If you think this is worth it, pass this on to State and County Chairpersons. It is hopes that this will be my contribution to the Democratic campaign. It is yours. You may copy it and change it and rewrite in line with your own opinions and needs.

In the outline below, Sections I and II were written a couple of months before the 2004 presidential election and III and IV soon after it. Section V at bottom is current and suggests an altogether different approach to turning Red states Blue. Do not skip Section V as it is the one prescribing for how to win the 2008 election. The history in Sections I through IV is an important prerequisite for understanding why the suggested new approach in Section V must be tried.

After the 2004 election, the Democrats began, albeit a bit too late, promoting talk radio stations and personalities. Now, TV news stations are regularly including radio talk show personalities in their evening segments featuring debates between both parties on hot political issues and critiques of presidential candidates campaigning effectiveness and gaffs.

Neither party has tapped into a huge but uninteresting potential voting block. This group is not media wise at all. They take whatever their favorite TV news shows say as the gospel truth. However, it is rare to find a news-junky among them.

Section V. below addresses this unquestioning, uninformed, disenfranchised, untapped voter reservoir and how to muster them to register, vote, and vote for the candidate that actually will be for them. Fortunately, most of these people are extremely anti-Bush. One really good thing about this strategy is that it can be a particularly repulsive strategy for the Republican type personalities to pursue. Fortunately, it is one that should excite Democratic types. In addition, it just might draw in a new group of highly motivated and energetic volunteers.

‘Boondocks’ Must Out ‘Hornswoggle’ Bush and the Reds

Bush’s deceitfulness carries argumentum ad hominem, misinformation, and character assassination tactics to new depths of moral depravity. Bush structures issues in black and white, simplistic terms and puts down genuinely, morally complex issues while endorsing fundamentalist, pseudo-biblical beliefs, and staged-for-the-moment value crises. In this regard, Bush attributes to Kerry positions and sayings that are opposite to Kerry’s actual positions.

Bush distorts historical facts of Kerry’s life and then Bush magnifies these false claims to the rank of high priority when they actually have no relevance to national and international issues. Bush twists, misrepresents, and presents half-truths with respect to Kerry’s legislative record and does so with such confident aplomb that naïve people hearing this would have to think that Kerry was a hopeless egghead totally neurotic, indecisive, muddleheaded, and tied-in-knots. He uses this technique very effectively by phrasing his statements in a simplistic, down-home, honest-Injun way that appeals to a minimally educated mentality.

Bush frames the campaign, his speeches, and his strategy, as though it were his baseball club in a contest with its rival. He frames it in terms of a ‘yeah’ for our side and ‘boo’ for their side to which the man-in-the-street can relate. It is as though Bush has an encyclopedia of hot-button words to stoke the fires of resentment latent in the man-in-the-street over their hardships but he redirects their resentment to fan flames of hostility toward Kerry.

Bush sets up straw issues that appeal to small town, fundamentalist, anti-science, and anti-intellectual, belief systems and makes it seem like the simplistic, narrow-minded, yokel ignorance or folksy way of knowing makes the hometown folk feel superior to the highly educated, bureaucratic, city slickers types. Bush makes being well informed, well educated, and intellectual out to be the equivalent of being ‘liberal’, decadent, anti-American, and a threat to mainstream American values. Bush frames these bogus arguments like they were determinative of our national character and destiny and like going along with the ‘liberals’ is the same as being a traitor or unpatriotic.

Bush construes huge problems of the economy, relations with other nations, healthcare, employment, poverty, and war as being trivial concerns and as though the Kerry camp is blowing them all out of proportion or like they are, as he is so fond of saying, ‘revisionist’ history. Bush makes reassuring predictions on these critical national issues and when they do not turn out the way he predicted but rather the opposite, he pretends that that was what he expected all along and ‘so not to worry’. Bush claims small, short-term positives as significant successes that prove his long-term vision was right and then raises bogus issues to distract and make people forget when those small, short-term positives are disastrously reversed.

It is not good enough to say Bush lies. Kerry must find ways to address, head-on, these nasty, lowbrow strategies and expose them immediately on appearance. He must educate, incessantly and assiduously, the working class people on how to detect Bush’s snake-oil salesmanship, and charlatan tactics. Kerry must do this in a way that makes the working class people take the classic stance of "Oh, of course I knew that!" and thus bolstering their self esteem for catching the city slicker at trying to exploit them. In other words, Kerry would be turning the Bush strategy back against him.

Kerry must use small town, folksy language to teach the people how to detect when Bush is surreptitiously trying to make fools of them, hoodwink them, and pull the wool over the ‘country hicks’ eyes’. He must teach them to question, ask for facts, to face the issue and not the man, and to question false claims and fabrications. He must teach them to question what the real priorities are versus the bogus ones Bush touts. He must teach them to remember how their lives and the state of the nation have changed under Bush. He must teach them to recall how Bush lied to get us into war with Iraq. He must teach them to contrast the long chronicle of spin-doctors’ versions the devious, dirty realities of the foul-ups of Bush's administration with that of his own. The strategy of repeat, repeat, repeat worked for Bush’s and the Red’s deceptions, so why shouldn’t the Democrats use the same strategy for their true Blue authentic achievements and plans on behalf of the people.

