Seeking Truth: Political Messaging In Modern Media
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The election campaign is running at full speed, and what better time to talk about the reality of political messages than now? In this episode, Bill Stierle and Tom try to uncover the truth in the political messaging in the modern media. They apply this to the current political status on the democratic side, especially with the primary Iowa caucuses. Delving into what makes a message stick inside someone’s consciousness, they investigate the language used in those messages that do so and do not—from Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg, and even to Michael Bloomberg, Andrew Yang, and Ted Cruz. Read between the lines and find out how truth gets purchased in these messages.
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Bill, I’m excited to talk about the reality of political messages and our current political status, especially on the Democratic side as we’re coming up to the first in the nation caucus or primary Iowa caucuses. There’s a lot of infighting going on and that’s a good place to start. It’s interesting to see what messages are starting to stick and which ones are not. Why don’t we start there?
One of the things that is the biggest challenge as Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Pete Buttigieg as the current front runners are looking to do is find a message that sticks. How do you get a message that sticks inside someone’s consciousness? It could be a positive or negative message. It could be a negative message about what’s wrong with the country and it can be painted in a shadowy, yucky way. Calling a certain group of people, a name, marginalizing a group and then keep coming back around to that touchpoint as a message creates the quality or meets an important need for us as human beings is a certainty. Certainly is this belief is in alignment with my belief. It doesn’t mean if the belief is right, wrong, or ethical.
Even an American belief could be traded easily for a belief that I feel certain about, and this is the way I would like to see America, even though the constitution is outside that belief. This is what we’re doing here, one nation under God. This is the belief of inclusion instead of the belief of exclusion. The other candidates, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and Andrew Yang, all of those people also have got to find what message they want to have as a part of certainty. How big of a boulder is it to push up the hill in order to get some traction on it? Andrew Yang’s give a $1,000 as something and we’re going to tax these big tech companies for using our data is the first foray into setting a new vision.
We’ll talk about how our data are being used and our brains are being hacked and utilized. It’s one thing for them to do it and a lot to do but what are we getting for it? It’s ours, isn’t it? If you want access to my brain, don’t you think you should pay for it? By the way, aren’t you making billions off of that in order to access our data and people are interested in that? I would like to see something for that because it happens to be mine but they’re saying, “Why do we need to do it when you’re giving it to us for free? You don’t have any value in it.” Let’s suppose we do.
These are messages that I would like to see amplify because that might be a message that would stick as cleanly as I pitched it.
There are 2 or 3 other levels of impact that could be designed around that. Other than the person understanding it, it’s the person embodying it as this is something I believe strongly about as an American, as a rugged, independent individual. My data is mine. Do you see how I got to the message? I got to the certainty, “I’m an American, my data is mine.” The Andrew Yang campaign, if they were reading this, that’s the slogan, my data is mine or would you like my data? Pay for my data.
That’s helpful to see how you went through a process in your mind to get to a message of certainty. It foreshadows a future episode here where we’re going to talk about your data. I do like that but we could go down that rabbit hole deeply but we’re going to hold off on that. It is an important future episode. To tease a little more to that episode and then we’ll get off it is that the latest news has come out that Facebook is not going to the truth of political messages. They’re not going to censor them if they’re not true. They’re allowing people to put messages out there that are not truthful. We’ll put that in a parking lot and that’ll be a longer episode.
The weapon of the First Amendment of Freedom of Speech is being weaponized. It’s now being able to be purchased for whoever has the greatest dollar. Michael Bloomberg is spending a lot of money on media. He goes like, “This is who I am. I’m not like those other candidates. I’m most certainly not like the billionaire. By the way, if you do not choose me, I’m still not taking Donald Trump. I’m going to support whoever gets the nomination.” He came out and said that he goes like, “This is about Donald Trump. I have the belief that I’m the best candidate because I’ve played a big role in government and in business and stuff.” He’s using his own money to purchase truth.
