The Koch Brothers announced this week that their network will spend almost $1 billion during the 2016 elections cycle. In response, Democrats announced they’ll spend almost that much talking about it.
The Koch’s announcement is certainly cause for alarm and deserves a response. It’s not, however, the foundation of an electoral strategy. Democrats and their allies should watch what the Kochs and their friends are doing and emulate them, not attack them with campaign ads.
As 2014 showed, the electoral strategy is a loser. Democratic strategists say that voters believe the system is rigged against them and the Koch brothers show how money corrupts the process. However, voters believe that the political class, both Democrats and Republicans, has rigged the system, not just billionaires. So the first step in an anti-Koch strategy is spending millions of dollars convincing voters that Democrats aren’t on the take. Given the attitude toward politicians, that’s a tough sell.
Next, Democrats need to show how the Kochs are rigging the system and how their actions directly affect the lives of voters. To say that the Kochs are buying politicians is not enough, since, as noted, the voters who decide elections think all politicians are beholden to big money. Democrats need to establish a direct connection between the Kochs’ money and a deterioration of voters’ quality of life.
Once they’ve made that connection, Democrats need to tell voters what they are going to do about it. In 2014, they never made the connection and they never offered solutions. If the foil in the election is the influence of the super rich, the hero of the election needs to be a fire-breathing populist. The Koch brother strategy would have more chance of success with Elizabeth Warren than with Hillary Clinton.
Regardless, though, the whole concept is too complicated and asks skeptical voters to have too much faith in one party to have much success. The better response would be for Democrats to start playing the long game like the Kochs have done. They, like Art Pope in North Carolina, have been at this for years. They don’t just put their money into campaigns; they put it into a conservative infrastructure that develops policies and tries to influence the political debate. They are investing in communications operations, grassroots organizations and even universities and educational programs. Their operation is much more nefarious than just funding political campaigns.
In contrast, Democrats have taken a short term approach. Their infrastructure, which is far less developed than the one on the right, focuses primarily on campaigns and, hence, is tied to election cycles. They would do better to establish more think tanks and communications programs that develop progressive ideas and connect them with people’s daily lives.
Democrats seem to believe if they can win elections, they can control the broader political debate. The Koch brothers and their allies believe that if they can dominate the broader political debate, they will win elections. In other words, Democrats are electioneering; the Kochs and company are propagandizing. Democrats want to win votes. The Kochs want to win hearts and minds.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Some great comments, but all have still avoided the fact that the other half of the money-voters necessities NEED to be addressed more convincingly! That is, we need to attract and enthuse more voters, and that means pushing popular progressive goals to the forefront of our campaigns. While we can raise money, we need to make sure it IS from the Soros types and not the same corporate donors who will demand our candidates stand for Rethuglican-lite positions or soft-pedal their inner progressive desires. THAT’S why we lost so big in 2014; nobody was enthused by meeley-mouthed frightened-to-be-honest candidates who offered too little critique of Rethuglican dismantling of programs that serve the people and too few positive, concrete proposals to improve their situation!
Speaking of “duds,” let’s not forget the GOP’s “obsession” on social and religion-related issues (anti-abortion, anti-same-sex marriage, religious “freedom” legislation, fighting ACA but having no alternative, and drug-testing for food stamp and public assistance, to name a few). IMO, if continued, it will cost them substantively with millennial gen and younger voters at the polls in the next several national and state elections.
Never understand the fascination with the Koch brothers. While they certainly are politically active with their money, they are pretty far down the list of largest political donors. David Koch clocks in at #24 (open secrets). The #1 on the list, Thomas Steyer, gave 30 times more – all to liberals and Democrats.
The top conservative donor, Paul Singer, gave 4 times more than David Koch.
Morris, It’s not called “dark money” for no reason. I’ve seen those same lists of donors, and they simply do not account for the very veiled and indirect —but brilliant— ways the Kochs move money around and to their grassroots groups and candidates.
Right. But I think the point is that the Democrats have lots of very wealthy donors. George Soros also pushes an apparatus of foundations and orgs that put money into the system through non-campaign routes. And the Right plays the same game of tying every left wing/progressive movement back to Soros.
It’s boring and hypocritical on both sides.
I think that Koch obsession is well founded for the Democrats. They are losing to them, badly. If I were a Democratic strategist I would obsess over them in the sense that I would learn every single fact I possible could about how they’ve built the political infrastructure that they have. It is a remarkable achievement.
I do agree that Harry Reid and other party leader’s obsession with making every election about the Koch brothers is a dud.
I agree with this. There’s also just a basic incoherence to the way the Democrats message on this issue. The emails I get day after day basically boil down to ‘the evil Koch brothers are spending a bunch of money in politics, so give us lots of money to get money out of politics’.
It’s flatly incoherent. And, as you ably demonstrated, people already know that big donors call the shots. If the Democrats are going to keep pulling their punches on advancing a positive vision of what they want and instead focusing on their hypocritical denunciation of big dollar politics they’re just going to keep losing.
