The Cost of Miscommunication

When you're family makes less than $70,000 a year (2 incomes), it's difficult to relate to news articles talking about $500,000 for this or a million dollars for that, let alone billions or trillions of dollars. That's why the average guy or gal on the street is on the outside of conversations concerning the national debt, the trade defect, CEO salaries, campaign financing, congressional pork, the effect of tax cuts for the wealthiest 1%, and lobbyists.

They can understand talk about rising healthcare costs because it hits them in each paycheck they take home. But they're lost when the discussion turns to the cost of a national healthcare program. They can speak about the importance of raising the minimum wage but have difficulty staying involved when the conversation turns to the cost of implementing it.

It's not because the average person is unintelligent. It's because it's difficult to engage in discussions that involve more money than they (or their whole neighborhood put together for that matter) will ever make in three generations. Our newspaper and TV journalists don't put these issues on a playing field where the everyday wage earner can see the significance to themselves, their aging parents, or their children.

The reason George Bush won the last election was because although less than 0.001% of the US population was affected by the terrorist attack of 9/11, the Republicans were able to sell the idea to over 60% of Americans that they and their families were in immediate danger of being attacked again and only the Republicans could protect them. Seeing those planes crash into buildings over and over again and George standing with his bullhorn on top of the rubble spoke to the average person in a language they could understand and relate to.

The Democrats chose to talk about money. Trillions of dollars being wasted on this, that, and the other thing. And all that talk went right over the heads of people living paycheck to paycheck. One group of multimillionaires putting down another group of multimillionaires. They couldn't sink their hooks into it. Who cares about the trade deficit when we're about to be attacked again by America hating, blood lusting, bomb wielding, foreign heathens?

The Republicans talked about the sanctity of marriage, the right to life, and immigrants taking jobs from middle class families. Again, hitting home with people who's only contact with homosexuals was from news photos of Pride parades or from TV and the movies. As for abortion, who couldn't relate to pictures of mangled babies being sucked into tubes and thrown into trash cans? And it was easy for people put out of work by the death of manufacturing to look at illegal aliens as coming to America to take away their jobs. It didn't matter if anything the Republicans said was true or not. What mattered was people could relate to what was being said in their day to day lives.

How did the Democrats counter such talk? Did they stand up for the rights of Americans being swept away in a tide of misinformed emotionalism? No. Did they hammer home the point that it's unacceptable to go back to abortions with wire hangers performed in back alleys by quacks when our Congressional types are open to discussion on how to fix the problem in ways acceptable to all concerned? No. Did they explain how the Republicans were taking away more middle class jobs than illegal aliens could ever hope to fill? No.

They kept beating the dead money horse over and over and over again. The Democrats couldn't relate to their base any longer and it cost them the last two presidential elections and the last three congressional elections and it won't stop until they relearn how to communicate with the man on the street again, the wage earner, the working middle class people they're supposed to represent.

Bush thought he won the election on values so he started in on Social Security thinking the average Joe and Jane was behind him. But he missed the point and Americans felt his cold fingers wrapping around their monthly means of keeping their heads above water and now King George is in trouble.

Now would be the perfect time for the Democrats to stop telling folks about Republican big money grabs and start showing the middle class how their pockets are being picked in ways people can relate to.

We'll try to do that here at The Blue Voice.

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