Created Equal

Not All Prejudices Are Created Equal

Prejudice comes in many forms. Sometimes it is racism, sometimes it is sexism, sometimes it is based on religion or how much money we make or the kind of job we hold. Sometimes it is overt, other times subtle. It is so insidious that sometimes we don’t even realize it is there.

People of every stripe feel the effects of prejudicial behavior. We ignore it. We fight it. We smile through it. Prejudice can even be used against us for the very thing that makes us privileged, like beauty or being part of a class that holds power.

Prejudice make us angry or sad or lonely or worst of all, it makes us doubt ourselves, for a moment or a life. It often makes us defensive, which creates more anger, possibly more prejudgments. And it is insidious, sneaky. It lives in the most unlikely places. The vast majority of racial prejudices (racism) is perpetrated by white people, but white people certainly are not the only ones harboring racial prejudices. Worst of all, those sneaky biases are even levied by people of a kind. In other words, sometimes the tendency to see an entire class of people in a certain light extends to some of the members of that class. A Jewish person might prejudge another Jewish person based on stereotypes, a gay person might make certain assumptions about another gay person, and a black person might jump to conclusions with respect to fellow black people. An expression of prejudice can even come cloaked as a compliment, sometimes feel like something we all share that brings us closer together. Prejudices are really nasty.

In America, we try to address prejudices with laws and by talking about it, and then by not talking about it, and then by talking about it again. And we make strides. And we lose ground. Periodically the righteous erupt onto the streets, demanding better than incremental change or protesting steps backward, raging against a far overtaxed patience.

Since humankind was just a twinkle in a protozoan eye, men have dominated…well, absolutely everything. In the United States, it is white men who have held the power. Understanding this history, I do understand how some white men could feel frustrated today. Whether or not a situation is just or fair, even if we recognize that it is not fair, we adapt to it, we get used to it, we especially grow accustomed to the good parts of it, enjoying the aspects that bring comfort and ease and make us feel like we belong. You, let’s say you are a white man, you see all people as created equal, but we have also lived in a world that has provided you certain benefits, or if not recognizable benefits, it’s not singled you out as someone who gets chosen last or treated especially harshly because of how you look. It is understandable that it would take you more than a couple of years to adjust to a society in which white men no longer control absolutely everything. I genuinely understand that it can be an adjustment.

This adjustment is made more difficult if you are someone who has had to overcome disadvantages in life. Maybe you were born into a home that wasn’t peaceful. Maybe your family fell on hard times due to illness. Maybe your local school wasn’t good. Maybe you made good and then lost it all in a fire. Maybe you have worked hard in a way that someone in a suit couldn’t understand, the kind of work that breaks your body, demanding much while providing little. But it’s good, honest work, so you’re not complaining about that or any of it. It’s just that you hear talk about the plight of black Americans and you think to yourself, maybe say out loud if you are with friends, “You’re not the only one who has it rough. I’m not complaining, why are you?” And, at first glance, that makes some sense.

“It’s not right,” you think.

To add insult to injury, you are doing your best to be a good man, trying your hardest not to say the wrong things, and BAM! you’re accused of being a racist. You think to yourself, “But it was only a joke.” You think, "I love people of all colors, why do you think I’m a racist? My brother-in-law is half Mexican.” When you watch TV and the subject of white privilege and racist behavior comes up, you think they just might be talking to you, and that upsets you, you think, “I don’t deserve this, I am not a racist.” You have a good heart, you don’t have hate in your heart. “Why am I constantly being attacked?” you ask. You’re sick of it, and you’re getting pissed off.

But you did tell that joke. Why did you tell that joke?

So here’s the thing. While all people may be created equal, not all prejudices are. We all have something that makes us different than the people around us, something that makes us stand out and feel vulnerable, something for which we are mocked or treated badly. Something about which we feel self conscious. And people of every background, every race and creed, have had to overcome adversity, some more than others. But in the United States of America, in 2020, it is unarmed black men and women who are disproportionately being Tased and shot and choked and killed and lynched. By the people who are sworn to protect them.

But, you say, he robbed the store. He stole the cigarettes. She committed a traffic violation. She shouldn’t have argued. He passed counterfeit money. He resisted and ran away. I know he’s so young, but he had a gun … the police officer thought it was real.

We come back to the insidious nature of prejudices, this time how they infect police officers, including many good police officers. There is no doubt that it was a white policeman who squeezed the life out of the unarmed George Floyd. It was a white policeman who shot 12-year old Tamir Rice as he played with his BB gun, and it was a white man who called the cops on him. It was a white policeman who stopped Walter Scott for a broken brake light and then shot this unarmed man in the back, 5 times. And it was two white men (retired and off-duty policemen) who chased down and murdered the unarmed Ahmaud Arbery in broad daylight. I will acknowledge that not all police violence is carried out by white police officers. The unjustified use of force is also committed by black officers and Hispanic officers and Asian officers and by officers of every background. And like prejudices themselves, not all officer-involved shootings are created equal. Some are awful mistakes, seeing a gun where there is a cell phone, a holster where there is just a belt. But these awful mistakes happen to African Americans far more than they do to other groups (though Native Americans are also treated with particular suspicion). I am sure that, even though rising adrenaline and fear play a role, prejudices do too. Nonetheless, a black man is twice as likely as a white man to succumb to police brutality according to the National Academy of Sciences, and yes, this is disproportionate to the percentage who commit crimes according to the U.S. Department of Justice. 

Europeans brought African men and women to these shores hundreds of years ago. They tossed living, breathing human beings into the bowels of ships to live on top of one another, in each other’s filth until reaching land. They were shackled and beaten, these human beings, they were tied up and whipped, they were raped. They were worked til they bled. They were forbidden to read. They were forbidden to learn. Their children were ripped from their arms to be sold to other white men. They were called animals. Grown men were called “boy.” For hundreds of years. Hundreds of years.

Please don’t get upset because someone took offense at your offensive joke. Maybe they said the joke is racist and they are right, and maybe they said you are racist and they are wrong. Maybe neither and they just took it the wrong way, made their own assumptions. You’re thinking, “Don’t assume you know me.” Or, you’re thinking, “Lighten up, it’s only a joke, don’t be so sensitive.” Don’t be so sensitive. You may not realize it, but that is a tactic used by bullies, to quiet the subjects of their taunts and attacks. To weaken their voices. Be like Captain America instead, stand up for those who have been knocked down, don’t join in the crowd that’s kicking them. Please do not minimize the pain of another human being, especially if you are not in a position to truly understand it. This is a lesson we all can learn, not just you. At any rate, just don’t say that.

“All that bad stuff, slavery and everything, it happened a long time ago. It was really bad, but it’s in the past.” You might be thinking that because the really bad stuff happened a long time ago, that people today should forget about it, move on, not let it affect them. But the past affects us all, just ask the people with confederate flags flying, the people who protest the removal of a statues 150 years after the Civil War ended. Maybe you think of yourself as someone who lives in the present, someone who doesn’t put too much stock in tradition. But you can’t stand it when players peacefully protest racist brutality on bended knee, thus breaking with the tradition of standing tall before our flag. Please try to understand that it is not just the joke, it is not just the cumulative effect of centuries of abuse, it is everything that a black person experiences every, single, day. In 2020. Not in 1865 or even 1965.

I ask you to imagine your legacy as hundreds of years of enslavement only to be freed into a world covered in Whites Only signs.

