in heart-wrenching paroxysms of aural pain and dismay.
Democrats should not let Republicans get away with this. They should insistently ask “Do you agree with Glen Beck about this?”, “Do you think Obama is really a socialist? “Or a Fascist?”, “Or born in Kenya?”, or “is it really OK to call the president a liar?’, “To keep children out of school when the president speaks?”, “To carry guns to town halls?”
There will be a constant succession of wedge issues along these lines – issues that become critical litmus tests of “toughness” for the movement right but which are embarrassing distractions for Republican candidates seeking moderate votes. Democrats should be absolutely dedicated to keeping these wedge issues on the front burner. The operational criterion is simple – Republicans seeking support from moderate voters should be on the defensive literally all the time.
Many Dems find this kind of politics distasteful. They prefer reasoned debates about the “real issues” to shouting matches with the Becks, Limbaugh’s and O’Reilly’s of the world.
Such delicate flowers have full permission to step away. There are now more than enough Dems who are sick and tired of being accused of planning to murder their elderly parents and set up concentration camps for people they disagree with to happily step up and slug it out toe to toe with the political representatives of the Republican slander machine.

It was not only Democrats but a wide spectrum of Americans who were deeply appalled and offended by the demagogic Republican attacks on Obama’s planned speech to schoolchildren today. A New York Times editorial well expressed the sincere outrage many Americans felt:

The American right has directed many silly and offensive attacks at President Obama. But so far nothing compares with the news that right-wing demagogues on talk radio and the Web, along with Republican Party officials, are trying to stop children from hearing the president urge them to stay in school — because, they say, that is socialist propaganda.
Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a surprise after a summer in which town hall meetings on health care have been turned into mindless shouting matches, where protesters parade guns and are cheered on by elected officials… Still, it was startling to read in Friday’s Times about the overheated and bizarre response to Mr. Obama’s [planned speech]…
The White House says Mr. Obama will talk about the importance of education — hardly, we hope, a controversial topic. But the article said that in a growing number of school districts, especially in Texas, parents, talk-show hosts and some Republican officials are demanding that schools either refuse to show it or allow parents to keep their children home. The common refrain is that Mr. Obama will offer a socialist message — although nobody said what they meant by that…
There is, of course, nothing socialist in any of Mr. Obama’s policies, as anyone with a passing knowledge of socialism and its evil history knows.

Unfortunately, this was not the only reaction among the “mainstream” media. Many print and TV commentators took a far more timid approach. Consider, for example, the editorial in the Washington Post:

Education, not politics, should drive the president’s pitch to students on Tuesday.
…One would think that this message about the importance of education — by a president making it a priority — would be universally welcomed. Instead, the planned speech has drawn denunciations from conservatives. School districts around the country are refusing to air the broadcast, and some parents are even threatening to keep their children out of school that day…Particularly egregious have been comments, like those of the Florida Republican Party, accusing the president of wanting to spread a socialist agenda, at taxpayer expense. Who knew that doing homework and setting goals was part of “The Communist Manifesto”?
But, Democrats aren’t exactly blameless, either. They were the ones who criticized President George H.W. Bush for making a similar address in 1991. They accused Republicans of using children as political pawns and questioned the use of federal dollars to stage the event…It also was a goof for education officials to suggest as part of the original menu for classroom activities that elementary students write letters to themselves “about what they can do to help the president.” That has been changed in the wake of the controversy to writing letters “about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”
A complete list of resources and suggested lesson plans appears on the Education Department’s Web site, and there is nothing objectionable thereof. Moreover, the White House’s promise to post the full text of the speech online Monday should be further reassurance that the president’s interests are educational, not political.

What in God’s name is this editorial actually implying — that Obama really needed to be warned by the Washington Post editorial writers that “education, not politics, should drive [Obama’s] pitch to students on Tuesday” – because otherwise he would give a campaign speech? Or that Democrats are equally guilty of this kind of behavior — although they never called on a single school district to boycott Bush’s 1991 speech or told a single Democratic parent to keep their children home that day?
Of course, the editorial does not explicitly say either of these things. Quite the contrary, it is a particularly elegant example of a widespread modern genre of commentary that attempts to hem and haw so acrobatically that it says nothing substantial at all — and most important of all, avoids expressing any genuine and categorical moral outrage.
The purpose of this exercise is, of course, to avoid offending the powerful thunder gods of Fox News and the vocal foot-soldiers of the conservative right. At least half of the editorial writers who wrote equivocal, “on the one hand, on the other hand” commentaries about the Republican attacks on Obama’s address were actually as offended as most Americans and privately agreed with the New York Times editorial but were unwilling to “go out on a limb” with their audience by expressing the moral outrage they actually felt.
Commentators weren’t always this timid. In the 50’s when major American papers began to challenge Joe McCarthy, they had the courage of their convictions.

The Evening Star of Washington It was a bad day for everyone who resents and detests the bully boy tactics which Senator McCarthy so often employees…
The New York World Telegram: Bamboozling, bludgeoning, distorting way…
St. Louis Post Dispatch: Unscrupulous, McCarthy bullying.
The New York Times: The unwarranted interference of a demagogue — a domestic Munich…
The Herald Tribune of New York: McCarthyism involves assaults on basic Republican concepts…

In a TV broadcast that was widely viewed as dealing a major blow to McCarthy, Edward R. Murrow summed up the challenge:

We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men…
This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result.