By using familiar allegories and dramatic metaphors taken from Texas lore, the Blues can open the corral gates on Bush and let out his bum steers and expose him for the lying tinhorn cowboy that he really is. There are common Texas phrases from and vignettes about the honesty of cattle ranchers of bygone days, cattle ranching, cowhands, drovers, Mexican immigrant ranch hands and farm workers, outdoorsmen and hunters and cowboys and their guns, native Texas wild animals, oil–oil wells-drilling, and other homespun cattle-country anecdotes, to illustrate how the people can tell the difference between the stock of a cattle rustler (Bush) from legitimate fire-branded cattle (the Blue’s candidate).

Finally, he must encourage the small-town, down-home folk to let Bush put his foot in his own fresh buffalo chips, give him his come-up-ins, and really lasso this smirking rhinestone cowboy and hogtie him good come Election Day.

Flashback to 8/28/2004

The Bush-Rove Linguistic Advantage

If Bush had Ashcroft enact a new law stating, "There shall be no shenanigans at any Hootenannies" called the ‘Hootenanny Law’, he could exercise absolute control over the hoards of ‘political scum’ invading the New York Republican Convention next week. Since no one on the upper Eastern Seaboard would know what that meant, he could get away with arresting anybody for anything and just tell them that they had violated the ‘Hootenanny Law’. As long as they were prevented from communicating with one another during the convention, the Bush people would have a sui generis law by which they could selectively put away especially annoying protesters and their attorneys would be helpless to intervene until after the convention. Police, unhampered by legitimacy, could lambently waltz through the piebald, placard waving crowds deftly plucking suspected political imposters, ne'er-do-wells, malcontents, and malicious infiltrators from the midst of the chosen, elite, bona fide ultra-conservative, rightwing, evangelical political insiders. When released after the convention the police could simply explain that the individual had exhibited suspicious behavior that seemed precipitously tantamount to orchestrated, disruptive mischief.

Consider the linguistic contrast between the preceding paragraph and Section I’s "hornswoggling and hogtying tinhorns" language. Here lies the advantage of the ability to employ the cultural and linguistic eccentricities of the small-town, undereducated, redneck constituency when in their milieu. When the audience consists of the republican base, Rove can instruct Bush to use language and content appropriate to that powerful, privileged, corrupt, disingenuous, calculating and unscrupulous, ultra-conservative group of political strategists. When you think of addressing the latter, can you not envision Rove and the other top level White House staff and Department Secretaries parading around a Waldorf convention room consorting with wealthy CEOs and discussing such things as stocks; foreign investments; imports and exports; oil pipelines and ocean tankers; the latest high tech weaponry; espionage; alliances; the value of the dollar against foreign currencies; or in the inner sanctum of the Bush war-room pontificating in language full of concepts and vocabulary that is militaristic; legal; Latinized legal language of corporate contracts; acronyms and vernacular of marketers and advertisers; statistical trends; logistics; co-optation strategies of simulations; zero sums and game theory; prioritized resource allocations; demographic voter characteristics; geopolitics; manipulating public opinion; pseudo-religious buzz words; occasionally throwing in comments about recent Op-Eds in major newspapers; angels of biased commentators; and now and then an erudite literary or sports allusion? Who among the rank and file of the populace speaks language like this?

Think about it, who are the true constituents of the Republican base? They are mainly a small percentage of the population that has incomes of well over a half a million dollars. Most of them own their own business or hold upper management positions. They hire or supervise hundreds of employees. They are highly educated and well versed in specialized vocabularies like those of monetary theory and business management. They have access to networks of top-level people in the media, government, business organizations, private clubs, and members of corporate boards. They live in expensive homes in gated, exclusive neighborhoods. They attend upper class churches, if at all. They subscribe to newsletters that have a limited, party loyal, group of subscribers. They donate large sums of money to politicians. They donate to charity through charity balls where they do a considerable amount of name-dropping. Their pictures are occasionally seen on the Society pages of newspapers. They are ambitious for money, power, influence, and fame.

Do you remember Stockwell, Reagan’s initial director of the White House Office of Management and Budget who called Reagan a "scrooge"? It is very rare that a slip up is made like putting someone with Stockwell’s values in a critical high-level position. Society’s top level, wealthy and powerful is a very close-knit group. They do not let outsiders in but can be icily, superficially chivalrous with them when they have to. They are masters at keeping up appearances and displaying proper décor. They display their extensive knowledge of elegant furniture brands; authenticated antiques; rare artifacts; private collection art works and exclusive auctions; luxurious and exotic clothing materials and brand name clothiers; sumptuous foods; fashionable furriers; opulent, outrageously pricey jewelry from renowned lapidary artists and elite outlets; exclusive, vintage, dated fine wines; hoity toity cultural events, and such. They are experts in formal and stilted communication and at deftly and diplomatically shunning those who are not. They are very stingy when it comes to sharing their wealth with employees and the needy but they are adroit at appearing to be philanthropists. Those cloistered within this tiny minority are the people that run the country!

On the other hand, the vast majority of the population is made up of lumberjacks; roughnecks and roustabouts; cowboys, rancheros, or caballeros; longshoremen and dock workers; swabs and gobs; merchant marines; foot soldiers; ditch diggers; leathernecks; hard hats; men in blue; farm workers; clerks; coal miners; construction workers; teachers; prison guards; food service workers; stockers; security guards; cleaning staff and maintenance workers; public and commercial transportation drivers and truckers, checkers and loaders and un-loaders; nurses and LVNs; military veterans of all branches; small shop owners; and in general the vast number of members of the lower middle class, working-class poor, welfare recipients, and ghetto inner city churches and youth clubs. What do attitudes of people with these affiliations and in these occupations have in common? They believe in loyalty, rules, and conventional morality. They do not worry much over keeping up appearances except on very special occasions. They do not stand on ceremony but prefer to be informal and keep conversation monosyllabic, simple, consensual, and about common everyday events. They are prone to put-down jokes and bathroom humor and to laugh with belly-laughs. They are candid in expressing feelings. They can be hospitality experts, even at making strangers feel relaxed and at home, unless they are putting on air. They are typically generous with what little they have. While they tend to have a live and let live attitude, they can be somewhat territorial at times, especially if someone is unduly intrusive, or obviously trying to rip them off.