There are a number of white men and women in this country who still feel that they were wronged in the Civil War, that those losses are too much to bear, even today. This isn’t you, I know, but it is a good number of people, white people for the most part. Maybe they aren’t thinking about slavery when they feel their ancestors’ pain, maybe they are thinking about a war lost, a home destroyed, a legacy altered. But, re-writing history by ignoring its central theme doesn’t change the stark fact that the war was about slavery. The confederate flag is the flag of the Confederate States of America, Confederacy, the government of 11 states that seceded from the union, from the United States of America. Led by Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, they fought to preserve slavery in their states. To preserve it. The free labor provided by enslaved black men, women, and children was the foundation of their economy and of their way of life, and they were willing to die to protect that, for the right to continue to own and abuse humans who came from a far-away land and who did not look like them. They fought to preserve a way of life that put only monetary value on the lives of human beings. There are white men and women who claim this legacy, claim to feel today what their great-great-great-grandparents lost 150 years ago. Even though they emerged into a post-war world that benefited them, that favored them, a world in which they were allowed to vote, allowed to read and learn, allowed to compete for any job. They were allowed to sit at the lunch counter of any restaurant, they could drink from any water fountain, use any restroom. The courts did not rule that prohibiting black children from white schools was illegal until 1955 (a ruling that continued to be challenged until 1968). The law did not even outlaw discrimination until 1964, and it did not protect a black person’s right to vote until 1965. It wasn’t until 1967 they were granted the right to marry a white person, 1968 the right to live in any neighborhood. 1968 was also the year that federal law, for the first time, made it illegal to injure or intimidate a person based on their race. 1968. How is it that the great-great-great-grandchildren of slaves are derisively called “victims” for remembering their history by the white men and women protesting the removal of a statue commemorating a 150-year old war that their predecessors lost?

After the Civil War, slaves were freed. Sort of. Reconstruction was good while it lasted, for about a hot minute. Then the good was reversed as the men who cared enough to ensure progress left office and were replaced by small men. There was no more slavery, but there was indentured servitude. And there was Jim Crow. There was separate and we’re not even going to pretend it’s equal. Then there was separate and we’re pretending it’s equal. And while blacks were allowed to learn to read, write, and do arithmetic, they weren’t allowed the means. They were kept down and out, not allowed to attend schools of their choosing, not allowed to attend most colleges, not allowed to live where they chose, not allowed to eat where they wanted, not allowed to apply for good jobs, certainly not chosen for good jobs (the interviews were in person, after all). Back of the bus. “Use the back door, you should know better." Modern history, not ancient history. Not allowed to use the front door.

And then there was (is) the Ku Klux Klan burning crosses and lynching people. Do you know what these lynchings entailed? Sometimes it was a lashing that left its victim alive. Usually it was murder. Sometimes the lashings were so vicious, the victims’ backs were flayed. Flayed. The victims were beaten or whipped or mutilated or shot or some combination, then they were hanged. A crowd participated and watched and jeered, brought their children to see this ghastly “show.” It’s the crowd that makes it a lynching instead of a regular-ole-murder. Mob “justice.” “Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.”

There was tremendous cruelty. And it was still happening even 100 years after slavery ended. Original sin. Repeated sin. Ahmaud Arbery

We come to the civil rights movement and, I think we can all agree, one of the greatest men who has ever graced this earth, Martin Luther King, Jr. Peaceful protests broken up with high-powered fire hoses and violent dogs. Thousands of brave men, women, and children laying it all on the line, year after year. An assist from President Kennedy and President Johnson, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 becomes law. Kennedy shot down. Bobby Kennedy continues the fight for justice. King shot down. Bobby shot down. Hard-fought victories, but many fights remained. Fights for equal housing, equal education, equal opportunity, equal justice. 

Flash forward to the 80’s. You, let’s say you are a black woman, you only had to go through three realtors to find one who would show you homes in this neighborhood, so not too bad, right? You send your kid to an integrated school (see, all better!) and off to the local college. He, like most college kids, likes to party, but Ronald Regan is president and Nancy insists that you Just Say No and that the government have Zero Tolerance. Your son’s girlfriend (you don’t approve) takes him to a party in a crappy part of town, there’s crack cocaine at the party, then a police bust, they are arresting people, they arrest your son. Meanwhile, your son’s white classmate goes to another party at a big house in the hills, makes a deal with a guy to sell coke on campus, the party is raided, and he gets arrested too (which is really unlucky for him since it was three times more likely that he’d get away with it). Next thing you know, despite your best efforts, your son is off to prison for possession of 5 grams of crack (party guest stuffed it in his pocket) while his classmate, thanks to, excuse me, totally fucked up sentencing guidelines and a sympathetic judge, is picking up garbage on the side of the road that summer for possession of 5 grams of coke (kids will be kids, is that powder on his nose?).

Do you know the difference between crack and cocaine? Crack is watered down cocaine, basically. It costs less. So the black kid goes to prison for socializing with people who had the discount version of the same damned thing the white kid was about to start selling because…well, because he’s black.

I know, technically the sentencing guidelines don’t distinguish between the race of the person getting caught with the drugs, but because of the history I’ve recounted above,  poverty hits more of black America than it does white America, so while the rich kid on daddy’s yacht can afford “the good stuff,” the kid on the other side of the tracks cannot. But they’re the same damed thing. The path to prosperity is dusted with coke, the broken sidewalk to nowhere is littered with crack vials.

March 3, 1991 followed by April 26, 1992…”can we all get along?”

The Fair Sentencing Act is signed into law in August 2010.

You, let’s say you are a black man, you are on your way home from work, still in your suit and tie, driving your 2020 Toyota Highlander in Blizzard Pearl. You get pulled over. You are told to get out. You ask what this is about. Your face is on the pavement. Your ID checks out, next time come to a complete stop at the stop sign, you can go home now. You are walking your dog along your tree-lined street, thinking that now would be a good time to plant those tomatoes in the backyard, and a white guy in a pickup drives by and yells “get out of here, n****r!”

Let’s assume you are a white man again. If you are still with me, you might be thinking, but I’m not like that! Yes, I am a white man and I drive a pickup, but I am not like that, so don’t call me a racist. And, putting your offensive joke aside for the moment, you are absolutely right, you are not like that. So, can you understand that every black American must feel the same way, being judged by their appearance, assumptions made, at just a glance? That the tomato-growing suburbanite must feel pretty awful after being insulted with the most demeaning word in the English language? I know that you understand that judging one person based on the actions of another who looks like you is hurtful and wrong. I know that you feel this yourself when others assume you are racist. Do you see how it is similar, what has been perpetrated against African Americans for hundreds of years and the assumption just made about you? Do you see how it is similar but so much worse? Do you see that you can remove your cap, that what you wear is a choice and that the color of a person’s skin is not? Can you see that not all prejudices are created equal

February 23, 2020. May 25, 2020. June 12, 2020.

A police department has not instituted community policing, so the police officers patrol in their cars, only jumping out when they see trouble. They don’t walk the beat, they don’t get to know the people who live in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood residents don’t get to know them. The police officers are white, to be sure, but they are also black and brown and yellow and all the colors. They are men and they are women. For the most part, they want to do right. But they are in their patrol cars, patrolling a largely black area of town. They only see the people who are committing crimes and making domestic abuse calls, and because it is a largely black neighborhood, they mostly see black people doing these things. Day in, day out. There is nothing to distinguish one human from another, no personalities or stories or shared experiences, nothing but the crimes they commit and the nonspecific aspects of their appearance, namely, that they are African Americans.

