Davis Green: What's In a Name? Everything.

[Martin Eden]

What's In A Name? Everything.

How Progressives Can Start Winning Again By Renaming Their Opponents and Reframing The Debate
by David Michael Green
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0208-21.htm

Progressives are losing the war for America. At every level nationally - and, via disastrous foreign policies, across much of the world as well - we are in retreat. The country lurches further to the right every day, and every election cycle, because we on the left sorely lack ideas, the outlets to express them, quality candidates, compelling leaders, conviction, message and strategy.

But more than anything, progressives are getting creamed where it counts the most, and where small successes at little cost produce the largest dividends. We are losing the battle of framing. When it comes to the portrayal of issues, the contestants fighting those issues, the moral choices at stake, and the consequences of those choices, we are being severely outgunned on every front.

There are so many ways in which this is true that the magnitude of our drubbing is quite staggering. On at least four levels of political discourse we are losing badly before the fight even begins, because of our inattention to the overriding importance of framing.

At the most basic of these levels, the right has claimed a litany of successes across a wide range of specific issues, in large part just by reframing the debate. For example, by construing Iraq as an urgent threat to American security and a front in the 'war on terrorism' (itself a major frame), they handily won the domestic political struggle leading to war. (Though, of course, it would appear that the Iraqi insurgents didn't get the message. "If only", the White House must be thinking, "they could somehow be made to watch more Fox...") The right is now doing precisely the same thing with Social Security. If they can frame the system as 'in crisis', they have a far better chance of fooling the public into supporting its dismantling and privatization.
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Green makes some good points here, though it remains to be seen whether substituting "progressive" for liberal and "regressive" for conservative in the public mind can be achieved.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0208-21.htm

[meti57b]

1. perfect!

Main Entry: regress

Synonyms: backslide, degenerate, deteriorate, ebb, fall away, fall back, fall off, go back, lapse, lose ground, recede, relapse, retreat, retrogress, revert, rollback, sink, throw back, turn back, wane