Making it Simple

I know we could write books about why America is a fearful, knee-jerk society. White flight in the 1950s and 60s was driven by the fear of African Americans moving next door. Unscrupulous real estate agents would knock on our doors, point out how awful it would be to have blacks living next door, tell scary stories about how rapidly our property values would drop if they did, and we packed up and moved to the suburbs. This kind of simple story telling is what Republicans have been good at since at least 1968, when the party told northern suburbanites that urban lawlessness - they wanted us to visualize blacks - would grow under the weak-willed leadership of liberal Democrats like Hubert Humphrey. This was the same year Harry Dent used the Southern Strategy to win votes from Southerners unhappy with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The message was this:



That's the way Republicans thought. And their methods paid off. Making everything so simple won them votes. The parallel message they peddled alongside their race-based message was just as simple, just as easy to reduce to black and white, easy to understand images:


This is still the Republicans' main message. Democrats have often resisted campaigning this way. They believe that voters can understand complex choices, and that compassion can guide us toward tough, but humane decisions. Or, because Democrats are Americans, and just as prone to fear and knee-jerk stupidity, we respond to Republican tactics by prevaricating, waffling, and abandoning our principles. We position ourselves to say "Yeah! Urban crime is bad!" and "Government doesn't have the answers." Then we look like what we are: spineless copycats.

But I think we have a new opportunity to drive a simple message home about Republicans that should help win votes. It is easy to understand, but isn't cowardly or morally corrupt. It resonates with our principles, and portrays the Republicans in an unflattering, but honest way. Republicans have spent the summer arguing that Latinos aren't Americans, and neither are Muslims, and maybe the 14th Amendment, which gave Blacks full citizenship, wasn't such a good idea after all. And, except for Ted Olson, Republicans don't think gays and lesbians should be given the same rights as the rest of us. How this makes sense politically is hard for me to fathom. The country is increasingly made up of people of color, and attitudes toward sexual orientation are becoming more tolerant and supportive. Yet here they are, marching across the country with the message that America is a Christian, Anglo Saxon society, and the rest of us should shut up and blend in. I say we call them on it: