How not to win friends and influence people.

BlueCheese

(897 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Nov-04-10 09:15 PM
Original message

How not to win friends and influence people.

Please don't fall into the trap.

We lost an election on Tuesday. Let's not try to sugar-coat things--losing 60 House seats, six Senate seta, and nine governorships is losing. There's a lot of frustration going on.

Did everyone forget how bad things were in 2008?
Don't they remember what a mess George "30%" Bush left behind?
Wasn't it the Republicans who ran the economy into the ground?
Didn't the GOP spend all of the last two years doing nothing but sabotage any kind of progress.
Don't they realize how bad things would have been if not for the stimulus?
Why aren't they grateful for the health insurance bill?

A few memes quickly boil out of all of this. We tell each other things that in our minds explain how such good people might have lost. But it's a trap--for the more we think them, the worse we'll do in the next election, and every one after that. What are these memes? Try these out:

The people are stupid.

It's a comforting explanation. We didn't do anything wrong. We did everything right, and if only the voters were smarter they'd realize that.

It's no secret to a lot of the public that a lot of self-proclaimed elites look down on them. And guess what--it turns out to be a really bad way of getting their support. Once someone figures out that you think you're better than him for no reason that he can see, he stops paying attention to you.

Even if it were true, as long as they understand that you think that, they'll never vote for you.

Sometime we try to cushion the blow a littke:

They're not stupid, they're ignorant.

They get distracted by American Idol or Survivor. Or maybe it's not even their fault: they want to be informed, but they get deceived by the MSM, and Fox News. They can't find their way to the truth as easily as we can.

Strangely enough, this doesn't melt a voter's heart either. Once I figure out why, I'll report back.

These days, there's another explanation, too:

The people are racists.

Honestly, if we want to make sure we never win another election, this would be a good thing to shout from the rooftops. I see it used as an explanation of almost every setback that happens. Even though Obama won the presidency with the largest margin in years. Even though his approval rating when entering office was in the 70s. Even though important figures in the GOP of late have been Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Nicky Haley and Sarah Palin--all ethnic/religious minorities or women.

Is racism dead? Of course not. Not even close. But take the swing voter who voted for Obama in 2008, or who voted for McCain but not because of his race, and say the reason she voted Republican is because she's racist, well--it's a good chance she'll never vote for you again.

Remember how angry you got when Bush and his stooges called you unpatriotic, because you didn't support his warmongering and human rights violations? I've never forgiven him for it, and I doubt I ever will. Screw you, I thought. You don't know me. How dare you say that I love my country any less than you?

Well, that's what these voters think when they hear themselves being called racists.

A lot of the public already thinks that self-appointed elites on the coasts look down on them--that we think they're dumb, or uninformed, or prejudiced, or hopelessly religious, or xenophobic, or too fond of weaponry, or provincial. Why do they vote for Republicans instead of Democrats? Because they think--often wrongly--that people like Bush understand them and value their contributions to society more than Democrats do. And when they hear us responding to a loss not by addressing their concerns, but by calling them stupid or racist, well, don't expect them to vote for us next time, either.