Yet, if these police officers patrol in an area that is mostly white, if the criminals they encounter are mostly white, if the domestic abuse calls they answer involve mostly whites, do they walk away with an impression of white people as criminals? Do they see nothing specific in the appearances of these white criminals they encounter? The next time they see a white person, do they assume they are looking at a scumbag? What about when the white person is groomed in business casual? Does seeing white criminals over and over make all white people blend together for them? I don’t think so. Let’s be honest, they might develop a pessimistic view of humanity, think that people are fundamentally flawed, but you would be hard-pressed to find a police officer who would start prejudging all white people as dispensable. Even worse, I think the same is sometimes true for the black officer, I don’t think he would start judging all white people as criminals either. It’s an awful truth. Not all prejudices are created equal.

Many prejudices are born not so much out of hatred, but out of a need to categorize. There is so much in the world for our brains to take in, an amount of information and experience and sensory transmission so vast, it is unquantifiable, seemingly infinite. So we look for patterns and we group similar things together. And, generally, it works well. Except when it doesn’t. It stops being helpful when we pass judgment based on stereotypes or superficial categorizations. Like a white woman seeing a black man on the street and clutching her purse a little tighter, like a black man seeing a white man in a pickup and trucker’s hat and assuming there’s hate in his heart, like any man seeing a pretty woman and assuming she isn’t strong or smart…you get the idea. But there is a world of difference between a black man assuming that a white man is racist and a white policeman assuming that a black person is dangerous or, worse, only an image of a person, not an actual person, not worthy of breath. While all prejudices can be hurtful and damaging, not all prejudices are created equal.

A police officer makes a terrible, terrible mistake, he (or she, but that is less common) uses too much force, doesn’t intend to but takes a life. There are no consequences. How must that affect them, to hurt another human, to kill another human, and have the society they live in tell them that it is normal and acceptable and not punishable? It might make a person numb, it might lead to self-hate and gnawing guilt, it might lead them to repeat their mistake. And if it was not a momentary lack of control fueled by adrenaline and fear, if it was worse and fueled by a rush of power or hate, it will happen again and again. If authorities do not pursue claims of wrongdoing by on- or off-duty police officers, do not arrest and prosecute white men who hunt down and kill unarmed black men, the violence against black Americans will not end. It is enough to make a person angry.

And what about their fellow officers? The police union ensures that none of them will be held accountable for their mis-actions. And if that doesn’t protect them, they are members of a tight brotherhood that protects them where the union cannot (I’m talking to you, Buffalo Police Department Emergency Response Team). Of course, the origin of this is that police work is perilous and officers must make life-altering decisions in seconds, so they (like anyone accused of anything, frankly) want their actions reviewed by their peers, by people who understand the dangers they face, the intensity of the decisions they must make. However, this thing that makes sense in theory has been twisted in practice, in the name of fraternal justice. Love is blind, justice and loyalty should not be.

“People are always assuming that I am a racist, and I am not a racist!” I sincerely believe that you are a good person. I have loved a white man or two in my time, I’m in love with one now. And I think that no one should assume you are a racist, ever. Just as no one should assume that a black man or woman is dangerous or inferior. I do not believe that you are a racist, but I also believe that you may be horribly uninformed and misguided and that that leads you to say hurtful things sometimes, like that joke you told.

It’s one thing to know that the civil war happened, that the north won and the south lost, that President Lincoln saved the nation and eliminated slavery. It is another to really think about what it would be like, to be a slave, to be three fifths of a person in the eyes of the law and the police. What it would be like to fight a war against Hitler and hate, and return home only to have your life cut short in a lynching. What it would be like to smile as your son jumps into the community pool only to watch all the white children jump out? How does a father explain this, any of this, to his son? How would you explain this to your son? What if it was still happening, every day, but largely invisible to the white world so that any time you raise the issue, you are accused of overreacting, of being too sensitive?

Not understanding the weight of history, how events from so long ago inform how we think about ourselves and how we think about others today, has clouded the judgement of many a man (and woman). Democrat and Republican alike. The woke man in the city and the redneck country boy. The salesman and the hippie. The man on the yacht, the man building the yacht, the man cleaning the yacht. 

What came before is not entirely in the past, historical events are not just words in a text book or dramatic images on a screen. Just because the events of history have come and gone does not mean that their effects are not felt and experienced by us all, but particularly, every day, by African Americans. As breath is squeezed from George Floyd, new life is breathed back into old wounds. And it keeps happening. It’s the little things as well as the mortal. Until we let in the light, I am afraid, people will continue to stumble about and make assumptions. Until we let in the light, people will continue to make assumptions about you, too.

And so, people of every race, creed, and religion protest. We protest the abuse of power. We protest the violence. We insist that perpetrators be held accountable. We scream at those voices in our heads to go back where they came from and never come back.

I know that you, please continue to assume you are a white man, I know that you support these goals. You are a decent person, a good man. You are a considerate person, even would risk your life to save another. But there are a few hundred years of ingrained attitude bearing down on you. And that is a burden I beg you to overcome.

It probably isn’t fair, that you have to overcome this burden. It certainly isn’t fair that every black American has to overcome innumerable burdens of prejudice every day. And as my mother likes to remind me only too often,“Life isn’t fair.” I’ll make you a deal. If you think about the weight of your words, the impact of your assumptions, if you try to understand that as long as there is injustice there will be people drawing attention to it and that that means less attention will be drawn to you, if you try to adjust to a world where white, male power is no longer the only power, if you focus on the things we all have in common rather than on our differences…I will try to understand and help others understand that life is not always easy for you either, that there are more difficulties in this world than the ones we protest today, that assumptions are also made about you, that you value strength and quiet resilience and that your toughness isn’t ill-intentioned, that even though anti-discrimination measures are meant to even the playing field it sometimes feels to you like you are being sidelined because you are not a member of a minority group and that even if white men still hold most of the reins of power in this country, that doesn’t mean that you feel that power yourself or don’t miss what you once had. But I beg you, again, please understand that not all prejudices are created equal.

You should be given the chance to act in a manner that is as well-intentioned as your heart. Every man, woman, and child should be given this chance. You say in your most sober tone, “Absolutely, I will do all of these things. I hear you, I understand.”

This message is to you, particularly. It is to you because you represent the people who have held power all these years in America, from before our states were called states, from before we were united. It is to you because the color of your skin and shape of your face makes you the bearer of this burden, this burden that was created by people you never met and to whom you probably bear no relation.

This burden that requires you to not only refrain from judging a person based on the color of their skin but to work hard to use your rational brain and suppress your emotional one in matters of race. To make the effort to reject the stereotypes that pop into your head when you see or hear about a person of color.

But you do not carry this weight alone. We have all been imprinted with racist prejudices. White, brown, yellow, red, and beige. Black, too. It was done on purpose starting a long, long time ago, and though it is rarely done on purpose today, it is done still. Unwittingly, advertisers reinforce racist prejudices and we all buy the products. Film and television reinforce these prejudices, and we all watch. Laws and government programs play their role. Neighbors, friends, and family with their poorly retold jokes, quips, and old expressions, too. Like ostriches, our heads are buried in the sand clutching worms of tradition.

We all bear this burden, fairly or not.

So please stop. Just stop. Some of us might laugh, but this time, don’t finish that joke.

