Monday, July 24, 2017

"A Better Deal"?

Really? That's the best message you can come up with Democrats? Talk about tepid and uninspired!
I generally vote Green or Peace and Freedom, so I'm more sympathetic with Democrats than with some of the other parties, but this is hardly going to inspire me to vote Democratic. Or anyone else.
They're trying to reference the New Deal, I suppose, but that hardly seems like a winning strategy: Republicans have been hating the New Deal for almost a century, so referencing it isn't going to inspire people who aren't already pro-Democrat.
I suppose they're also referencing Trump and his reputation as a deal-maker. But that hardly seems like it will differentiate them from Trump in a positive way--"better" is nebulous. There's nothing there that can make them anything more than being "not Trump."
Democrats, I offer the following two alternatives that are almost surely superior and more compelling: "A Fair Deal" and "An Honest Deal." Both still use the "deal" references, but also show some specific direction for how they're different. Both rely on important moral touchstones that Democrats don't use effectively. Somehow, Clinton was branded "crooked" while Trump skated through numerous self-contradictions and obviously false statements while being the representative of the party closely tied to the moral imperatives of fundamentalist Christianity.
"A Fair Deal" references the importance that people place on the idea that the economy is "fair”—an idea suggested by recent research that people are more concerned with “fairness” than inequality. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0082)
“An Honest Deal” references an obvious issue, and in the context of commercial exchange “an honest deal” is a close synonym for “a fair deal.” But the idea that you’re getting an “honest deal” is potentially important in convincing people of the value of important regulation of economic behavior: most of the behaviors that Democrats try to regulate could be framed in terms of honesty or playing fair. Polluting could be described as “cheating,” as a way of getting an unfair advantage, and that kind of discussion can be blended back into Free Market theory: to suggest that the markets have to be free of cheaters.
I haven’t thought deeply about these. They’re the product of only a few moments of reflection after seeing the new “A Better Deal.”

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