Honestly, who is manning their messaging? I know some people who work in RNC politics and communications and they are all thrilled that the Democrats are going to, apparently, jump down this rabbit hole once again. I also know hard corse activists who also role their eyes. They get bombarded constantly by fundraising solicitations, so they, understandably, take a somewhat cynical view of the Democrats lamentations about money in politics.
Vonna and Will: Totally agree.
We’ve got to be smarter…let’s face it..instead of relying on Jim Hunt’s strategy of using teachers as a base we also need to do some strategic truth telling…after all we let Art Pope get by with a budget that manages to starve the state while shifting revenue generation Toth middle class and small businesses….does anyone really think the GOP would have won so big in Nov if these tax “surprises” had been divulged in April of 2014?……Let’s face it….it isn’t just money…they are diabolical…laser provisioning gerrymandering etc, etc….and YET MOST people don’t want NC to be cracked and most people know NC hemorrhaged jobs in the recession and are disgusted at the lack of full time work for living wages…THESE are the issues that cross political lines…..These are issues that galvanize people….and that whole spurious “Redistribution of Wealth” meme…isn’t it time to call it out for the lie it is…..the redistribution of wealth has already occurred – taking money from workers and sending it directly to the one percent of the one percent….instead let’s talk about requiring the very wealthiest to pay their fair share…another “winner” in terms of building a consensus that might even be strong enough to defeat the efforts of the Kochs and their ilk
Hey,Thomas – “Nefarious” is a good word & might be exactly what you meant but I think your point would be better made with the word “thorough.” “Nefarious” means “wicked.” I thought you meant that the Republican approach was thorough, that they built infrastructure, paid attention to detail, & tried to put in place mechanisms for building support in the future rather than just firing shots in the present moment.
Walter, I think using your money to influence university and high school curriculums under the guise of reforming education is pretty nefarious.
As is requiring unnecessary medical/clinical/hospital admittance conditions on abortion clinics (as a guise to shut them down)….
The electoral system is rigged (and has been for sometime), by the very corporations whose electronic tabulation machines count the votes – with no independent means in place to verify the vote count. It is the oldest ploy in a ‘cast vote’ system – just ask Joseph Stalins: ‘I care not how a person votes, I care only about who counts the vote’! It is that simple, yet all the political analysts and commentators continue looking under every nook and cranny for the reasons we are seeing improbable republikan electoral victories nationwide. The corporate desire for totalitarian fascism is no secret, just ask former US. Senator Prescott Bush.
I don’t think the Dems can very quickly do what you are suggesting they do.
Their Big Tent is an amalgam of voter segments (granted, all on the center-to-left side) that reflect a relatively wide spectrum of frenetic interests and support. Gaining any sort of consensus on a sweeping and sharply focused message and change to the Dem platform would take a long time.
It seems you feel that think tanks, communications programs, and grassroots efforts are needed first in order to spur a more progressive Dem base and approach. My thinking is that it would first take a small wave of progressive candidate wins plus several intra-party platform debate victories before the Dems would even think about undertaking a long-term infrastructural effort as you describe.
And either approach would take quite some time……
The progressive wing is the problem, in my opinion. The progressive wing of the Democratic party is the most beholden to the ideal of spectator politics and most eager to invest their time in things like protests and other symbolic demonstrations of dissatisfaction that don’t have any electoral consequences. I think you can see that in what a happened to the Ferguson Protests. Rather than focusing on building an infrastructure to achieve actually success in municipal elections that could change police practices, they have defended into symbolic freeway demonstrations that just alienate average, marginally engaged working voters.
You have apparently not followed what’s gone on behind the street scenes in Ferguson since the demonstrations started, political activism by the true residents there and by hometown AfAm leaders and groups. But I’ll understand if that doesn’t fit your narrative.
And, IMO, progressivism is the only hope for turning things around in this country,and away from corporate subsidies, banker power, income inequality, and middle class decline. Let’s just agree to disagree on that…..
Right, I would make a clear distinction between what actual Ferguson residents and groups are doing versus the national manifestations of the Black Lives Matter national iterations. The same applies to Occupy Wallstreet or the Moral Monday movements.
1-In the few years that I have been out of school I’ve worked professionally for progressive and Democratic organizations.
I would strongly disagree that the Democratic Party in general, and the progressive wing in particularly, is not overly enamored with the spectacle politics of the late 60s. Much of the activism focuses on marches and protests and there is a continual attempt to replicate or invoke the iconography of the social movements of the mid to late 60s. I attended the early protests at Raleigh that eventually came to be known as the Moral Monday protests. People spoke out against the voter ID laws. When everybody was leaving I asked the organizer what the next step was, expecting to hear some sort of substantive plan (something like ‘well, we have this plan to register ‘x’ number of voters from communities that will be impacted by this law and we want to these vulnerable GA members who ma be vulnerable in 2014 etc) instead I was given a list of future planned protests.