Males in this stratum of society tend to have a be-tough and get tough attitude. They tend to speckle their conversations with four letter words, put-downs, and suggestive remarks. Males have a macho, competitive, fix-it identity. They will expound on what they would do if someone questions their masculinity. They are quick to defend their honor and the honor of their family. They affirm their protectiveness toward their women and can flare when the line of respect is crossed. Females are subservient, preoccupied with their appearance, and coquettish. Females tend to talk about relationships, conformity, children, and social standing. They will fuss over making their home proper and clean. Among themselves, women make fun of their husbands’ lack of psychological insight and coarse domestic habits. When both genders discuss politics it usually consists of whom they like and dislike and what they think should be done about this or that but always in general terms. Platforms are never discussed. If the talk of policies, it is mainly a highly condensed version of what their favorite newsperson reported. They are much more likely to watch, on the TV news, human-interest stories, especially catastrophes, comical mishaps, oddities of nature, crimes, and scandals than in-depth coverage of national, and world issues. C-SPAN stations are not likely to be their favorites. If I have misconstrued people here, the point is that their lives and language are extremely different from that of the upper class. When addressing the lower class, and even the middle class, politicians have to adapt their language to the variant used by that audience. Campaign volunteers must also do so, and even more so.

Most of these middle and lower class people are employed by or accountable to the rich or well to do and, when at the ballot box, they tend to vote as their employer or company wants them to. They are, therefore, the uninformed pawns of the rich. Therefore, to a large extent, the poor and rich form a homogeneous voting group. Many of the middle class and some of the poor will vote for the party for which their family and friends have always voted. They usually vote a straight party ballot. Sometimes a group of friends and associates will include someone whom we can call ‘an inside dopester’, someone who knows someone in an important, official position. Sometimes a member of a group is able to subscribe to some secret, exclusive source that reveals the other party’s goal and game plan. These inside-dopesters give the group their privileged information. The inside dopester can exert considerable influence on voter behavior. Typically, however, it takes something more dramatic for a family or close-knit group to switch political parties.

Since the middle and lower classes represent by far the largest percentage of the population, this is where campaign strategists tend to focus. Consequently spending the money, gaining the effectual knowledge, and exerting the effort required to control and sway the major media outlets and the ‘local populace-media’ has top priority. Wealthy conservatives are not natural partners with the populace while liberals always have been acknowledged as the champion’s of the people until recently. Garnering the votes of this huge segment of the population is a very high priority for the wealthy and influential of the nation. They were definitely successful in this endeavor in the last few elections.

Intellectuals, who are the non-affluent college educated, are in between these two upper and lower divisions of the population. They tend to be readers and take a deprecating attitude toward the popular media. These intellectuals typically are more influenced by the contrarian and counter-culture media. Only when their sources seem validated as authentic, more realistic, deeper, and more consequential, is their thirst quenched. A high percentage of them will spend a good amount of their leisure time with friends discussing politics, evaluating the qualifications of politicians, and dissecting and critiquing issues. They also do this kind of intense debating with respect to the state of the nation. They are particularly adept at analyzing what is wrong with politics and our culture. This aspect of the liberal’s dialogue makes them susceptible to the conservative’s charge that they are anti-American. Liberals have been fighting a losing battle against this conservative propaganda. However, intellectuals represent a very small and basically non-influential percentage of the population.

These three groups have little communication, at least honest and true communication, with each other. With this in mind, consider who and what does determine the way the majority of people will vote. Consider the hypothesis that elections are won by knowing how to manipulate and determine voter choices. To win, the goal is not the dissemination of correct and significant information. Something else is the pivotal factor in getting votes.

There is a fourth group that presents the candidates and the media moguls with a serious dilemma. This fourth group is one group each party must vigorously fight for and it is the Independents. Some independents are also are intellectuals. Many intellectuals are not independents but rather party loyalists. The significant point here is that while independents, like intellectuals, represent a small percentage of the voting public, they are a powerful group. They are the ‘dreaded swing voters’.

The structure of the American two-party system creates a bizarre phenomenon. A political party creates ideological tunnel vision. This results in a kind of ethical imbecility. Whatever a person’s party’s candidate or elected official does is regarded as good and wise. Whatever the opposing party’s candidate or elected official does is considered bad and stupid. If each act of each political leader were regarded in and of itself, without considering their political affiliation, then the evaluation of many acts would be the exact opposite as when viewed through the lens of party affiliation. As it is, regarding anything related to the political opponent as good and wise is tantamount to treason in the eyes of one’s own party and political reference group. This tendency is eschewed by the independent. Independents tend to consider each position on each issue independently of its relation to a party.

This label, independent, means not just that they can swing back in forth in their choices but it mainly means that they can unexpectedly swing the election. Often no one knows until after the election which candidate will get their votes. These people definitely are not the sheep that the majority tends to be. Furthermore, they are not likely to vote ‘for the person’ as does the majority. By election time, they tend to know which candidate will benefit them the most and which will be the most dangerous for the nation’s future.

