The week the Public option died and how progressives still haven't learned their lesson.

The week the Public option died and how progressives still haven’t learned their lesson.

In the week before the summer recess that crushed liberal spirits around the world, numerous forces came together to kill the public option. The problem for Democrats, and more so for progressives, is that many of these problems could have been avoided.

Schumer v. Rockefeller

Politico reported on July 1st that Sen. Schumer was hard at work on a Public Option that could pass the U.S. Senate; one that would ultimately failed to garner enough votes in the Finance Committee. Schumer’s plan would vary in approach and would be more modest that the plan put forward by Rockefeller. Both plans would face defeat in September of 2009, but the death of the Public Option could have been avoided with some planning.

First, the two Senators could have, despite their differences in approach, created a minimum baseline for the public option. By creating a quick list of sound bite benefits that would have been guaranteed in either plan, the two would have given other Democrats a way to talk about the Public Option without vagueness. It would also have been helpful for the two to get their differences worked out before the committee voted on the bill that September. A unified front, even if the compromise would have been acid to both Senators, still would have been better than two competing plans. This illustrates an even greater problem with the public option: it never left the theoretical stage.

The Public option was a brilliant idea, but it never became anything more. The Democrats needed more than votes to get the public option, they needed to sell a new and exciting product to the American people. The Public option should have been sold based on the benefits American families could have expected from the new program.

“Houston, we have a marketing problem.”

The Democrats completely relied on the notion that the program would be inevitably popular, thus disregarding intense feelings around the plan. The Public option required, much like any other piece of major legislation, good marketing. The Democrats should have pulled a play out of the book of who they were trying to stick it too: the insurance industry.
Why? Because they already know how to sell insurance.
The week before the town hall meetings would create a path back to power for the Republicans, the Democrats still had no unified front on the major issue of the day. The left should have created a product out of the Public option, instead of trying to address every policy question under the sun. The fact is that they knew the answer to the Problem, but never figured out how to properly ‘show their work’ to the American people. Let’s break down a few things.

Its all in a name

The words ‘Public Option’ never should have entered the Debate. The public option was a theory, not what needed to be sold to Americans. The public option was a sterile, bureaucratic, semi-welfare program. It’s not what Americans needed.
No, Americans needed Americare.

When you’re in car accident, the last thing you should have to worry about is how much it is going to cost. The Americare Act will lower monthly premiums, save hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars, and will insure tens of millions of children and adults for the first time. With the Americare Act, you’ll never have to worry about being denied coverage or being dropped by your insurance company.
So if you believe that health care should be better, smarter, and more affordable: then call your Senator and tell them you support the Americare Act. Care for your family. Care for your Country. Americare.

Or something like that.

This approached can be contrasted by the campaigns run by PCCC, Moveon, and others. While their campaigns urged the President to fight for the public option or featured heartbreaking stories about people getting screwed by their insurance company, they fundamentally missed the mark.

These campaigns didn’t espouse benefits to the average American. There were a lot of Americans that found the stories sad and powerful, but they weren’t able to connect with them. The stories felt alien to them and many Americans expressed satisfaction with their insurance company. To combat this, the Democrats should have created a campaign designed to excite and entice people away to a new product, the iphone of insurance. People should have seen the benefits THE Y would have gained from this exciting new kind of insurance.

Every other message should have been used to disrupt the doubts or negative emotions Republicans were planting in the minds of independents. This is where the campaign PCCC ran featuring millions in support of the plan could have made a difference. People needed to know what they were supporting, and why they should support it, before group think could be engadged.

In short, the Democrats should have locked up support from uninterested and independent American’s before going for the sympathy vote. Two guys in Nowhere, Arkansas should have had positive things to say about Americare at the bar. “I think I’ll get it when it comes out,” was what the Democrats needed, not “It will catch on eventually.”

Where were the reinforcements?

Another problem was that, ironically, the Democrats were utterly out organized by the Republicans the week before the public option got murdered at the town halls.

Liberal groups failed to turn out crowds and the left plain old failed to show up.
They say that eighty percent of winning is showing up, and that might account for why the public option died. The President didn’t show up, the DNC didn’t show up, Progressives didn’t show up…at least in time to matter. The core liberal groups showed up behind the curve of the debate with a whimper.

Democrats were never able to get people to get vocal and active before the town halls, let alone during them. The week before numerous Democratic lawmakers were scared into dropping their support for the Public Option, the Democrats should have had a system in place to make sure that the town halls would be packed to the brim with liberals, there to voice support for the plan.

