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about things they care about, and to demonstrate how those things are affected by public policy even in seemingly unrelated areas, are hugely important.
And the ability to do that without looking "evasive", when one is commonly confined to question-answer format when speaking in public forums, is an important electoral skill.
A tiny example from my own experience as a sacrificial candidate in a constituency in Canada that would vote Liberal Party if the candidate were dead and the Liberals had just proposed taxing air.
A lefter-than-thou acquaintance of mine decided to ask us candidates, from the floor at a community association's all-candidates meeting, whether I supported the Sandinistas. Way to go, friend. Just the question I needed. I was first up.
So I immediately started talking about how the great feature of the Canadian tax system was that when you gave money to a charity, or the charity raised funds through its activities, the govt matched it dollar for dollar. So I saved all the stamps I got on my business mail and donated them to Oxfam, my favourite charity, which sold them to collectors and got funds from the govt to match the proceeds, and used the money for development projects, including in Nicaragua, which was how I wanted my tax dollars used, and allowed us all to have direct input into how our tax dollars were used.
Evasive, yeah, but substantive. A lot more interesting to the people there than my opinion of the Sandinistas, though. Biden's, of course, was much better. ;)
On substance -- it should never be assumed that people don't want it, or won't be interested if it's offered.
That election, our leader was immensely popular, although our party never got votes to match. After a leaders' debate in which he had done extremely well, I started saying to people at the door, "So, did you see the debate the other night?" People watch these things, but many don't talk about them around the dinner table or water cooler. When I asked what they thought of our party leader, they would say, sometimes with a little surprise, how impressed they were with him.
I'd ask what they thought about what he'd said about a particular issue. They'd talk about it. I'd offer some more info about party policy. By the end of the campaign, we were madly photocopying off "issue sheets" to hand out at the door, because I found that once I offered a woman with toddlers our issue sheet on child care, she'd say "what else do you have there?" and gather up the sheets on job creation, economic policy ...
I was flabbergasted; I'd never seen that kind of response, before or since -- people asking for campaign literature on the doorstep, and talking themselves into voting for us. We lost, of course, but we did double our vote in that constituency that year.
A party leader who talks to people about things that matter to them in such a way that they will want to listen, and helps them make sense of those things and understand where their interests lie in relation to them, is invaluable.
The right wing connects the dots by putting prejudice and popular-but-false wisdom in the space between things that reasoning or compassion could never connect. Using reason, and applying compassion, may take more time, but most people really aren't completely stupid or uncaring, and can recognize good sense and goodwill when they see it.
Election campaigns aren't the best forum for educating, but tracing the route between the dots is really what has to be done if one wants them to take that route.
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