Because of this vast diversity in the voter population, campaign speeches and sound bytes must be carefully targeted to the special susceptibilities of each group. Broadly speaking, there are the four aforementioned groups, namely the close-knit wealthy, the populace, the independents, and the intellectuals. These four groups greatly diverge from one another in their attitudes, beliefs, preferences, and bases for voting choices. The populace as a whole has a vast diversity of attitudes, beliefs, preferences, and bases for voting choices.

A clever ploy of the conservative party is deliberately to offend the intellectuals. This is a winning strategy when trying to gain favor with the wealthy conservatives and populace. On the other hand, intellectuals tend to supply a forceful consortium of activists and volunteers for the liberal party. Liberal politicians, on the other hand, face the dilemma that if they woo these highly prized intellectuals, they are likely to offend the non-intellectual majority. Wooing intellectuals gives conservatives powerful weapons to turn against liberals and woo the populace. Conservatives are more likely to offend the swing-vote independents who, if not themselves intellectuals, still tend to be swayed by more intellectually leaning arguments.

Independents have memories and are skeptics. Keeping their choices open, they listen and carefully examine the candidates’ messages and to some extent include candidates’ styles when evaluating each candidate before deciding. They will remember and compare deceptions and inconsistencies. The message of each candidate is mulled over in contrast to the other groups who either do not listen to opposing parties’ candidates or discount them out of hand. When decisions are left open and information from all sides is questioned and mulled over, more information will be retained, critical aspects of contrasting messages will be remembered for longer periods, inconsistencies more readily detected, issues and their significance will be more deeply understood. Each party’s loyalists and defenders may detect information inconsistencies but will not engage in equal opportunity mulling over. As a group, however, independents will stand apart from the others because, for them, message rates higher than style. Candidates, therefore, should be more relaxed and spontaneous when addressing groups affiliated with their own party and tense, cautious, and equivocal when addressing independents.

The trick for both conservatives and liberals is to seem to be honest and specific enough, and consistent enough, in stating their positions to convince the independents and still spin their seemingly commonsensical platitudes and conventional beliefs to suit regional variations. Conservatives cannot totally write off intellectuals because of their potential influence with the independents. Both conservatives and liberals must, therefore, weave their words through fields of opinion landmines. The veracity vultures are lurking about the campaign trails and always have an eye out for a stumbling miscalculation of messages tailored to one regional majority audience that contradicts messages delivered to an alien region or majority sub culture or ethnic group. Reporting a faux pas like this can make a reporter’s reputation and career. Consequently, each party’s writers and publicists have to be masters in the art of weaving, as much as is humanly possible, colorful, coherent, consistent, verifiable, and highly provocative tapestries of political opinion.

Dick, Ron, and George W. were presented as somewhat similar types with personas that included traits like ‘tough talk’, ‘be tough’, and ‘get tough’, homespun humor, hometown values, good natured good ole boy, true-grit competitor, steely under pressure, leader, get-it-done man, and defend and protect the family and the nation. Their speeches were full of idealistic phrases, moralistic platitudes, slogans, commitment to main street morals, and country boy puts one over the city slicker humor. However, when examined, their speeches devoid of substance.

‘Jimmy and Rosalind Carter’ had the persona of a down-home, common man, idealistic, common sense, ole-time religion Sunday school teacher, sympathy for the underdog, dirt-under-the-fingernails style and appearance. Rosalind was the faithful, subservient, plain and decent, but not afraid to politely speak up, icon for the generic American woman. Jimmy’s speeches were soft spoken, analytical, visionary, and yet easily understandable by the common man. He came across as having a grassroots, unpretentious sincerity and unflappable authenticity and as someone you could trust with anything. He also radiated the character of a true, genteel, wise, farmer-aristocrat, similar to that of our founding fathers.

In radical contrast was the persona of ‘Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy’. Their persona had a teenage romantic fantasy quality about it. They were startlingly different in style and appeal from all of the others with the exception, perhaps, of Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Here were two bona-fide aristocrats, the king and queen of the prom, who did not consider themselves too good to be identified with the ordinary plain Janes and Joes of America. They were a happily married King Arthur and Guinevere. They made all America feel as though they were living with the King and Queen in Camelot. However, she was the classic delicate, graceful, subservient, ideal hostess and he, in addition to being an aristocrat, was a rough and tumble touch football player, a daring veteran surviving near death attack at sea, a man standing up to and facing down both communists and big corporations, yet, at the same time, tranquilly sitting in a rocking chair on a front porch and conversing with the elderly. He was the opposite of Nixon in speeches. His were eloquent, bristling with an encyclopedia of facts and statistics, and yet exuberant and quick with pithy, Confucius-like wise-sayings, and wry one-liner jokes that had great audience appeal. Kennedy also had his consummate persona creator, Ted Sorenson, cultivating his persona just as Bush has his Karl Rove. Unfortunately, Carter’s persona creator proved not to be quite up to the challenge.