I’ll close with one of the best movie scenes ever created by Hollywood. A Mississippi lawyer defends a black man who, learning that the two white men who brutally raped and beat his little girl could walk free, goes after them. The father shoots and kills the two men who terrorized and nearly killed his 10-year old daughter and stands trial for their murder. This is his white lawyer’s closing argument to the all-white jury.

What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts?

I set out to prove a black man could receive a fair trial in the south, that we are all equal in the eyes of the law. That's not the truth, because the eyes of the law are human eyes – yours and mine – and until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to be evenhanded. It will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own prejudices, so until that day we have a duty under God to seek the truth, not with our eyes and not with our minds where fear and hate turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts -- where we don't know better.

Now I wanna tell you a story. I'm gonna ask y'all to close your eyes while I tell you this story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves.

This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl.

Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up, and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on, first one then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure – vicious thrusts – in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to bear children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. So they start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw 'em so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones – and they urinate on her.

Now comes the hanging. They have a rope; they tie a noose. Imagine the noose pulling tight around her neck and a sudden blinding jerk. She's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking and they don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck, and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge and pitch her over the edge. And she drops some 30 feet down to the creek bottom below.

Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body, soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood –  left to die

Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl.

Now imagine she's white.

“A Time To Kill,” conceived and written by John Grisham and Akiva Goldsman.

Digital 101 in Three Parts: Part Three

The Way to Campaign in a COVID-19 World.
The Way to Campaign, Period.

What is a winning campaign message? It is a message that wins the election. It is a message that persuades a majority (or plurality) of voters to trust a candidate to look out for them. It is a message that says, “I got your back, you can trust me.” It is a message that resonates.

Resonance

More than anything, the campaign message should resonate with voters. Voters are human beings, each with a life full of joy and sorrow, success and disappointment, love and loss. A voter’s life usually requires hard work and almost certainly involves a good deal of anxiety. It is, without a doubt, impacted by daily stressors. And for all its triumphs and delights, it is also disrupted by many forces that are beyond any one person’s control, and by some that are not.

A message that resonates will tap into voters’ emotions and elicit a feeling. A voter will feel that the candidate understands her or at least understands the kinds of trials and tribulations that pepper her life. A voter may sense sympathy, maybe empathy from the candidate. A voter may hear anger in the candidate and identify with that. A voter will feel that the candidate just might grasp what she is going through. A voter will feel excited or safe or hopeful or cathartic.

With a resonant message, a voter will believe that the candidate is perceptive, has insight into his world, is sensitive to his frustrations and fears and pains. He will feel a connection to the candidate, will feel that he and the candidate share something

important in common. He will trust the candidate. I won’t go into the importance of trust right now, I’ll just say that TRUST IS EVERYTHING. And when you boil it all down, one way for a candidate to win the trust of a voter is to establish a meaningful connection. And the way to do that is more often through the heart than the head.

Passion

If we are targeting emotions, it is necessary to examine what voters, especially swing voters, are feeling this year. Frustration, first and foremost. Anger. Fear. Anticipation. More frustration. Exhaustion. And some sadness and loneliness. We all feel an overwhelming need for a leader who can bring order from chaos and return us to a world that only ever existed in our American dreams.

For Joe Biden, this means crafting a message that conveys strength, confidence, command, and kindness. It will draw on his strengths, be true to who he is, and provide what everyone in the country needs.

While the campaign message should be something of a loner (one message, not many messages, definitely not a laundry list), that does not mean that policy issue cannot be addressed. A website can summarize policy positions and link to white papers; candidate questionnaires, journalists, and opinion pages can flush out the tough issues; and social-media campaign soldiers can cover everything from the candidate’s favorite candy to data points on his or her voting record. But the message should convey feeling because the goal is to create a message that wins the campaign, not an argument.

When it comes to the day-to-day on social media, the candidate should convey a sense of humor (if funny, be funny, if not, add levity and enjoy other people being funny). Be clever, not mean. And take advantage of opportunities quickly. As noted by David Plouffe and David Axelrod, after the President mused about using disinfectant “by injection inside,” the Biden campaign shot off a great little video: “This is a cup of Lysol. It is poison. Please do not drink it.”

Content is King

As Bill Gates predicted back in 1996, content is king. 

What are the options? Speeches, op-eds, event announcements. Live hangouts (maybe a backyard BBQ with the candidate at the helm) and virtual pressers (with presentations, videos, pics, etc.). Gifs & cartoons because laughter and smiles are good. Make the most of viral moments by sharing them with clever quips and poignant pronouncements. Virtual tours peppered with stories (ideas for the Biden campaign: VP Biden narrates a virtual tour of Scranton, commute to the Capitol, “bar hop” through Delaware, walk through his Delaware home (today we’re visiting the living room, join us tomorrow when we venture out to the family room!). Share posts (feel-good, funny, political, public interest, informative), articles, and all kinds of volunteer, community, and other user-generated content. Virtual town halls (with video questions from voters or from within gaming platforms—get creative!). Livestream a Fortnite one v. one with a young voter, let the competition begin.

Candidates can live-stream interviews as interviewee and as interviewer. In fact, I believe that candidates should take as many interviews as possible on television, radio, possibly YouTube shows, and

definitely podcasts. Do the interview, say something worth repeating, share the interview. Repeat.

Candidates can also host their own podcasts where they interview community activists, fellow politicians, policy experts, or maybe their mom—no matter what, have fun with it. Make sure your candidate’s podcast is findable on Stitcher, Spotify, Overcast, and the iTunes and Google podcast apps. Place ads on others’ podcasts if they’ll have you. And be sure to keep up to date with what’s hot in the worlds of entertainment and sports.

Targeting

In campaigning 101, they (yes, them) teach candidates and staff to identify how many votes are needed to win (50 + 1 + a few more, just to be safe) and from whom in the district those votes may be found. This is about identifying your audiences, or in this case, your voters (for instance, suburban women, union members, people who voted for President Trump in 2016 and a Democratic congressmember in 2018, and lifelong Democrats). Then, for each of your targeted audiences, determine whether you want to persuade them to vote for you, simply motivate them to vote, or mobilize them to vote, volunteer, and organize.

A/B Testing

Once you work all this out, ideally you will want to use social media to target potential voters with nuanced variations of the campaign message (as applied to different issues, by varying the wording, using modified designs), each one targeted to a different audience or even to specific voters. A/B testing is one way to determine which messages work best with each of your audiences. A/B testing is a method for comparing the effectiveness of two versions of an ad that differ only subtly and in only one respect. The ad that performs best with that audience is the one you’ll run because it has been shown to be most likely to give you your desired outcome, in this case, votes. Some of the social media platforms, such as Facebook, take A/B testing to the next level.

Facebook’s Loom of Gold

Facebook’s algorithms do A/B testing on steroids, not only testing many multiple variations of ads, but taking it one step further and making the adjustments to the ads based on performance results (data analytics). In this way, micro-audiences receive messages that are particularly well-suited to persuade them. Ian Bogost and Alexis C. Madrigal explain how it works in the Atlantic. Suffice it to say that you can create a very simple, low-cost digital ad that isn’t much more than a Facebook post with a pic or 6-second video, pay Facebook a hundred bucks per ad buy, provide Facebook a bunch of custom audiences from which to start (some of which may be grouped by interest area, all of which contain information that is used to create variants of the original ad), and have Facebook work its algorithmic magic like the inexhaustible Rumpelstiltzkin weaving hay into gold.