He is. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. This is an opinion and we’ll wait and find out how much of an effect is it becoming but it’s a tall task that he set up for himself. It’s interesting how he does it though because he’s staying above the fray. He’s staying out of the infighting going on amongst all the Democratic candidates because he’s not even participating in the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary and some of those early states. He’s waiting to get in until later. He can have all this positive and setting the vision type of messaging and these are all over the airwaves. His messages are quite effective in terms of what he’s saying and the level of integrity that he’s establishing.
He is establishing integrity, consistency, and stability in regards to that whether or not his version is more dripping certainty through traditional, “Here’s what I’ve done and here’s why I’m a good person,” positive messaging. Each one of the candidates has soft spots to them that there’s something real or imagine being hooked to them. There’s one person that said, “How many times do I need to hear sleepy Joe Biden? How many times do I need to hear Pocahontas?” although that hasn’t often been used. “What are you going to do with crazy Bernie Sanders?” How many times of those young labeling tactics? The word young is important here because of youthful language and simple messaging, many times of the American voter sticks. It’s in alignment with where that messaging is because it’s simple. The word hope is a simple message that there’s, “Let’s do some hope because that other character in this other party is not hopeful.” When you win, you’ve got to do something with it. You’ve got to be able to do what’s best for the people, why you’ve got the momentum. That’s one of the challenges that the Barack Obama administration got into early. You won, you had hope, now give us a whole bunch of it soon.
It was hard to do when the country was in the economic ditch that it was in, even though they did many things that were necessary for the company to survive. For Wall Street not to fail, that wasn’t the hope. It was what people and the country needed but that wasn’t the hope and vision that they were looking for. The Affordable Care Act ended up being more delivering on that hope for many people that didn’t have insurance. Interestingly, the messaging coming out of the candidates here in the run-up to the Iowa caucus, you mentioned that policy Andrew Yang has put out about $1,000 for everybody. Was it per month? It was an audacious plan that’s different.
It’s doable and it’s crazy. It can work.
If you get into it and you look at the details, it can but it’s not a simple message. It’s hard for that to stick because it’s unbelievable to people.
It’s outside their belief structures. Meanwhile, it’s like, “You mean I have something to value? This is something of value I don’t have to work for it?” It’s right against the entire ‘50s Puritan work ethic, you’ve got to do something. It goes like, “My data has value. My contact information, who I am as a person has value? I didn’t know that.” It’s interesting if he were to stay on that same thread is, oil is valuable, isn’t it? Everybody in Alaska gets money from the oil that’s being drilled in their state. Don’t you think that you could get that same value? It is a lot to get across, it’s a boulder. Many of these messages are much like the story of Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the hill. Do you know the story?
I know it generally but please share it with the readers.
It is important, it’s a great tale where Sisyphus did some things that the gods were angry about and Zeus sentenced him for all eternity to push a boulder up a hill. As you’re pushing a boulder up the hill, it gets steeper and steeper, it’s heavier and then he becomes weak. It rolls back down the hill. The next morning he wakes up, he’s got to push the boulder up the hill. These candidates are in their own boulder experience. If they can get a message that would get them to some plateau where they can say, “I’ve gotten this far.” Donald Trump used everybody else’s efforts against them. When Ted Cruz was ahead, he went after Ted Cruz and whatever momentum Ted Cruz had, he took the momentum and he pulled it on his side with branding and marketing. Here’s what Ted Cruz did. Here are some negative messages about Ted Cruz until he took all of his votes and then he went through the candidates one-by-one.
He definitely is a master of that simple messaging then labeling that ends up adding to that big boulder that you’re trying to push up the hill. You’ve got a bunch of people sitting on it or pushing it downhill, which isn’t helpful. Refreshingly, we don’t see a lot of that going on amongst the Democratic candidates in terms of labeling each other and the simple messaging to try to bring each other down. On the other hand and maybe Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer, and Andy Yang could have used that messaging to rise to the top, get more momentum behind them, and get more donors. Although Amy Klobuchar and Andy Yang have been on the debate stage, it’s questionable whether they’re on the next one. I don’t remember but they’re going to lose eventually because they don’t have enough momentum.