‘Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson’ had a break-away persona, particularly Lady Bird who was a precursor to the modern, independent, ecofeminist, person-in-her-own-right woman who was emerging in the sixties. She brought the Texas style graceful hospitality to the White House. In addition, she was a highly successful business woman. Lyndon brought with him the, some might say, notorious Texas style arm twisting. He was a master of behind the scenes tough negotiating. His fellow politicians were rightfully afraid of him just as they had been with the famous Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn. The other side to Johnson was the warm, lovable, man of the people and champion of the poor. He was formidable his pursuit of the "Great Society" and his "War on Poverty". He had the persona that was both folksy and highly sophisticated. He also had the appearance of a loving and protective father. Together, their persona was reminiscent of ‘Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt’. I recall seeing Roosevelt in my hometown movie theater when the ‘Newsreel’ was played before the movie started. What an elegant, measured, strong, classically oratorical voice he had! And Eleanor was also a force to be reckoned with. She was extremely outspoken and powerful reinforced Franklin’s persona of a Champion of the people. In the cases of both the Roosevelt’s and the Johnson’s, they were successful in keeping their achievements consistent with their personas.

All of these men presented above, both Republican and Democrat, along with their wives, had personas that resonated with the populace or common man, but also with many of those in the other three groupings of voters, upper and lower class ‘party faithful’, intellectuals, and independents. Again, when someone says they vote for the person and not the party or the platform and such, they are, in fact, voting for the persona created by their publicist and speech writers. Of course, their life long, observable, characteristics must not deviate much from the persona invented for them. Setting that aside, and given that candidates have their party’s backing and sufficient funds to campaign, then accepting that it is nothing but this one central factor, the persona, that wins elections is essential. This entails that volunteers must over learn their candidate’s persona and how to present it to their prospects and audiences. Neither Gore nor Kerry and their publicists and writers mastered the art of persona creation and presentation. In spite of all of his flaws, George W. won twice because Karl Rove was a master of persona creation and presentation. Rove was much less successful, over time, in concealing in concealing Bush’s true character.

For the final plank in the boardwalk sashay to the White House, which will be outlined in Section V below, those who want to influence elections must discern who their target populations will be. They must find a way take hot button issues and weave them with consistency into the persona of their candidate. In the end, it must look as though a candidate’s positions on hot button issues emanate from his true character (persona) rather than that he adopted them out of duplicitous expediency. The more artfully this is done, the more they will bolster the candidate’s persona as one that is America’s next true political hero archetype, and the more likely that their candidate will win.

Flashback to 11/06/2004

Small-Town Middle and Lower Class Whites Ruled the Texas Elections Inline with the Rest of the US

How Texas Divided into a Red Majority and a Blue Minority

Before analyzing how Rove did it, consider the case of Texas as an example of how Rove did his magic in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Election results for Texas may not perfectly mirror the nation but a structural analysis may shed light on the reasons for the configuration of county republican versus democrat trends as well as point the way to altering this configuration in future elections.

In the chart below are trends for all of the major Texas Metro Areas. From left to right, with decreasing percentages, are the Gore 2000 Metro Counties. Gore rural counties are below that. Next are the Kerry Metro Counties. Only Travis and El Paso were solid for Kerry. The others, Dallas, Harris, and Bexar broke even or almost even except the Nueces and Tarrant were just slightly more for Bush.

Rural Texas Eastern counties have high % Afro-American populations and West and South counties have high % Hispanic populations and were also Gore and Kerry counties. Bush rode heard on the rest of the state in both elections!

Out of 254 Texas Counties, the following went for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.

In 2000, these were Gore counties:

Metro Area Counties:

El Paso

Rural Area Counties:

East Texas: Jefferson Morris

South Texas: Zavala Starr Dimmit Duval Brooks Jim Hogg Willacy

West Texas: Presidio Culbertson Reeves Brewster Hidalgo Zapata Webb

Maverick Jim Wells La Salle Cameron Kennedy Frio

In 2004, these were Kerry counties:

Metro Area Counties (Kerry had a only a slim margin over Bush in these Metro areas):

Rural Area Counties:

East Texas: Jefferson Morris

South Texas: Zavala Starr Dimmit Duval Brooks Jim Hogg Willacy

West Texas: Presidio Culbertson Reeves Brewster Hidalgo Zapata Webb

Maverick Jim Wells La Salle Cameron Kennedy Frio

The East Texas Counties have largely Afro-American populations and South and West Texas Counties have mostly Hispanic populations. 230 of the 254 Texas Counties went for Bush. About half of the Texas Counties have populations below 18,000. Five out of the twenty largest Counties went for Gore in 2000. Nineteen out of the remaining two-hundred and thirty-four Counties went for Gore. Those that went for Gore were Counties with mostly Hispanic or Afro-American citizens.

These results suggest that Red Counties were small town middle and lower class whites who know each other well, have the strongest push toward social propriety, and are lead, for the most part, by a minimally educated fundamentalist clergy. These towns have low crime rates. They tend to have local radio and TV antennas rather than cable TV, which restricts their view of the world. Their local newspapers reflect their provincial bias. They listen to poorly educated fast and coarse talking, judgmental, radio DJs who preach a weird combination of fundamentalist religion, fundamentalist-Victorian morals, and right wing, simplistic versions of politics and economics. They tend toward winning arguments through vague generalities and character assassination rather than verifiable facts. Consequently, these populations have an extremely isolated, provincial, local view of the world and are highly susceptible to demagoguery about national and international matters. While they probably only added about 10% to the state vote, that is enough to swing an election.

I am not suggesting that Texas demographics are representative of all other US states. However, having lived in quite few other states in the North, Mid West, West coast, the Bible Belt, and East coast and sampled the culture, life styles, and opinions of many of their small towns, I have strong feeling that their worldviews are similarly narrow and conservative. I have also lived in the large cities in these regions. I have a tendency to explore sub cultures, ethnic groups, churches from a variety of religious denominations wherever I go. I have found that the poverty areas and the middle class in large cities tend to have conservative values and fundamentalists leanings and they are not prone to listen to stations like CPANs. They are drawn to Archie Bunker TV newscasters.