Optics matter and after the town halls, Americans were shown strong opposition to the plan. A plan they knew little or nothing about, but that their neighbors and community had shown up to VOCALLY disapprove of. That was it folks, the end of the line for the public option. No poll or commercial after that would be able to sway the public on the plan. That leads me to my final point.

Ideas love a vacuum

In his book Ideavirus, famed marketing guru Seth Godin talks about numerous factors that put ideas in people’s heads. One thing he talks about is the notion of ideas operating in a vacuum. Godin postulates that when a strong idea that can easily spread like a virus enters a vacuum, or a space where there previously was no serious thought on the subject, it tends to dominate that vacuum in a way that prevents competing ideas from coming in and altering the discourse.

In short, be first or die.

The Democrats needed to get the benefits of their ideas into the minds of Americans before the Republicans did, after that they just would have had to swat flies. Republicans got there first during the town halls and they stayed there, until they killed the debate.

There was obviously a serious level of preparation on the part of Republicans leading up to the town halls. There message was tight and vicious; their optics were strong, having no opposition or rowdiness at their town halls; and they presented a unified front that painted the story of them saving the country from the socialist overreach of the Democratic Party.
The Republicans have used the same tactics, organization, and messaging style since the public option to pave a path back to power.

We must adapt or die my fellow liberals.

What can we learn from this?
1. Have a good message.
2. Keep it simple. Even better, put it into a story anyone can agree with.
3. Be first.
4. Present a unified and organized front.
5. ??? (Hope it sinks in)
6. Profit.

What are your thoughts? Please share your opinion below. Also feel free to sign up for our Newsletter for more coverage of Democratic messaging, strategy, and a few rants. This diary was cross posted from ProgressivesUnlimited.com

Medicare for Anybody was the correct re-branding.

Everybody in America knows what Medicare is, and it is a resoundingly popular program.

It could have been Can We Afford Medicare For Anybody?

And the answer would have been No Let's Make Everybody Buy Private Insurance.

The latter outrageous approach in the *first instance* is why this effort is having such a crippling time of it.

Instead of making a popular public program accessible to anybody, our brilliant legislators chose instead to try to enrich a for-profit industry in a blatant screwing-of-the-People way.

Poorly done!

George Lakoff is, indeed, the answer to this.

"The lesson" that progressives seem to need to learn, is who the audience is to win elections, and issues.

It is NOT PROGRESSIVES! We're already on board.
It is NOT CONSERVATIVES! They will virtually never be convinced by any argument of ours.

It is the Bi-conceptuals. And if you don't know what that term means, then shame on you. You've already lost the debate to the conservatives, WHO DO.

You may think of that group as "moderates", "independents", or "undecideds"----and they are none of those things.

If the argument to a position is tailored to progressives, then progressives is who you will convince. NOT the "undecideds"! All those progressive arguments do, is make us FEEL GOOD, AS WE LOSE THE ELECTION OR THE ISSUE!

Aren't you getting tired of getting walloped at the polls? Wouldn't you rather win?

You MUST understand, that when making arguments, those arguments are made in a way that creates certain "frames". These frames create subconscious reinforcement of ideals, conservative or progressive. If you use a conservative frame, then NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY, you reinforce the conservative point of view. Let me give you an example from today:

A progressive buddy sends me an email, with the title: Scary, very very scary.......
Attached is a link to a Rachael Maddow video about a conservative outrage in Michigan.

What is the problem? THE TITLE OF THE EMAIL. The conservative position is that the world is a scary place, and that to be safe, there needs to be strong leadership, authoritarian (we progressives might even say fascist).

Look at any poll of "independents". Overwhelmingly, they identify conservatives as providing consistently STRONG LEADERSHIP, compared to democrats.

So the background message of such an email is: The world is scary, you need a strong leader, think CONSERVATIVE!

NOT to a progressive, but to all those who are "somewhere in the middle".

By the way, when you see progressives whining about Obama or another democrat not being an effective leader, YOU REINFORCE THE CONSERVATIVE FRAME OF THEIR LEADERSHIP!

Aren't you tired of losing? Don't you wonder why, when our goals and objectives are so much better for so many people, voters so frequently support the conservatives? THIS IS WHY!

most important opportunities missed by the President and the Dems was the messaging. I am completely baffled why this administration does not "market" their ideas. Dems need to learn how to frame arguments and present them to the American people better than they have.

