Three Game-Changing Paradigm Shifts
When Our
Greatest Strength is
Our Greatest Weakness
Failing
The Greater Good
Surprisingly Simple Powerful and Unexpected
The Republican Party that has evolved from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump is now a party that takes elections personally with a collective sense of purpose. To Trump's base, winning elections means your life continues as you've always known it. Losing an election can mean that life as you know it has come to an end.
Issue-based debate and the advertising approaches that follow are the province of the evaluating and qualifying conscious mind. Unless the issue being promoted is personally "your issue," the reasons put forth by "you" for other voters to be persuaded towards it will likely remain in their conscious minds, never connecting with any of their subconscious pathways.
This collectively recorded pathway can be distilled into this: "They (the others) will take something from my family and me forcing us to live in a way that is unacceptable." (Think, "Wearing a mask infringes on my personal liberty.") It is a pathway that can easily be reached and reinforced by a message that Eugene Robinson describes as "emotion, patriotism, and cultural affinity." This kind of advertising, advertising that connects with us personally, is a prime reason why Trump's messaging has become so effective.
The Democratic party has sometimes been called the "Big Tent Party" because of the diversity among those who vote Democratic. While diversity is good for creating a pluralistic society and has enabled us to become the only party that still knows how to govern, a diverse electorate that votes, or doesn't vote, according to each person's own individual priorities is bad for winning elections.
Whereas Republicans take elections personally, Democrats take the issues personally, and that is where our greatest strength became our greatest weakness during the 2016 Presidential campaign. People who voted Democratic in the past stayed home due to the perception that their issues were not held in high regard by either the candidate or the party. An often expressed belief is that one's greatest strength can turn instead into one's greatest weakness, and in this case, it was decidedly true. It was these many individual decisions not to vote that collectively brought about a very unwanted result. We all got Trump!
It is not just a collective sense of purpose...it is a singular pathway of belief held by united subconscious minds. It is a recording that has been fine-tuned and played with sustained repetition for decades. At its core, it's also a recording based on fear. The fear that is hard-wired into the subconscious mind controlling our brains 95% of the time.
Knowing what's "at risk for me personally" is the well of understanding that can unite us in winning it all. For when we have clarity on the personal danger being faced, it is a wakeup call for the subconscious protector within, one that can create a shared sense of purpose that this election transcends individual issues; that this election is about the "Greater Good;" that this election is personal.
It is a collective pathway that creates an election target with a huge bullseye that all supporters fit inside.
Watching a man die at the hands of police with a knee on his neck for an excruciating length of time burst into a shared subconscious pathway that does unite Democratic voters. It is called the "Greater Good," a rejection of "life as we know it" that is only good for some for "life that must be fair and just for all."
There is no greater good right now than defeating Donald Trump. The threat that he poses to American democracy does not stop at the doorway of his base. All of us will lose the life-long protection of the democracy that our children will not inherit. That is just as true for those wearing MAGA hats and Trump colored glasses of delusion.
Individual subconscious pathways create an election target with a small bullseye for winning amongst the many separate issues being advocated.
A diversity of subconscious minds that unite in the "Greater Good" creates an even larger bullseye that encompasses all who champion it.
Only then will the tools that Eugene Robinson said, "Republicans have long wielded with tremendous skill and success," become even more powerful in the hands of Democrats who will understand the danger and use those same tools as the weapons of truth to confront lies and deceit.
That's not to say that the perception of an issue's personal importance cannot shift and become part of a subconscious pathway. It most certainly can. It's just that such an occurrence is a uniquely individual process. It is rare to find a collective subconscious pathway that unites and inspires Democratic voters into collective mass action. At least that was true until the death of George Floyd.
The election stakes for every single race have never been more PERSONAL.
We Must Shout it From the Rooftops!
Washington Post 5/7/20
Eugene Robinson
Political warfare in this country has long been asymmetrical. Democrats tend to appeal to voters with arguments based on reason, fairness and economic self-interest. There's nothing wrong with any of that, but defeating President Trump and his GOP enablers is too important to leave any weapons on the shelf. Democrats need to learn to use the tools that Republicans have long wielded with tremendous skill and success: emotion, patriotism and cultural affinity.