They’re pushing the boulder all by themselves and even all the candidates that if you use a negative message, you better be ready to take that negative message and put 5 to 10 positive messages on top of it if you’re going to stay in the integrity race. If you don’t want to stay in the integrity race then you go the way Donald Trump went which is a negative message, they’re bad people, this is the group you need to worry about, these are evil individuals or whatever. If I think about some people in my life who have this mindset of being a Donald Trump supporter no matter what, they get stuck on many different points of confirmation bias. This is what he represents to me.
I look at how the truth has been purchased and I’m going like “You know he says and does things that are not in alignment with what you said you think he’s about.” It’s such a firestorm issue such as abortion which keeps many of those people in Donald Trump’s camp. It keeps them locked in there. He must be religious because he’s fighting for our passionate primary issue. It keeps them locked into the camp. Meanwhile, they’re not looking at the freedom piece of it. It’s robbing the choice of another person and they’ve got to make that decision. No matter what you think about that decision, they’ve got to make that decision. It’s challenging. In the past, we’ve had some of these moments where they found the negative message that if we go back to George Bush number one against the caucus, it was the Willie Horton campaign.
This is the way he and his people are going to deal with jails. We do not want these people coming out on furlough. My judgmental mind said unless it’s Jeffrey Epstein. We don’t want people coming out on furlough if they’re going to hurt you. There are people coming out on furlough that’s going to hurt you or the sticky ethical message about monkey business, the extramarital affair of Gary Hart and how that was amplified and it’s a moralistic issue. It’s Democrat immoral because this person or these people are doing this immoral thing. We’re not even looking at our own house or own closet about what’s happening on our side because that’s our bias. Our bias is we’re on this team. We talked about this in the past about whether you’re putting an LSU shirt on or a Clemson shirt on, this is the best my team did and I’ve got to mourn the loss of that and get ready for the next season. In politics, it’s a little bit difficult because it’s not a win-loss game as much as that whoever wins is setting the value set for everyone else in the nation based on laws and things like that.
That’s interesting, Bill. There are two of the Democratic candidates that stand out as putting out that larger message, trying to set the vision that we need to defeat Donald Trump that he is not in integrity and whatever it is about Donald Trump that you want to say you don’t like. You have Joe Biden at the top of the democratic field, the front runner who is putting out ads that aren’t talking about why he’s better than Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg or any of the others. He’s putting out messages that are using Donald Trump’s own words against him. For 6 or 7 months, Donald Trump has been concerned about Joe Biden to the point where he’s mentioned him in almost every political rally that he goes to.
Joe Biden is now taking clips of all that where he’s talking about Joe Biden and he’s amplifying that saying, “I’m who he’s afraid of.
This is how we’re going to defeat Donald Trump.” Similarly, you have Michael Bloomberg who is not engaging in political attacks against other Democratic candidates. He’s going to support whoever the Democratic candidate is. He continues to eliminate not only what’s positive and vision setting about his own record and what he wants to do in the country but he is talking about defeating Donald Trump.
A real billionaire spending his own billionaire monies. He’s going like, “This is the value I see in America and government. We’re going to do something that works.”
Meanwhile, you’ve got Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren spatting. I don’t know what the proper word is especially Elizabeth Warren who’s a little behind is grasping and picking a fight with Bernie Sanders. She’s trying to find ways to take him down because her campaign sees his voters as more in alignment with her than Joe Biden’s.
It’s such a mistake to do that. If I was on her campaign, her best strategy would get back to and start the messaging that is going to solidify not the plan but the outcome of what the plan will get her. The plan is more of it gets people stuck too much in a step-by-step mindset. When a person communicates about the end result about the why of this, this is what you’re going to receive at the end of this and on the person who has already mapped that out.
To use your language, what’s the reward for the plan? The outcome or the reward. That’s setting the vision, isn’t it?