-PLA

I'm a little surprised too because Obama gave the impression he was going to be an activist for a change and a president in touch with the people. Once he was inaugurated it became apparent that his style was more technocratic and that he prefers operating the levers of power from inside the bubble to accomplish his goals.

The tension between the reality of this presidency and the hope is deeply woven into the division we see in the party at the moment IMO. On one hand you have the reality of President Obama, cloistered and involved in legislative minutia and on the other you have the President Obama many hoped for; a principled leader who willingly engages the public and makes the other side worry about populist consequences once he has swayed public consensus.

Ironically, once he finally wheeled out the "bully pulpit" and went to the public; once he explained the real world consequences of opposing his tax compromise plan he used his position of authority against Democrats. The bully pulpit worked just like it was supposed to. He convinced voters that they would suffer economic losses if the plan failed and politicians, worried about electoral punishment, were swayed.

Wow, I wish he would have searched around in the White House basement and found the bully pulpit earlier. He could have used it during the healthcare debate or even against extending tax cuts for the wealthiest.

You seemed to have clearly incapsulated what many have been trying to express for a long time. I particularly like your second paragraph. We hoped for a "principled" leader...I don't think that this is too strong an implication. It does appear, at least to me, that there is a lack of "deep" principle that keeps him on a singular track. Instead, he seems to operate with his finger in the air to assess the political winds. I for one, am greatly disappointed.

-PLA

In the secret meetings with the insurance and drug companies.

President Obama's job was to make it look like he really supported it while making it fail in a way that made it look impossible to do.

It was so refreshing for us to admit he was never planning on doing it, otherwise we'd still be wondering.

And, Lieberman refused to support a public option. HE killed it. All the distractions from some on the left about what Obama did or didn't say/do are meaningless, I'm afraid.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/01/ftn/main5484246.shtml

That said, I agree we need better messaging.

This is a blame the victim mentality, IMHO.

Truth is that secret deals with big insurance and big phrma killed the PO, fact is it was never on the table.

The leadership failed to push nationalizing HC, or Medcare for all, much less the public option.

You are just reframing history with slick PR in an attempt to deflect the truth of what happened, IMHO.

PS Godin rules!

You have just characterized us as victims, or in other words, losers.

Why on earth would any "independent" support a vision of such political wimps?

You don't support your assertions with any facts or citations, and it is critical to do that, when you are making an argument for "TRUTH", not opinion!

Your argument is that it is all out of our hands, that there is nothing we can do, and there is no reason to change strategy. If we take that approach, we will never get anywhere.

I get really tired of all the hippie punching that's been going on at DU the past few years.

Yes.

You'd better get used to one of the rules of life: You only have control over what YOU do, not over what your opponent does.

If you fail, it is because YOU didn't do a sufficient job.

Why is this mindset important? Because if you take the position that it is someone else's fault, then there is NOTHING that YOU can do to change such an outcome in the future.

"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein"

Don't you get tired of losing? Don't you wonder why, when we progressives follow the same strategy, and lose, lose, lose, that we expect something different?

Because we are smarter than Einstein? NOT!

When we lose an argument, or an election, we need to understand that WE didn't do a sufficient job, that WE need to change our message, that WE need to change our approach.

If you wait for the other side, who just won, to change their approach so that we can win, you will be waiting out in the cold a LONG, LONG time.......

If you want to gain some perspective on Healthcare, you may be interested in this lecture at UCLA that I personally attended. Michael Hass and Michael Dukakis discuss it at some length:

Barack Obama, The Aloha Zen President
From: UCLA | Mar 9, 2011 |

Is Barack Obama the most misunderstood president in American history? Political science professor Michael Haas thinks so.

In his new book, The Aloha Zen President: How a Son of the 50th State May Revitalize America Based on 12 Multicultural Principles, Haas argues 12 multicultural principles uniquely developed in Hawai'i are the source of President Barack Obama's charismatic personality and centrist political philosophy.

On March 8, 2011, Haas visited the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and spoke with students, faculty, staff and community members about his new book. Joined by UCLA visiting professor Michael Dukakis, who wrote the book's forward, the pair took questions from the audience and expanded on the idea that to understand President Obama you must first understand Hawai'i

http://www.youtube.com/user/UCLA#p/search/0/FrWSlYdFtA4