I want to continue the theme of aggression in politics because I think that a new movement of the non-establishment liberal left needs to strategically use aggression to push ideas and policies into the mainstream. So, in response to my article on why Democrats need to be more aggressive, Sunder Katwala says:

…the Republican right in particular is fundamentally interested in driving an anti-government, anti-politics message. If they can get the public into the position of thinking “I don’t like it, but they are all pretty much the same” then this serves their agenda much more than that of the progressive left, because it limits severely the possibilities of politics and government.

It’s a compelling argument that needs more examination, but I think the Republican message is more sophisticated than that. Both Democrats and Republicans have a base: the former is more fired up by positivity, the letter is fired up more by resentment towards liberals and the idea that they will take away their guns or destroy American wealth/power/chruch. But it’s the independent/swing voters that matter.

What Republicans do really well is use emotional messaging to connect to voters who are not financially threatened, to say that they share similar values that makes the Republicans more comfortable to them. This has been drummed relentlessly through the narrative that “upscale latte-sipping liberals” look down on middle America (a meme that many self-loathing lefties here have also bought into).

Furthermore, Republicans are shameless about outright lying to frame Democrats as being bad for the country, that doesn’t just make people say politics is shit but also ends up raising doubts in the minds of swing voters. There’s nothing to suggest that less mud slinging (in the UK for example) leads to less apathy. In fact it may even rile up the respective bases so much that participation increases – as it will this year. McCain has gotten serious slack for negative campaigning because of various factors: (a) he played the ‘nice-guy maverick’ narrative and then went against it; (b) Obama’s campaign highlighted his negativity while downplaying theirs; (c) Obama had more money to run positive ads and drown out his negative ads; (d) Outside orgs didn’t go negative on Obama hard enough

If you do negative campaigning properly – it works. McCain’s mistake has been to not be clever about it.