I think the point here is clear. During the run up to the 2014 elections I heard day after day from many of the activists about how NC had waken up after 2010, ‘witness the Moral Monday movements!’ It wasn’t necessary to engage in the stale, normal grind of voter turnout, the Moral Monday protests we bringing the nefariousness of the GA to light! Oh course, the Democrats were thrashed badly. The same could be said of really every major surge of progressive fancy in recent memory (the one exception being the highly disciplined, systematic, and analytical Obama Campaign which recognized that ‘visibility’ events were basically a necessary evil to prevent a negative news cycle and should never take focus from substantive political work)
2-I don’t know what’s happening in ferguson and have no desire to comment as it’s not my place. Regarding the movements and campaign that has sprung up in the wake of the Ferguson protests, I would make the same point as above. Again, there is an obsession with media coverage rather than concrete political goals. Hence, the incredible ill-conceived protests blocking highways (something for the protestors to consider, most people don’t have the luxury of taking a Monday off to block traffic, when you get attention preventing people from getting to their jobs it does not make you look good). I have asked a lot of people involved with these protests what the goals are. I have heard zero substance.
So it’s not surprising that these movements are moving into increasingly fringe territory and irrelevance.
As to your comments about police practices, the UK police force was notoriously racist. There are still, to be sure, lot’s of racist UK cops. Compare the number of people killed in the UK by the police to the numbers in the US. Having elected officials setting policies and the bounds of legal liability has tremendous actual effects on the relationship between citizens and the individuals who police them. You can’t outlaw racism. You can, however, crate policies that protect individuals from brutalization by the police. The individuals who set these boundaries are, largely, local and state officials. These individuals like their jobs. If you can demonstrate that not implementing better policies will mean that they will be voted out of office then these policies will change. If you block working people’s morning commute you’re just engaging in recreational activism.
3-I guess I honestly don’t see how anybody could disagree that the activism of the Progressive movement has been misplaced. I would just say look at the results. Who is winning? To me, it looks like the Koch’s know what they are doing. And no, it’s not just that they have money. The Democratic party and the progressive movement have many, many wealthy members. Kay Hagan crushed Thom Tillis in terms of fundraising.
1-I don’t know why you are referring to them as my candidates. I’m not a Republican. I thought I made that pretty clear with my previous post. I guess not.
2-I don’t know why you keep bringing up the hippies. I’ve referenced the iconography of the protest movements of the 60s. I’ve said nothing about hippies. While there were surely hippies involved they were not the only ones.
3-I keep pointing out that the Democrats have moneyed interests as well. And in fact have outside the Republicans in a number of instances. Money is not the reason that Republicans keep winning. It’s how they spend the money. I think the article here does an excellent job pointing this out. I’ve said why I believe that to be the case as well. If you disagree, fine. However at some point, when you’re losing, you should look at what the guy whose beating you is doing.
I don’t think there’s any reason to continue this discussion. Have a nice day
Nobody cares what your issue is unless you can deliver a) money or b) votes. That’s it. I think the idea that you need to spend huge amounts of time hammering out platform issues before you start building infrastructure (the Democratic party isn’t that fractious) is exactly wrong, in my opinion. The reason that the Left and Democratic party never really wins is precisely because rather than coalescing on their wide area of agreement they focus on inter-party squabbling over (comparably) marginal issues.
The Dem Party isn’t that fractious? It is in NC for the last two years. And weren’t the national primaries of 2008 raucous and contentious?
The Dem party never really wins? What about the last two presidential elections? When was the last time the GOP held both chambers of Congress before this year?What about holding one or both chambers of the NCGA for decades before 2010? What about the NC governorships over the last 40 years? Only if the world started in 2010, would I agree with you on the Dems not winning.
And as far as intra-party squabbling over marginal issues goes, isn’t that a major issue facing the GOP Congress and a growing one facing the NCGA right now?
The problems that the NCDP has faced have related to institutional management issues, not substantive disagreement over issues of the platform. As to the Presidential elections, I agree. But I think that goes to my point. The Democratic party can win broad, national discussions. However, unlike the GOP, they don’t appreciate the fact that most actual policy doesn’t have that much to do with the Presidency (or national politics in general, because the Senate is institutionally designed to prevent large, national policy changes without super-majorities).Most policy that actually affects the day to day lives of most people gets crafted on the state and municipal level. The GOP recognizes this and has put in the infrastructure that has allowed to remain the “governing party” even when they lose some Presidential elections.
Because of their focus on infrastructure (think tanks, out reach, news bodies) they have also been able to shift the terms of the debate strongly to the right. Obama won huge in 2008. He won traditionally red states, super majorities in congress and the Senate. And what was his keystone achievement? He managed to (barley) pass a law that was basically the Republican counterproposal to the Clinton’s failed attempt.
Now Republicans are operating in an environment that has basically shifted the terms of healthcare reform in their favor AND they are getting to run against their own counter-proposal.
I do agree that the GOP has recently fallen victim to the same pathologies but those seem to be getting purged by Reince Priebus. A lot of the GOPs recent dysfunction seems to have come from Michael Steele being a clown. But that’s my impression from the outside.
I’ve been stating for some time that this election cycle starts at 5 billion. The brothers announcement shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, and neither should the focus on pre-engineering both ballots and democratic party structures prior to the kickoff.