That’s setting the vision. You’ve got to say, “Here’s the reward.” Every TV commercial does this. Here’s what this thing is going to get you. They work back. Imagine what it would be like to get the thing I told you that this product was going to give you. That’s called the anticipation then uncertainty. If you don’t get it now, you’re still going to be thinking about this commercial later. You may want to do this now so you’re not thinking about this commercial later, this loss that you’re going to experience. I don’t want us to experience loss. I want the thing and the vision that you created for me.
I see a metaphor in my mind and I realize that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Andy Yang for sure, to an extent Tom Steyer because he’s in the fight on the debate stage. All these people are not the front runner and not setting a vision. All these people that are in there that are doing this little infighting and not setting the vision are rearranging the deck chairs of the Democratic Party platform. Their ship is sinking and they’re not setting the vision of where’s the ship going? Where do we need to get to? What is that reward once we get there? Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg and I’m going to personally lump Pete Buttigieg in there because he is more setting the vision and he’s not getting involved. People try to attack him on this or that detail and he stays above it. He doesn’t play into that, I would say more petty and fighting games. He may not win the nomination at the end of the day, but he’s going to be a lot cleaner when he comes out the other side. We’re going to see that our nominee is going to be one of these people set the vision, isn’t it?
Kamala Harris got on the debate stage and she took a shot at Joe Biden and the same thing as Eric Swalwell took a shot of Joe Biden. It gave them notoriety notice at that moment, both of them had upticks to start, they were able to boost things. I’m not afraid of stuff and I can say things that can stick. I’ll take the heat after I say it. What they didn’t do right after that moment is set the greater vision for America. It’s the gentle turn that Barack Obama would make in saying, “This is the way I see it and this is the way they are. This is where I see we’re going over here.” Are you paying attention to where we’re going because we’re going over here? Would you like to go over here? There happens to be some hope over here.
You can’t attack and highlight the negative aspects of the negative messages of your opponent and expect that to bring the voters to you. That will get you a new cycle for a day, maybe even a week but it’s not going to motivate people to change who they’re supporting and to donate to your campaign. At the end of the day, what’s keeping people in the game, the Democratic primary race is you have to have many donors and have raised much money in a given period of time in order to be in the hunt. Eventually, that’s been up to this point and now that we start having primary states, the votes and the number of delegates they get from each primary is going to end up determining who the nominee is at the convention. The people have a say in who they are supporting and donating to and how many donors they all get some on the stage but it’s going to be state by state and a bit of a different dynamic.
Communication is a big piece of this thing, Tom. I’m going out and teaching five executives from a major company about how to create messaging that helps them of their internal staff as well as with the public. How do you create some messaging that’s going to be in alignment with where they want their company to go? How is their leadership going to adjust so that they can cultivate truth and trust between each one of themselves? Notice that when truth and trust don’t show up and then say something about it. Say something about it not in a bad way but saying, “This is the way I see the truth and this is the way you see the truth.”
It will make a healthy discussion from that viewpoint. As a consultant, I’m getting hired out to do that to help people to move their message forward. It’s not to defeat the other side but move into some form of collaboration so that it’s more cooperative and more additive. The best idea can leak up to the top, not whatever good idea you have, we’re going to figure out how to legislate around it. That’s what’s happening. We’re legislating around ideas, healthcare for all. How do we legislate around not to have that so that we could keep the same systems in place? That’s not a healthy way to go about growth.
When you win, you got to do something with it. You've got to be able to do what's best for the people.
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We have a few more things to go. Tom, next time, let’s go ahead and take out for a spin a little bit about how is mutual respect going to look like? How does integrity get restored? We’ve got to do that as a nation. How do truth and trust get restored because those are two things? The negative messages and the infighting will only get you to one part of the Sisyphus Hill and the boulder rolls back down. Look at all the different people that are underneath the boulder. All the ones that are dropping out and go like, “We ran out of money. We couldn’t get up the hill.” You had your moment and you didn’t build upon it or you said something that distracted from that moment. That shows that you were not the leader of the free world.
It sounds good, Bill. I look forward to that.
Thanks, Tom.
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