“Facebook’s ad software doesn’t try to get someone to buy a product or vote for a candidate. It merely tries to produce the results that advertisers [and candidates] declare they want…. Each action a user takes or doesn’t take—clicking, liking, sharing, commenting, donating, hovering, buying, filling out a form—slightly changes the complex network of predictions that form Facebook’s picture of a person, which is to say, a [voter].”

Hire digital gurus, find digital guru volunteers, or turn to the social media platforms themselves for assistance. I highly recommend watching the 60 Minutes interview of Brad Parscale in which President Trump’s 2016 digital director (2020 campaign manager) downloads just how they made the most of what social media had to offer and got millions of people who had never voted or who had been voting Democratic to vote for a hotel/reality-TV personality on the Republican ticket.

Learn From Your President In Order to Defeat Your President

Now, Donald Trump may not be the sharpest crayon in the box generally speaking, but when it comes to propaganda, he is a savant. Our president is someone who understands what the masses want on the most visceral level (he is from Queens, after all). In 2016, he knew what kinds of messages his target audience wanted to hear, and he knew enough to hire a digital director who could drill down on this and make the most of it. Facebook and other platforms not only amplified his message, it helped sculpt his message for maximum return. I believe that the role of Facebook, in particular, in getting Donald Trump elected president cannot be overstated.

When you boil it all down, it’s about getting access to eyeballs. Facebook has automated this process. Assume your campaign knows that Republican women in Orange County who are concerned about school shootings just might entertain voting for a Democrat. You therefore need to identify and reach these women and people like them. One good place to do this is on Facebook where the campaign can send them a particularly persuasive ad about responsible spending and responsible gun control. The Facebook recipe includes data about user behavior, artificial intelligence, and fancy pants computer programming to do just this. It’s a dizzying combination of targeting, micro-targeting, and broadside blanketing using dozens of variants of an ad (yes, it is narrow and it is wide). And they kind of get your campaign addicted to it, the Candy Crush of digital campaigning, as you spend more and more to reach voters you otherwise would never reach. In the case of the Trump campaign, it was and still is money well spent. The Biden campaign would be derelict not to take advantage of this, no matter how distasteful it is to feed Facebook’s coffers (that, my friends, is a battle for another day). Embrace it.

Digital 101 in Three Parts: Part Two

The Way to Campaign in a COVID-19 World.
The Way to Campaign, Period.

This is a country of 330 million souls living on 3.5 million square miles of land, some of which is separated by even greater amounts of water, or Canada. A presidential candidate can’t help but wish that he could take his {sigh} message to every American, everywhere. But there is just too much ground to cover. Even for congressional candidates, their districts are pretty big, averaging about 750,000 constituents and spanning as many as 570,000 square miles. Senate districts range from 600,000 to 40 million people and cover up to 650,000 square miles. The primary messengers of campaigns are the candidates, to be sure, but to get their messages out to everyone they are trying to reach, they are going to need a little help.

Surrogates

There was a time when it was TV ads that helped candidates reach voters everywhere. But everywhere just isn’t what it used to be. TV ads are expensive, and not that many people under 40 are watching them. To cover all that ground, whether virtual or hard pavement, you have got to use surrogates: fellow politicians, former presidents (thank you President Obama), community activists, religious leaders, entertainers, athletes, union members, YouTubers, and social media icons. Get them out there, representing the campaign at events, doing interviews with journalists and talking heads, posting to social media, wear campaign t-shirts, and so on. Supportive political and nonprofit organizations, each with their own networks capable of mobilizing and spreading the word, should be enlisted as well. And don’t forget to ask your surrogates to invite their friends to help out, too. Which brings me to the modern campaign’s most important messenger: the supporter.

Supporters

Thousands, even millions of campaign advocates, supporting the candidate online, generating their own content (called user-generated content) are, en masse, a powerful weapon. Especially when the relational organizing approach is employed via social media posts and P2P communications—put simply, supporters mobilize their friends and networks through social media, some of those friends become volunteers themselves, and they, in turn, reach out to their networks. The campaign’s supporters, armed with little more than their social media accounts, P2P apps, and the candidate’s website, are producing original content that promotes the candidate’s message. In the old days, having so many spokespeople for a campaign was more hindrance than help and caused leadership to fret that their carefully crafted messages would spiral out of control. Today, campaign communications teams can fearlessly loosen their grips, partly because of the decentralized nature of social media communications, partly because campaign resources are so readily accessible to every volunteer, and partly because personalized messages engender trust. Together with surrogates and partner organizations, these volunteers form quite an army. This is how it works now.

Army

Welcoming and inviting user-generated content makes possible communicating with thousands, even millions of potential voters, and specifically, voters the campaign otherwise may not have reached. After all, 72% of adults use at least one social media site (about 90% of Gen Y and Z and 40% of the 65+ crowd). If I post a message about Joe Biden’s strength & kindness and 10 of my 1,000 Facebook Friends share it, and 5 of each of their 500 Facebook Friends share it, and 5 of each of their 500 Facebook Friends share it, that’s 28,500 + a lot of people who may see it, all from one post that cost somewhere between nothing and next-to-nothing. This doesn’t mean that going digital is going to cost nothing, it just means that there is a lot you can do on a limited budget and a tremendous amount you can do with a sizable budget.

Posting on social media websites is only one way for supporters to share messages. P2P (peer-to-peer) communications refers to direct messages between individuals, such as texting, DMs, and chat groups. Volunteers can text and chat using platforms like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram DMs, GroupMe, Hustle, GetThru, CallHub, and Team (by Tuesday). Through P2P communications, supporters convey the campaign message in their own way directly to their friends, family, and social media acquaintances. In addition, with permission, campaigns can also run a supporter’s social media contacts against voter files or target lists to home in on high-priority voters who might need some persuading or who might be good fundraisers.

These campaign soldiers are critical to a campaign’s success. Their weapons are their messages, discharged via social media posts, texts, DMs, and chat groups. And, as with relational organizing, they participate because they believe in the candidate and the cause. None of them has incredibly large followings, but there are many of them.

Special Forces

Some Democrats have also been building a sort of special forces command within this army. These social-media-elite are comprised of influencers and micro-influencers. Influencers are those who have sizable followings on line, from 10,000 to millions. They might be politicians, entertainers, sports stars, religious leaders, well-known journalists, or other public figures. Micro-influencers are not as famous, but within their own field, passion, or niche they are known and well regarded. They will typically have between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. The idea here and with the broader supporter army, is that people tend to believe what they hear when it comes from a trusted source, like a friend or a respected leader, so it is wise for campaigns to tap trustworthy messengers who have large followings. Influencers and micro-influencers are trusted sources for their followers, and because they have so many followers, that is valuable to campaigns. If campaigns ask these influential supporters to craft their own messages, putting their own personal touch on broad campaign themes, it will ring authentic because it is. That is persuasive and far-reaching.

Whether a campaign has special forces or just foot soldiers, another reason user-generated content works so well is that people really like to create and share videos and graphics and cartoons and art and photos and gifs and memes and quips and Tweets and jokes. Presidential campaigns like those of Pete Buttigieg, Andrew Yang, Bernie Sanders, and, unfortunately, President Trump have demonstrated that these tactics give long-shot candidates a way to gain name recognition, create buzz, build support, and sometimes win a lot of votes. Like fans of Fabergé Organics Shampoo with Pure Wheatgerm Oil and Honey, “You’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on."

