No Shortcuts to Persuasion

         This past week marked the beginning of what will be, if we are a lucky, an incredibly challenging four years. One skill that has been lacking in our movement, but which our Party will absolutely need to rebound during these four years, is the ability to persuade.  Our struggles along these lines are not surprising.  Genuine persuasion is exceptionally difficult, and the sad truth is that for a minority to persuade a majority to care about their set of issues is exceptionally difficult. (We are a party built up of minorities)

But what we have learned in recent times is that while our constitutional republic sometimes offers shortcuts around persuasion (such as courts) there can be downsides to these alternative routes.  Put simply, the majority has a way of expressing its displeasure and reversing gains that are achieved without authentic consent.

There are three other short cuts that can also serve as surrogates for true persuasion.  The first is party capture. When your political party prevails you might be able to force through a position that is profoundly unpopular with the country as long as that position is essential to a wing of your party.   If that doesn’t work, another trick, used almost universally by interest groups and even some  political parties, is to claim majority status regardless of voting outcomes or results.  “The true people, the true party, agrees with us” and when something gets in the way of that story, the impediment is described not as a reflection of popular sentiment but instead as either a ruse or undemocratic.  

This can be made particularly effective through phrasing of issues.  So the NRA can, for example, oppose gun safety efforts on grounds that the “true majority” supports “the Second Amendment” without acknowledging that many quite popular gun safety measures are perfectly consistent with the Second Amendment.   

The third and final one is a bit more difficult.  A group may acknowledge that the public does not share the group’s agenda and yet it may appeal to moral or constitutional rights which allegedly justify bypassing popular opinion and thus undermine the need for persuasion. Sometimes this approach is truly necessary.  After all, our constitutional system exists so that in the words of many, “we don’t vote on rights.” It’s hard to quarrel with this logic and there’s no reason to give up on basic rights.  But no one should be fooled into thinking that rights can be relied on over a long period of time in the face of strong majoritarian opposition.   The reality is that the electorate ultimately turn political results in the direction it wishes and almost no piece of paper can make someone safe if the Government refuses to honor it.

 The alternative to the political risks inherent in attempts to misconstrue or bypass public opinion is to truly get better at persuasion.  This means that when it comes to decisive issues such as  global warming  the goal should be to build such a strong consensus among the voting public that elected officials would not dream of denying its existence.  In our current polarized climate, however,  it has become too tempting to spend more time on trying to make that consensus appear real than on actually doing the hard work of persuading people to the point of building consensus.

   Persuasion is arduous, hard to measure, and even harder to get donors to wait for as opposed to selling them on a manufactured consensus that they can get behind.  And changing minds may be harder than ever because rather than remaining open to persuasion issue by issue, people are starting to embrace global partisan views both on the positive side (I go with my team) and even more on the negative side (I am opposed to whatever the other side wants).

  In this vein, the challenge becomes persuading voters on the other side to adopt a whole new world view and not just a particular position.   Despite the heavy lifting this may require, the hard work of persuading people we are right is going to have replace the bold assertions that we are right.  The fundraising machines now fueling promotion of what might be called the progressive point of view must refuse to settle for assertions and begin to think about which of our opponents we can persuade and what is the best way to persuade them.  This does not mean compromising our values or positions, but it might mean making compromises on language to be more persuasive and thinking more about being persuasive.

  None of this is easy.  It might not feel good at first, although there is much value in connecting with others who hold different views.  But whatever the cost, persuasion is what is required if we want to regain power. And we have no choice but to pursue this goal with everything we have.