Messaging has always been a weakness for Democrats. Don't know why, but for some reason Democrats have trouble putting out messages that the American people can hear. One explanation might be the Democrats lack of a medium. You see, Republicans have the entire AM dial on their side. That's Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Micheal Savage, others, and in our neck of the woods, Zeb Bell. Heck, here in Idaho they even broadcat right-wing radio on the local Fox non-cable affiliate under the innocuous name "Idaho Talks Live". On top of that there is the highly disciplined Fox News. Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, plus all the right-wing anchors on that channel. We all know there is nary a moderate or left voice on that channel. I defy you to give me any time of the day where you cannot turn on either the radio or the television and find either on the AM station or Fox News right-wing ideologues blaring right-wing talking points at you.
The left has some messaging capacity. Not much, though. We have almost nothing on the radio. You could say we have NPR, but I don't count that b/c NPR is very moderate. It is not a bunch of ideologues. I mean, sure, you have Harry Shearer on Sundays I guess, but none of the voices could be described as anything more than "center-left". They always give the other side of the story. Unlike Fox News or Rush Limbaugh. So that leaves us with MSNBC. I'd like to claim this news organization in the name of progressives, but I just can't. Not in the way the Republicans can claim Fox News. Fox News is a complete right-wing mouthpiece, through and through, while MSNB is a news organization with three progressive pundits, one pundit that is a moderate but is lately pretending to be a progressive (Chris Matthews), and a few progressive anchors and guests(Davide Shuster, Lawrence O'Donnell). Other than that, you have a bunch of moderate anchors, and however many hours of Joe Scarborough in the morning. Scarborough is a conservative Republican with a large morning timeblock on MSNBC.
As of late, progressives have been cultivating a new medium. I am, of course, referring to the internet. We dominate this medium. It is the only way we are going to be able to push messages to the American people, because the traditional media sure ain't cuttin' it. Sometimes, MSNBC anchors will take internet memes and run with them. Keith Olbermann does this all the time. He is a regular contributor to The Daily Kos. The reason I am outlining all of this is because I want to explain the manner in which we, on the internet, can reach the viewers of traditional media so that we can deliver our messaging.
Messaging is very powerful. One of the most powerful examples of messaging that always springs to my mind is the way Republicans got rid of the inheritance tax. This tax was a very pro-capitalist, in my opinion, tax, that allowed for the free market to work even better than it would without it. The inheritance tax taxed the estates of the deceased. This makes perfect sense, because inheritance without taxation weakens the benificary's incentive to work. Anyway, through messaging, the Republicans turned the "inheritance tax" into the "death tax". This sort of messaging caught on with the American people through right-wing radio and the Democrats were defeated on this issue. But this is just one example.
More recent examples include the infamous "Death Panel" meme recently pushed by Mrs. Sarah Palin. Most progressives know that she was incorrectly mis-interpreting a provision in the House Health Care Reform bill that allowed for doctors to be reimbursed for end-of-life consultations with their patients (i.e; "should we pull the plug or do you want to be a vegetable if the situation arises?"), to mean that somehow the government was going to euthanize old people.
Ah, but this is old news now, isn't it? Let us look at the most recent messaging effort by the Republicans. Turn on Fox News right now, if you dare. You will find a pundit talking about how it took President Obama "six months to pick a dog", implying that he spends more time picking his dog than he does on allowing for healthcare legislation. Every right-winger everywhere will be repeating this within the week. You yourself will probably get a viral e-mail forwarded to you by your Aunt Heidi explaining this very conundrum involving Obama, his dog, and healthcare reform.
Whatever. Forget about all that. Here's what I want you to think about and push. It's got zing, it's got viral potential, and most importantly, it is the truth. I heard it while listening to Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and a staff writer for The New Yorker. He was on All Things Considered Saturday evening, and one thing he said really jumped out at me. Here's a portion of the transcript:
RAZ: We keep hearing in this sort of debate about health care overhaul. We keep hearing the word rationing being thrown around, and it sounds scary. But what do you say to someone who sort of wonders whether cutting back on procedures that you would argue are unnecessary, is a form of rationing?
Dr. GAWANDE: If there is any government or insurance company that is making the decisions about whether you need a CAT scan or don't need a CAT scan that is both bad medicine and rationing. If what you have is a physician who you have a relationship with, taking care of you and they're just making good evidence-based decisions about the right kinds of recommendations for you, that is rational care.
And what we've been missing in the system is rational care. The irrationality turns up in all kinds of ways. It turns up in the physician who wrote to me describing a situation where he's a part owner of a imaging center. They started losing money because the doctors weren't doing enough CT scans and he found that they were in board meetings where they were sitting around trying to figure out how to get more people to get more CT scans.
It had nothing to do with whether they had good care or bad care for those scans. And that's the disaster of our system is when you have medicine become a business rather than something about what the patient's needs are. And...
RAZ: But I mean, couldn't doctors make the argument that they're entitled to be paid well and maybe not just limited to receiving a salary but to receiving money based on the services they provide.
Dr. GAWANDE: I think that we are well compensated and that we're very lucky to live in a country that has valued the services of the medical profession so highly. There is nowhere else in the world that values their medical profession as well, and I think we have found real advantages to doing that.
But whether it is a salary or being paid a fee for each time that I take out a gall bladder, I still am in a country where we are well compensated, and I think it will continue to be that way.
It's a great piece of dialogue. And here is what I want my readers to take away from it. "Rational" versus "Rationing". This is the meme that I would like to see pushed everywhere. Alliterations in and of themselves have viral potential, but this one plays off an already established Republican message. Everone has already heard the "rationing" message, so the "rational" message should be easy for them to absorb.
"Rationing" is in the current system. It involves insurance executives and hmo's deciding whether or not someone is allowed to have a catscan, or an operation. "Irrational Care" occurs when the doctor, who gets paid more if he can convince his/her patient to get that surgery, convinces the patient to do so, whether it is in the best wishes of the patient or not. So when we are talking about "rational" versus "irrational care", we are talking about good versus bad decisions. As Dr. Gawande states, what we have been missing from the current system is "Rational Care".
The HealthCare Reform bill delivers "Rational Care" by taking these sorts of "rationing" decisions out of the hands of healthcare execs and hmo's, and putting "rational care" decisions back into the hands of patients and their doctors.
Anyway, if you've read this far, that's awesome. The main thing I want to stress is that we try out this meme a little bit. When you hear someone talk about health care "rationing", talk about "rational" healthcare. And explain why the current healthcare system is "irrational".
Thanks For Reading.
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