Big Gestures.

Big Gestures

Politics is show business. 

Democratic candidates have been scrambling to apologize for past positions. The words they actually say are only part of the message. 

What was popular and reasonable ten years ago is unacceptable now because Democratic orthodoxy has moved left and because anything that Trump has touched has been re-defined as cruel, brutish, racist, and misogynist.

This blog has written there is a subtext to apology, that it is seen as weakness by the public. Once careful reader, writer Maureen Flanagan Battistella of Ashland, Oregon, wrote saying she disagreed. She said "A good apology reflects a compassionate, respectful, thoughtful and caring human being. Period."

She is right--in real life, where a good apology restores self and community.

Battistella

But politics is theater on a giant stage. In real life a whisper is heard only inches away but a stage-whisper needs to be heard in the back rows. Small gestures are irrelevant. Communication plays by different rules. Voters see big gestures and only big gestures, then they draw inferences about character and temperament from what they can see in the gesture, not the denoted words.

Voters saw that Hillary Clinton got $400,000 for speaking to Goldman Sachs. Nothing whatever she said regarding holding financial malefactors responsible for their actions spoke as loudly and clearly as that. 

And politician happy-talk is worse than worthless. Voters dismiss political communication about how a politician loves America, supports democracy, wants integrity and democratic empowerment, and thinks that children are the future of America. Blah, blah. 

Such talk squanders the brief time and attention voters give them, and worse, it delivers a message that is received and absorbed, "this politician is like all the others." A negative message.

Gillibrand starts at 3:55.

Voters see big, unmistakable gestures, when the candidate pays a price for saying them. A position without critics constitutes "blah, blah." For example, Ocasio-Cortez got noticed on tax rates because a 70% marginal tax on incomes above $10 million a year surprised people and drew sharp criticism. She pays a price. Some people think she is a kook, others like her for it. A big gesture got noticed. 

(Does anybody know how any other Democrat thinks we ought to tax high incomes? I suspect not. I don't.) 

An ongoing premise of this blog is that the intended message is sometimes opposite the actual message sent and delivered. 

Kirsten Gillibrand provides an example of backfire. Click the link.

Her actual message, sent and received: I am an insincere person who will lie to you to get ahead, and the lies are so obvious and implausible that even friendly observers like Trevor Noah think I am ridiculous.

Guyer

Meanwhile, another reader, Thad Guyer, the attorney representing whistleblowing employees, offers a second reason for avoiding apology. It insults the people who have not yet moved along with the changing center of Democratic thinking. 

He wrote:

      "Senator [Kamala] Harris is married to a white male corporate lawyer who does money law, exactly who Ocasio-Cortez might describe as "a privileged white capitalist pig." There are lots of blog and social media trolling of him already. As Hillary can attest, a candidate is now expected to apologize for his or her spouse, his or her misdeeds, ideologies, and greed, and even defend their marriage decision. 

     There will need to be dump truck loads of apologies downstream from Democratic candidates if they use rebuke past mainstream policy positions. Once you open that portal, it's hard to control. They will risk looking feckless and weak.

     Every apology on past cultural beliefs also offends those still holding those beliefs. Don't apologize for what in the past was not bigotry or a misdeed, especially if half the country still thinks that way. That is, not if you want to be the next POTUS.

     The Democratic apology tour will be fueled by opposition research by Democratic adversaries and the GOP. It's going to be a real political correctness circus. Senator Harris will be smart if she continues to refuse any apologies whatsoever.

Sen. Harris and husband Douglas Emhoff

     Trump is likely to be the template for the winning Democrat--Don't apologize!"

Guyer voices a thought which creates immediate pushback within Democratic activist circles, that maybe Biden's positions are both reasonable and electable. I consider it undeniable that the center of gravity has moved for Democratic activists, but what is not yet clear is whether the voters in the Democratic constituency have moved with them. 

Presumed centrist candidates like Joe Biden--and electoral victors like Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer--may well still represent the center of the Democratic electorate. If so, the apologies for past beliefs may be a mis-step. There may be ten candidates splitting up the activist vote and one candidate winning with pluralities of voters who feel the Party has moved too far left.

That person might win the nomination. Then the presidency.