Being relatively insulated from the big city worlds, the small town news is local and is not forwarded to outside media outlets. Communication common to the world outside, with their higher information to noise ratios, investigative reporters, information about modern ideas and science, and debates that approximate equal representation from all points of view does not get in to these small towns either. They are fortunate if they can even get FOX, ABC, NBC, or CBS. When and if they do get these, the TV shows are tailored to the local situation. They have no competing sources of information that could have a persuasive impact and if some did slip in, the forces for conformity would squash it. All of the media, that is to say radio and local newspapers, in these small towns tend to project the suppressed or hidden mean-spirited and ‘sinful’ side of their audience onto the outside world. They get these country-culturally-isolated folk to turn against and condemn city slicker decadent morality and big city religious ‘modernism’. This leads to reinforcing boondocks’ self-righteousness, bigotry, and xenophobia.

Now, let us back up and remember that the Republican base is a very small minority of the nation’s population. The poor and the working and middle classes do not perceive the very rich as being like them or having their interests at heart. Therefore, the challenge for the wealthy upper-class is how to get the poor to vote for their candidate. They needed to be in control of the White House if they were to achieve their corporate national and international goals. The crux of the matter is that it is this mindset that is behind the governing of America and the decision making about the critical, complex, international, economic, and domestic issues of the day.

They found their answer to this challenge in a formula developed by the oil billionaire H. L. Hunt. After World War II, Hunt observed that people in isolated country towns spent a lot of their leisure time listening to the radio. In particular, they listened to broadcasts of religious messages. Any time of day or night a person could turn on the radio and listen to a fundamentalist preacher. The broadcasts were financed by offering their public autographed pictures of Jesus Christ for a few dollars. They also sold Bibles and religious relics. Hunt figured that if these people were gullible enough to think they were buying an actual picture of Jesus Christ with His actual autograph, he could get them to believe and do just about anything. It was a matter of weaving his conservative, republican ideology into the ole-time Gospel radio talk shows and sermons. This goal was easily achieved. Hunt’s formula was eventually seized upon by the Republican Party strategists and mastered by Karl Rove. These radio evangelists in these remote, rural communities preach a combination of fundamentalist Christianity and conservative ideology. It was a stroke of genius that this sociological observation led to its becoming the centerpiece of Rove’s campaign strategy.

This antediluvian, ‘Smallville' situation was found to be able to pave the way for imperialist jingoism at the highest level and plays right into the hands of the Project for a New American Century and the Carlyle group and other international collaborators. How can they penetrate these insulated small towns? These backwoods, often unscrupulous, religious radio DJs started to be funded by right wing political action groups! Karl Rove mobilized countless armies of temporary workers, some paid and many volunteers, to speak their small town, provincial, fundamentalist language and mobilize their evangelicals against hot button values issues such as gay marriage and abortion and to create in their minds a picture of big city liberals as advocates for a godless, morally bankrupt, and, especially, a sexually decadent metropolitan America. This made for a powerful combination of forces converging upon these information-deprived and information-processing-challenged small town citizens. Add in their adaptation of the Bush baseball – ‘yeah’ ‘boo’ ‘lets get em’ - mentality and lingo and the Reds were able to win the hearts and votes of a majority of the voters.

Because of this carefully, and somewhat expensively, orchestrated funneling of information to the inhabitants of these desolate, backwoods villages with their folk of naïve Neanderthal mentality, Rove and his people could tell them anything as long as it was couched in their countrified patois and merged with their Holy Roller religious vocabulary. Success in this endeavor, consequently meant that Republicans would get a majority vote and all of the huge international corporations such oil, pharmaceuticals, finance, and mining natural resources, raw materials, etc. would be given carte blanch to exploit foreign labor supplies, plunder natural resources, and wreak havoc on the environment over the entire face of the earth, pollute water supplies, and on and on, with impunity, - no suites or legal consequences.

If ever a marriage was made in hell, it is that between the global corporations and clueless middle, lower class, and backwoods religious America!

A painstaking analysis of these cultural and communication structures, just as Rove did, and a search for ways to alter them to bring about an accurately informed, rational middle and lower class America, an America that is immune to airways saturated with radical, lowbrow demagoguery, seems to offer the greatest promise for our future. The Democrats must eschew any attitude that portrays these small, out of the way, towns and townspeople as jerkwater places. Instead, they must be re-construed away from the Rove version’s assumption of their being xenophobic, inhospitable to the outside world, narrow-minded, fundamentalist, morally conventional and legalistic, jingoistic, stingy, rednecks and toward being depicted as being people who are good-hearted, warm, hospitable, honest, neighborly, and who believe in being my ‘brother’s keeper’. Note that now the emphasis has switched from the candidates’ personas to how the candidates characterize ‘the people’.

One statistic that is not available but reported from Rove himself is the massive money and effort put into mobilizing a huge cadre of republican volunteers, in the last ten days of the election, to send them to the small towns and out of the way places of Middle America, and especially to those of the middle red states, and to mobilize the evangelicals in towns that one gets to by going down county and farm roads. Rove claims that this campaign blitzkrieg was the main factor that won the election for Bush. By this time, Rove did not have to change their beliefs or mindset; they had already been well marinated and well cooked by radio waves for the big Election Day barbeque. He just had to rev up their imbedded motivation to get them out to vote, to prevent the devil's emissary, Kerry, from being elected. Rove’s eleventh hour, highfalutin cattle drive opened the gates for the big Red rodeo at the Bush OK Corral.