50 years later those words are still taught in J-schools and honored as one of the proudest moments in American journalism. In contrast, editorials that offered “on the one-hand, on the other hand” equivocations are now forgotten.
Today the time has come for all American journalists to face their responsibility – as Murrow said “to stand up for America’s heritage and history”. It is time for mainstream journalists to stop being intimidated by the bullies at Fox News, talk radio and the Republican Party. It is time for them to stand up for what they know is the truth – to show whether or not they are “descended from fearful men”

The latest Washington Post poll – dramatically titled “Faith in Obama Drops as Reform Fears Rise” — has caused a tremendous amount of consternation among Democrats and no small amount of demoralization – arguably more than is actually warranted by the results.
We’ll look at some of the numbers in a moment, but, to begin, it is important to note that the reaction among Dems has been quite extreme — “Obama is rapidly losing support”, “the voters are turning against us”, “we had the public on our side, but now they’re changing their minds”. “We’re losing the battle.”
Many commentators do indeed take note of the inevitable end of any president’s post-election honeymoon but they combine it with an implicit assumption that an optimal strategy could have limited any decline in support to just a fraction of the drop off that has actually occurred.
This has led to a quite rancorous intra-Democratic debate over “what we did wrong” — “we didn’t communicate our message”, “the other side won the spring debate”, “our strategy was fundamentally flawed” and so on.
Given the poll results, at first glance this way of viewing the problem seems unavoidable. But it is vital to stop for a moment and ask if this is really the right way to conceptualize what the poll results indicate is going on? It is without question the most demoralizing possible way of framing the issue, but is it also the most accurate one?
It is possible to gain a useful perspective on this question by looking at a somewhat comparable situation that very often occurs in a very different realm of strategy — the world of military affairs. In this other field, a rather parallel event is interpreted in a quite very different way.
Again and again in military history a general will begin a battle standing at the head of vast, awe-inspiring ranks of recently recruited soldiers — often peasants and laborers rounded up by paid recruiters and given only a few days or weeks training — only to see them melt away at the first taste of combat, dropping their weapons and fleeing the field in total disarray. Throughout military history — from Caesar’s campaigns in the Roman Empire to the behavior of native forces recruited to support European colonial armies in the 19th and 20th century — this kind of sudden collapse of untested forces in their first experience with combat is a common, recurrent event.
But military analysts virtually never interpret this kind of collapse as the result of some particular mistake in the general’s military strategy or as a failure of his leadership. Nor do they describe the unreliable soldiers as men who were previously loyal, motivated and committed but who for some reason changed their minds on the day of battle. Rather this kind of breakdown is invariably viewed as an entirely predictable – indeed often inevitable — pattern that occurs when “green” troops – soldiers who have not been “battle-tested” in the heat of actual combat – are employed. In military history, it is a general rule that only after troops have been “seasoned” or ” combat-hardened” by experience under fire that they can be fully and confidently relied on to stand their ground in a new confrontation.
To put it simply, in the military sphere it is considered basically false to visualize untested soldiers as suddenly “losing” a confidence, warrior spirit or aggressiveness that they previously possessed; on the contrary, the military perspective is that they really never really had such characteristics in the first place.
Translated over to the realm of political strategy, this raises the question of whether it really makes sense to conceptualize a group of voters as genuine and solid “supporters” of some policy simply because they endorse it on a single survey question. It can be argued that this substantially mischaracterizes the cognitive structure of their attitudes.
Let’s face it — we are all perfectly familiar with the typical pattern of high opinion poll approval for some progressive program that then declines sharply when the follow up question is asked “would you still be in favor of this reform if you have to pay higher taxes for it.”
This familiar, indeed, almost universal shift in attitude does not reflect the existence of two separate opinions or of a change of opinion from one moment to another. Cognitively speaking, both survey responses above are aspects of one single perspective that is measured in one way by expressing the proposal positively as a potentially desirable goal and then further explored by presenting arguments against it. It can reasonably be argued that it is really the number of people who support not only the initial statement of the program but who continue to support it after a range of effectively expressed arguments against it are presented who can properly be defined as real or genuine “supporters” of the program.
This is doubly true when one knows in advance that the policy in question is absolutely certain to be subject to severe, ruthless, dishonest and merciless attack. Much like untrained conscript soldiers, ordinary voters can also be profoundly frightened and demoralized by the “shock and awe” of observing a near-hysterical and almost demented assault on a program or proposal.
With this in mind, consider the data in the poll:

Read more…

The report in TPM today that two of the men seen carrying guns at the recent town halls are linked to right-wing extremist groups is an extremely disturbing development.
But, in responding, it is important for Democrats to remember that most of the Americans who carry weapons do so for legitimate reasons – security guards, night watchmen, private detectives, parole officers, and businessmen who have to carry large quantities of cash.
These normal, law-abiding Americans would never dream of wearing their gun at a wedding, or a PTA meeting, or a decent restaurant. They would leave their weapon in the glove compartment of their car instead. (one friend of mine, a lanky Vietnam vet named Pete, always leaves his sidearm in his car before going into Waffle House to sit around and joke with the waitresses. “It wouldn’t be polite” he explains).
What the “pistol-packers” showing up at the town halls are doing on the other hand is the exact opposite – they are being intentionally provocative and deliberately seeking to offend. Their behavior has absolutely nothing to do with the second amendment or gun control. The “pistol-packers” know perfectly well that they are deliberately violating the norms and values of their communities and the code of behavior followed by the vast majority of responsible gun owners. Their second amendment rhetoric has no purpose other than to obscure this basic fact.
Dems should not let the pistol-packers hide behind legitimate gun owners. The simple fact is that normal law abiding citizens do not carry their weapons into settings where their presence is inappropriate. The pistol-packers are making a point of it.
Don’t confuse the two.