Cancel Culture in Politics

I want to say something about canceling, and bear with me, I do have a point here. Canceling is the dark side of going viral (apologies for the expression). It is the social media rumor mill where the accusation becomes the proof. Canceling is when a social media personality or otherwise famous person is ostracized in reaction to something they have said, done, written, or shared. I learned about this when I stumbled on Natalie Wynn and her ContraPoints YouTube tutorial on the subject. This is how it works. 

Let’s assume that a fashion or entertainment or sports icon publicly accuses another icon of having done something offensive. The accusation is not so severe that it would ruin a person, but it could be taken the wrong way. The accusation is picked up by social media, but instead of simply repeating what’s been alleged (“I heard that he tried to get her to stay”), the social media grinder spins and pulverizes the original accusation into something much worse in an ugly game of telephone. First, an unfavorable Presumption is made about the accused and the original accusation is hardened (from “I heard that he tried to get her to stay” to “he made her stay”). Next, the Presumption of Guilt statement is transformed into one in which the specifics are obscured or erased and replaced by a generalized statement via Abstraction (from “he made her stay” to “he is aggressive and a misogynist”). This is harsh and leaves readers to imagine the worst about the underlying actions because the statement is vague. Then the attacks morph into a specific accusation (from “he is aggressive and a misogynist” to “he is a rapist”). Notice how the attacks no longer focus on behavior and instead focus on character—I call this the Ad Hominem step, Wynn uses the more sophisticated term Essentialism and explains that the personalities most vulnerable to this are those who are easy to envy, easy to resent, hard to relate to, and hard to sympathize with. The pillars of this kind of essentialism are relevant to the political climate of 2020 and, so far, good news for Joe Biden.

At this point, the original accusation has been escalated to something worse and further material is unearthed for fodder (the accused is caught on tape lamenting the fact that another woman didn’t invite him in after a long and expensive date). And in a defensive posture, the haters express faux outrage in the Pseudo-Moralism/Intellectualism phase, using morality as a pretext for their actual spite, envy, revenge, rage, projection, or tribalism. Let’s assume that the aggrieved party makes a half-way decent apology for the latter statement (”I am truly sorry. It was insensitive of me to discuss my date publicly and to describe my disappointment as my date’s character flaw.”). In the No Forgiveness stage, the social media world ignores the apology or finds it lacking and further escalates the attacks. Finally, we come to the Transitive Property of Cancellation in which a friend of the accused is skewered for sharing a totally unrelated Instagram Story the accused has posted, immediately being branded a fellow misogynist and a possible gang raper thanks to the high school principle of guilt by association. Progression through all of these steps is accomplished within a few days, but the attacks can last for weeks. And that is cancel culture, the escalation of mild conflict that ultimately results in the loss of millions of followers and a good deal of personal anguish. Neither understanding nor adherence to facts plays a role.

So, why the long exposition about cancel culture? I believe that this is an excellent way to understand the power of social media in politics. These tactics are well understood by the Trump campaign. And, while Democrats have taken to spinning like never before as Republicans dig themselves deeper and deeper into the Trump pit of despair, losing credibility with each ridiculous statement and hideous act, spinning is not the same as canceling. With canceling, social media weaponizes the lesser stories of opposition research, more than any one microphone ever could. A toxic conversation moves quickly from social media to cable to print to broadcast news. It may even result in the the loss of an election and the “canceling” of a politician’s career. Everyday people who are otherwise not engaged in the political process are encouraged or feel otherwise possessed to make outrageous statements about the candidates’ opponents. Sometimes, the accusations are true. Sometimes, they are not. The most potent contain grains of truth that float in a cup of lies until they dissolve and corrupt the whole damn thing. The damage can be politically fatal. I advise all Democratic campaigns to sharpen their digital skills, make use of their digital armies, run offense with positive messages about how their candidates will bring light to the darkness, and heed the ugly nature of social media discourse. 2020 is no year for ostriches—after all, it is the year of the rat.

In recent weeks, it has been made public that the Biden campaign is consulting with former primary candidates like Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Harris, Warren, Klobuchar, Yang, Sanders, and Booker. In addition, they’ve brought on a few staffers from one or two of the campaigns. This is good. Very good. What I would like to see is the Biden campaign brining on board senior staff from the Buttigieg campaign and hiring the best digital gurus from political and digital firms, some to serve as consultants, some as staff. There is much to do and much to be ready for. By deploying smart technology and making use of what social media platforms have to offer, we can win this thing. I do not suggest that Joe Biden should employ the underhanded tactics of President Trump, not at all. I simply mean that he must put folks around him who understand how it all works, understand how Trump’s digital strategy and tactics helped him win in 2016, and understand how a Biden campaign can achieve the same results without being underhanded. Winning is the only option.

Digital 101 in Three Parts: Part One

The Way to Campaign in a COVID-19 World.
The Way to Campaign, Period.

America could be open for business by this autumn. Or not. Or maybe we’ll be open for business this summer and then close up again this fall. Or this winter. Really, nobody knows.

I’m going to start with some assumptions: 1) Most or all of America will be open for business this summer. We’ll be social distancing, at first, and wearing face masks, some of us, at first. We’ll become a bit more relaxed after a month or two, and by September, we’ll appear to be back to normal. However, we won’t really be back to normal because, and this leads us into assumption number….  2) Most or all Americans will be worrying about a resurgence of the virus during flu season. I am going to make another assumption here, number 3) that the virus will return just before Christmas and last into February. Finally, my last assumption, number 4) is that flu season will begin in mid-October, a couple of months before coronavirus hits again, but everyone who gets the flu, or a cold, don’t forget about cold season, will likely worry that they’ve contracted COVID-19 and anxiety levels will be…elevated. I make these assumptions based on, well, a bunch of stuff I’ve read. There is one indisputable fact, however: the presidential election will be held November 3

What do we know about the campaign environment during a pandemic? We know that as some voters wear masks and some do not, some keep 6 feet away and other do not, there will be stigmas associated with whichever way you choose to go. Oh joy.

What does this tell us about about campaign strategy in 2020? Door-to-door campaigning, registration drives, and GOTV, gone. Door hangers, problematic. Rallies, maybe Trump rallies. Meet & greets, not so much. Church visits, they’re going to be small or virtual, unless they’re not. Dropping by the diner on Route 27 as voters eat their eggs and sausage, probably not appreciated. Shaking hands and kissing babies, unacceptable.

Traditionally, it’s through canvassing that campaigns figure out where they stand and what they need to do to reach the finish line by identifying voters who enthusiastically support the candidate, voters who make it clear that it will be a cold day in hell before they vote for the candidate, and voters who just cannot decide. Knocking on doors to collect this information, precinct by precinct, in order to rule out the cold-day-in-hell cohort, persuade the undecideds, and motivate the fervent to volunteer, organize, and vote is the bread and butter of a campaign. Campaigns need armies of volunteers to do the work, even if it all goes digital. Without in-person events, late-night bonding among campaign workers and volunteers, and snack-fueled house and debate parties, how will campaigns keep everyone excited and engaged? Without the Party convention to kick off the season, how will campaigns build momentum? We humans get excited when we’re close to one another (and, for some reason, when it’s really loud)—it’s biology, it’s conditioning, whatever it is, it’s true. So, what do we do?