Flashback to 11/06/2004

How Karl Rove Pulled It Off

The question is how did they get this way, where was the information input from, and what were the dynamics behind the cementing of their block vote? Small town and Middle America was a fertile ground from which those who were loyal to Bush could spring up like a voracious, vote-snaring beast over night. Real issues were irrelevant to them. In the final analysis, an ole-timey, evangelical sounding voice was the energizer of the ignorant beast.

The geographical and demographical structures and the structure of the media interfacing between the rural and cosmopolitan worlds and other cultural, logistical, and communication structural factors are the critical factors to be divined and analyzed. It is these that must be used to develop viable restructuring strategies. This is what will make the difference. However, these structural factors have shaped their privileged education, economy, religion, espoused values, life styles, language idiosyncrasies, politics, and, yes, even personalities. Their use of these powerful structural factors that will determine America’s voting patterns. Regardless of how hard we wish, the Republicans have the edge with the evangelicals and the majority of the people with the bit and reins of the corporate world directing their lives. Likewise, they have the edge with ‘all’ varieties of media. The FCC paved the way for that. After all, Murdoch, Clear Channel, Time-Warner, GE and a small handful of others now have the media sewed up and we know, or you should know, what their agendas are. With world enough and time my friends, the Reds coyness were no crime. In other words, there is a year until the next election. The Reds, now with or without Rove, are masters at the two and three step. They also can, if they wish, have the money to pay off the media to repeat, repeat, and repeat misinformation, lies, character assassinations, falsely construed values, bogus explanations and rationales, false promises, fabricated fears, revisions of history, ridicule of major Blue’s proposals, and minimizations of the Blues’ significance issues. By November 2008, their now barren political landscape could look like a tropical paradise.

In case you choke a bit over the assertion that even personality is shaped by structural factors, let me reiterate and expand on that. Yes, we are all shaped by structures, but we think we are who we are because of day-to-day and moment-to-moment decisions we make. If the politicians think that certain ‘kinds of people’ go Red and other kinds go Blue, or that people with a certain set of beliefs go Red and others Blue, then they are stuck with the same data sets that marketers and political statisticians and demographers have used so successfully in the past. Politics, however, does not have to work that way. That is the genius of Rove, he knows this difference between marketing and politics, and he understands the roles of personality and beliefs versus the role of structures. He is a master of structural socio-political design. You have seen it at work in the last two elections.

Using this knowledge, Rove plays the electorate as a virtuoso violinist plays the strings of the violin. It was masterful the way he sent his demagogic troops to the hinterland. He was masterful in selecting just the right kind of troops, those who were similar in crucial ways to the hicks and the cosmopolitan fundamentalists. He chose people who could speak or mimic the hometown dialects and gave them just the precisely right message to deliver at precisely the right moment. ‘Political Proselytizing’ is now the name of the game.

He was manipulating structures, marshaling from each level of structure what it was uniquely suited to do and directing them to structures most likely to be swayed. He was manipulating systems within structures, especially communication systems, each deployed from the right level of structure. He understood and correctly used the relations between history, time, and especially timing, and the motivation balance within targeted groups deftly to tip that balance so they would actually go to the polls and vote to stop Kerry the sell-out of our troops, the anti-American opponent of free enterprise and capitalism, and corrupter of the American way of life.

Everything I have read and every TV show on the subject addresses how the Blues lost by losing the values debate that was raging between Blue liberals and the rest of the nation, what we think of as that crazy combination of the right-wing elites, evangelicals, and easy to fleece lower class and Middle American sheep. In other words, these authors of Red victory and speechmakers of Red façades were emphasizing the ‘message’ when it now appears to me that the problem lay with the delivery strategy and the target population.

The Red lower-middle classes were not initially motivated to go to the polls because of their beliefs; otherwise, they would have turned out much heavier in 2000. First, they were made to be motivated because Rove penetrated the Airwave-Wall between these rural insulated communities and the outside world. Second, he succeeded because he took into consideration the modes and styles of communication to which they were most susceptible. And, third, he succeeded because he understood the importance of ‘timing’. None of these factors has to do with message except that he had to deliver a message that they could easily relate to. The message did not have to have anything to do with reality. He could have used a very different message, not dissonant but different, as long as the other three conditions were met. And how did he accomplish this? He understood the structure media modes that were prevalent in these backwoods and small town communities - as well as those that were not in vogue or even present.

Here is the deal. If you have a Republican Party chairperson in one of these small communities, you can feed him even bogus information on the ‘threats and conspiracies’ that they have to guard against. Now he becomes the inside dopester providing the inside dope to his fellow citizens. You make him feel like he is special because he is collaborating with the ‘big boys’, the one’s who really know what is going on. You lay out the simple, concrete plan in the plainest language, complete with dates for execution and method of feedback on how it is playing with the local yokels. Then, man-o-man, watch him go! Next, the message du jour, tailored to the rural folk, floods the local newspaper, local radio station (‘‘Listen up folks, this is just in from our man in Washington"), his party lackeys, and whomever else he has in his pocket and they rapidly saturate they rest of the surrounding population. They make sure to give the local reverends the message so that they can it work into their sermons and so that it is sure to resonate with his sheep (congregation) because they have already heard it through the grapevine. You see, Rove’s strategy is quick, easy, effective, affordable, and a perfect way to make a stealth attack on the unsuspecting Blind Blues.

If you cannot see the difference between traditional strategies and Rove’s strategy, then the Blues truly will fall victim to the next Red Rover attack.

He who understands structures possesses the fulcrum that Archimedes had been looking for when he said, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the earth". In this case, the structure of local communication systems and the structure of exposure to forms of media; the structure of geo-demographic distribution of locations of sub populations; the structure of histories of sub populations; the structure of transportation systems; the structure of the vernaculars of sub groups in relation to the language and language conventions of the majority; the structure of the political hierarchy in relation to agencies and organizations and their relations to poverty, health, crime, wages, and ethnicity; the interactions between levels of socio-economic status and educational attainment; and roles and role relationships as a fulcrum that moves the populace. These structures constrain and shape the dynamics within a society which in turn shape personality characteristics.

Using these concepts as your starting point, fill in their instantiation in the actual communities of interest. Understanding how these structures affect lives and socio-political interactions is a first step to be followed by entertaining hypotheses about which structures can be altered or used as a part of your plan and strategy to reach your goals. Use your imagination and play with perspectives on how structures and systems interact, keep revising as you gain insights and deeper understanding and eventually you will arrive at a strategy that is effective and efficient. Remember, it is not persons that are bad (whatever that means) but rather the malformed structures of society that shape them.

10/20/2007

Rousing the Really Poor, Sick, Handicapped, Imprisoned, Exploited, Ethnically Discriminated Against, Powerless, Downtrodden, Despairing, Disenfranchised, Disadvantaged, and Disenchanted to Defeat the Reds and Elect Someone Who Truly Would Be Their Champion

First of all, you must have a master strategy to launch into this atypical, trail-breaking adventure. It can be quite unnerving to go out unfamiliar places in order to meet with unfamiliar people. These most probably will be people whom you have unconsciously or even deliberately shunned in the past. Consequently, it is wise to make brief excursions into these un-trodden paths. Go with two or more of you as you venture into these areas. Just engage in small talk at first to see that you will not be contaminated of harmed. Mainly just listen to them. Eventually, take succinct flyers, buttons, bumper stickers, window stickers, yard posters, and the like to offer to those who appear curious or interested. Finally, when you have gained a comfort level and some skill, encourage those interested to take your campaign materials and pass them out at their gathering places. Now you are at the stage of recruiting bona fide volunteers to assist you.

Encourage these volunteers to recruit, on the spot, the poor, handicapped, unemployed, vets, young people, etc. Encourage them to talk to small groups on porches, street corners, bus stops, convenience stores, and in yards in poor communities and housing projects and other places listed below. If possible, give them semi-official insignia that identifies them with your campaign. Try to find natural leaders in neighborhoods and designate them as official leaders. Give them duties and schedules. Invite them to co-lead with you when you hold small rally groups in their neighborhoods. Defer to the indispensable leadership role of the indigenous leaders. You may be surprised at how effective these people can be. If possible, get them to select lieutenants to assist them with information dissemination and tasks like assisting with voter registration and transporting to the polls.

Emphasize that you are giving them the inside information that is excluded or played down by the major media outlets. If you are a typical, highly intelligent, liberal democrat, then you may have to learn to adapt your language to people with a ninth grade education and below average IQs. Please be aware that lack of higher education or low I.Q. does not mean that they are unintelligent. Their intelligence developed along a different path and in their own way will be smarter and more rouse than you are. Learning to speak their language and relying on them can be a humbling experience. Frequently those with ethnic dialects and street people with street idioms develop unique insider expressions and clever attenuated and elided patterns of communication that are precisely significant and rousing to their unique audience. Consider, as an example, the well known Cajun patois. How much more effective would a person with a knowledge of Cajun language be with Cajuns?

Contact blitzes with your target groups should occur intermittently and most strongly in the week preceding election days and/or primaries to avoid saturation and ensure the message will be in memory for the right time. If possible, get small, local newspapers to list the names of local volunteers and meeting times and especially to cite those with unique tactics and successes. These can make for very good human-interest stories. Avoid the major news, radio, and TV outlets. Many more than you might think have computers or access to them and a capable of communicating with their ‘peoples’ revolution groups’ by instant messaging and email. Some may even have their own web sites.

Make sure there are ways to assist your local leaders so that they can assist their recruited voters in getting them to register to vote, keeping them informed about where and when to vote, and in being prepared with plans for transporting voters to their polling places.

Once again, wherever you talk to spontaneously formed audiences, make sure you do much more listening than talking. Make sure that you let them know that you are making a mental note of their concerns and/or beliefs, even if they may be offensive to you or seem to be grossly mistaken in their information. Know your key issues and how they might relate to these audiences. Practice rewording these issues to resonate with such highly unusual and diverse groups of the poor and disenfranchised potential voters. One way to do this is to keep a running notebook of what you have gleaned from encounters with these people and then share your observations and thoughts with other volunteers.

There is nothing like respectful listening to ensure that genuine listening is reciprocated.

5. To analyze candidates’ current campaign finances, see:

http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapApp.do

http://www.cfinst.org/
http://www.opensecrets.org/index.asp
http://www.followthemoney.org/index.phtml

6. For up to the minute disclosure for candidates’ false statements, go to:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

http://mediamatters.com

7. For investigative reporting on significant public issues to make institutional power more transparent and accountable:
http://www.publicintegrity.org/default.aspx