Ok, now we have our parameters. Campaigns involve a lot of human contact, COVID-19 may, but the flu certainly will, return weeks before the election, and this is the most important election of our lifetimes. What’s a campaign to do?

Digital

If you thought, “Digital!” you are not wrong. Go digital like a Trump campaign. Zoom! We’re gonna zoom 🎶 we’re gonna zoom-a zoom-a zoom-a zoom 🎶 we’re gonna teach you to fly…but I digress. Post digital content to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat, and maybe Stitch (Fortnite, anyone?). Have I mentioned TikTok? Become one with the ether.

Even before COVID-19, digital had become crucial to successful campaigning. President Trump, Republicans, and Fox et al. have been waging propaganda warfare, with varying degrees of success, for 4 (to 28) years, but it was Donald Trump and his digitally-enhanced campaign who took it home. Even the assist from Russia was digital. If Democrats (read: Biden) do not embrace digital communications right now, our lemming friends on the other side of the aisle will be empowered to dive into the rabbit hole for another 4 (to 28) years and may very well take democracy and our great nation down with them. Digital.

So, what does this mean for Democrats in 2020? From Obama to Trump to O’Rourke to Buttigieg, campaigns have been applying digital technology for several cycles now, each cycle’s tactics more sophisticated than the last. But not all Democrats have ridden the digital wave. Some campaigns like Obama’s in 2008 and Buttigieg’s in 2020 invent the wheel (it rolls!), some like Obama’s in 2012 and O’Rourke’s in 2018 and Sanders in 2020 make very good use of the wheel (you can use several at once and attach stuff!), but some insist on trudging along, one jerry can at a time. Now is the moment for all Democrats to hop on the hay cart.

I am going to address three aspects of digital messaging: mode & medium, messenger, and message. In this first part, I’ll address mode & medium, by which I mean the how of it all, how a campaign communicates its message to voters (video, pics, graphics, gifs, text, and voice) and through which method of broadcast (social media and peer-to-peer communications). In Part 2, which will appear in my next blog, I’ll consider the messengers (candidate, surrogates, paid supporters, and an army of campaign workers and volunteers fit with not much more than their phones, laptops, and imaginations). In Part 3, which will appear in the following blog, I will discuss the message, the words, images, and manner that define a campaign and create a bond between the candidate and voters. Let’s jump in.

Mode & Medium

There are a lot of social media platforms, channels, applications, and tools out there. Settle in, get cozy, and put on your best skimming glasses

Home Base

Websites. Campaigns should invest in a well-designed site. Definitely ensure that your site can be found easily by putting some effort into SEO (search engine optimization). Hire someone to create your site, pick a do-it-yourself website design platform like Wix, Squarespace, WordPress, or one geared to campaigns like PoliEngine, or if you are using full-service, campaign software like NationBuilder, take advantage of its web design feature. Make sure your pick includes outreach and fundraising tools, translates well to mobile display, and will allow for quick load times. I also recommend using a micro-site. A typical micro-site is a stand-alone web page that exists independent of the website and serves as a candidate’s summary page. I would expand on this traditional purpose and use a micro-site as a sort of home base that links visitors to everything available on the campaign website. I got this idea from a website hosted not by a campaign, but by a Pete Buttigieg supporter who created The Pete Channel, a website that hosts videos, pics, issue summaries, podcasts, articles, and sundry other campaign-related things. I think that campaigns themselves should create sites like this and use them as a digital home base that has a clean, intuitive design and includes links to the following elements:

The Masses

What else do you need? Social media, of course. First and foremost, Facebook, Facebook, Facebook. It may not seem cutting edge, it may be the dinosaur of social media platforms because it pretty much invented social media, but it is, as Stefan Smith says, the yellow pages of the modern era. Fully two-thirds of the planet and 70% or 170 million U.S. adults use Facebook (85% of adults under 50). Even folks over 65 use Facebook. Even folks over 75 use Facebook. Of seniors who are online, 62% use it. I would argue that without Facebook, Trump would not have won the presidency. (Of course, without James Comey, Trump would not have won the presidency either. It’s always something.) The Trump campaign, namely Brad Parscale, made the most of Facebook by accepting their offer to train campaign staff how to use its every feature, in real time. For instance, the Trump campaign learned how to place Facebook ads that target specifically-defined audiences, but they also learned that they could tell Facebook what they hoped to achieve with an ad and Facebook’s algorithm would determine the audience(s) and which of about a hundred subtle variations on the ad to use for each audience. It worked. Let’s learn from it.

Second, YouTube. Even more people use YouTube (180 million Americans and over 70% of people 55 and under). People spend hours and hours watching YouTube videos of fails and beauty tips and soccer and parkour and babies falling over and puppies making messes and clever backyard rollercoasters and movie clips and, God help us all, smoking toddlers. You missed the last Colbert, Oliver, or Saturday Night Live? Catch it on YouTube. Post video of the candidate. Share video content. Create video content. Place YouTube ads, like Pre-Roll ads and TrueView’s Bumper and In-Stream ads. Above all, make use of YouTube.

The Influencers

Twitter is also a useful platform for campaigns, but in a different way. Only about 22% of adults in the U.S. (about 50 million) use Twitter, 64% are under 50, 66% are male, and the demographics skew to the more affluent/educated/engaged. But what happens on Twitter does not stay on Twitter. Tweets impact the national political conversation by influencing journalists, politicians, and others who directly and indirectly determine what will be covered in the news. Plus, Tweets often migrate to Facebook within 48 hours and then head over to late night, MSNBC, CNN, and FOX, making Twitter the canary in the coal mine of social media (thanks again to Stefan Smith). Twitter is where you influence the influencers. Let them know your campaign has a pulse. Be pithy. Be clever. Move over Murrow, Cronkite, Jennings/Brokaw/Rather, and Muir, nearly three quarters of Twitter users get their news on this platform. But remember, to make Twitter work for a campaign, the campaign and its volunteers must produce content.

LinkedIn is the stodgiest of the social media platforms, but it has its place and, as with its adoptive parent Microsoft, that place is in the (virtual) office. LinkedIn is for grown-ups (167 million or two thirds of U.S. adults), and by that I mean, useful and less fun. Save your video posts for the other social media platforms because on LinkedIn, articles without videos perform better (only 24% of users hail from the 18-24 crowd), as do posts with 5, 7, or 9 headings and article titles of 40-49 characters. Nearly a quarter of users are influencers and decision-makers, half are college graduates. It is also male dominated (57% men vs. 43% women). Like business. And politics. For now.

The Young & The Restless

Instagram is the place for sharing visuals in the arenas of beauty, art, nature, pets, personal moments, and achievements. It a place for celebration, encouragement, and sometimes sympathy. A campaign’s content should follow suit. It is also a good place to promote events. Its U.S. adult audience is half the size of Facebook’s and YouTube’s, but it is bigger than Twitter’s, capturing about 37% or 90 million U.S. adults (and 72% of U.S. teens, so watch your content). It is also a shopping gateway, making it great for brand awareness, so place some ads (Story Ads, Photo Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, Collection Ads, and Explore Ads). All in all, it is good way to reach an audience that may not otherwise tune in to the political conversation, an opportunity to connect with potential voters.

Pinterest, like Instagram, is more focused on human interest, specifically of the home. About 88 million U.S. adults use Pinterest, including 80% of American mothers (over 70% of all users are female, which makes this an important platform this election cycle). Photo and video Pins feature home improvement, arts & crafts, sewing, knitting, baking, cooking, decorating, teaching, celebrating holidays, and so on. Campaigns can take advantage of this with light-hearted videos featuring the stay-at-home-bound life of the candidate baking, barbecuing, reading to kids, gardening, fixing up that classic car, or building something around the house. Of course, ads are also an option. I’d like to see Joe Biden narrate a virtual tour of Scranton peppered with stories of his youth (family time, 10-year old Biden exploring with friends, 16-year old Biden getting into trouble with friends). Our former Vice President is a likable guy—his campaign should be able to make much of the Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest platforms in this way.

Snapchat also reaches a young audience and can be helpful to a campaign. As many people use Snapchat as use Twitter (86 million users in the U.S.), but it’s a fresh, young audience (while 78% are 18-24, note that 90% are 13-24, so, as with Instagram, make sure your content is appropriate). Snapchat is used for making personal connections, something all candidates should strive to do. It can be used to promote events, encourage voter registration, and get out the vote, as well as for ads. Gifs, stickers, drawings, and the like make Snapchat fun. Get creative with Snapstreak as a tool for volunteers as it keeps track of how many consecutive days a user has kept up an exchange with a friend (or a potential voter!), giving the conversation elements of a game. And while using Our Story to crowdsource Snaps taken at rallies, protests, and other live political events may be impractical this year, that doesn’t mean that this feature can’t be used for virtual events. Use it to better create the effect of a live event by crowdsourcing photos and videos taken by voters and other participants (in their living rooms, kitchens, and backyards) during a virtual event. However, beware of Snap Map—it reveals the users’ physical locations, which this year may be their homes, so it might be best if campaigns only encourage Our Story crowdsourcing if there is a way to ensure that users are in Ghost Mode.

Another youth-oriented platform is Twitch, which is focused on gamers (80% of whom are male, many of whom are young, so probably not swing-voter rich, but helpful for youth turnout). Placing ads in games is also a smart way to go (think Fortnite, Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, World of Warcraft, but take note of the guns, bloodshed, and thievery and make your decisions accordingly!). Short ads can also be placed in the word and puzzle games we all play on our smart phones

And then there is TikTok. TikTok is complicated. TikTok doesn’t allow political ads, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t political activity. Users, many of them teenagers, set up Hype Houses or political coalitions that function like cable TV channels for teen viewers with the attention spans of, well, Gen Z teenagers, some leaning right, some left, some straddling the political middle. Each TikTok is no more than 60 seconds long, and while much of the debate is honest, some of it has been invaded by disinformation and conspiracy theories, but that is true for most social media platforms.

Discord, another gaming-focused platform, has started to broaden its horizons into the world of neighborhood chats (think Slack but skews younger and more about community than business). Teenagers make up a vast majority of users and chat with each other on servers. The servers contain channels that host video-voice-text chat groups moderated and administered by one or more users in settings that are as private or public as desired—it is opt-in, not a scrolling feed. A year ago it had 250 million users. Campaigns should be aware of relevant servers on Discord and could consider using it in place of Slack for younger campaign volunteers reaching out to their peers.

Finally, if you can find a digital guru who understands the cross-platform opportunities afforded by social media (for example, posting from an Instagram meme account to a Pinterest board), you can make even more of the opportunities offered by social media.

Broadcast News

As for broadcasting platforms, each has its own features and restrictions, so compare your options. Here’s an overview: Facebook Live can only be viewed by people with Facebook accounts; YouTube Live is geared toward computers unless you are a YouTube subscriber with at least 1,000 followers; Twitter Live and Periscope (owned by Twitter) allow live streaming only from mobile devices, but users can invite up to 3 guests to join via audio; Instagram Live allows streaming only from mobile devices, but you can invite one guest to participate via split screen; LinkedIn Live is available for Pages as well as individual accounts, but beware that you do have to apply to become a LinkedIn Live Broadcaster, so plan ahead; and third-party apps like Switcher, StreamYard, Vimeo, Socialive, Restream, and BeLive are sometimes necessary (costs range from $0 to $20 to $75 to $350/month) but have advantages like simulcasting, talk-show effects, and the integration of text, images, and video. Do the research, and think about investing in a couple of pieces of inexpensive equipment, like a decent webcam and a mic.

Of course, you've got to have something to broadcast, so here are a few of the many digital tools available for creating video: YouTube, BeLive, Magistro, Promo, WeVideo, Crello, Adobe Spark, Vimeo, Camtasia, Prezi Video, and Wistia. Also, Wistia’s Soapbox & Jotto (for user-generated content), PowToon (animation, graphics), PodBean (creating podcasts and videocasts), and Amazon’s Twitch (primarily for gamers).

Most of these platforms have options for broadcasting live events, as well, so take advantage…like when congressmembers show up at immigration detention centers with mobile video in hand to shed light on the Trump administration’s policy of ripping babies from their mother's arms to put them in cages…but again, I digress.

A plethora (isn’t that a lovely word? plethora…thank you, Miranda Hart) of apps and software will make your broadcasts smooth and not at all irritating. Nobody wants to watch and listen to glitchy broadcasts (Biden campaign, I’m talking to you, though kudos on getting Biden into a room with windows, please do it again).

All of these tools can help a campaign get its message out to thousands or millions of voters. Next question: Who should be posting these messages? Look for the answer in Digital 101: Part 2.

Appreciation for Republicans of Character

I feel the need to both share and publicly appreciate a recent endorsement of Joe Biden for President. The Lincoln Project, founded by Reed Galen and George Conway, published their endorsement of Biden in The Washington Post a couple of days ago. It is a beautifully written piece. It is simple and straightforward, presenting a compelling argument for the former Vice President. It talks about human decency, competency, and experience. It talks about a life shaped by heartache, a life that could have gone in a very, very different direction—that it didn’t, the authors credit to Biden’s perseverance and strength of character, both qualities the country, and the world, need now.

We humans are at a perilous juncture today. The United State of America doesn’t seem like the sure thing I’d grown up thinking it would always be, and as a result, we and the rest of the world are in danger. I don’t mean to sound apocalyptic, it’s not like that. It’s just that humanity periodically goes through very dark times, and I believe that those times come when strong leaders fall and great empires crumble. And for all of President Trump’s posturing and bluster, he is not a strong leader, and it feels like we may be about to crumble.

For about 100 years, the United States has led the world—through difficult times and into promising times. The last great struggle we faced, one that endangered great portions of the globe, was one of war and economic depression from WWI to WWII. While the 30 years this period lasted seems like a long time to most of us, historically speaking, it was a flash. Had we not been led by great governments and leaders in England and the United States, had Churchill not held the reins when he did, had FDR not raised American spirits and sent munitions and then men, had Donald Trump been president instead…well, that flash of 30 years may have turned into another Dark Age. Thanks to great leaders and great institutions, it didn’t. I believe that we are at another such crossroads today. I believe that what we, here in the United States, decide to do this November, could put the world on a trajectory either toward truly long-term tragedy or toward daylight.

It took brave, bold, and selfless leadership in the 1930’s and 40’s to ward off economic ruin and political terror. Today, we need competence, empathy, character, and grounded leadership to get back on our feet and then to do better than we were doing before. Galen, Conway, Schmidt, Wilson, Horn, Weaver, Madrid, and Steslow exhibit these qualities when they not only place country above party, but choose to value our country’s long-term survival over shorter-term policy choices. Some of them have left the Republican party, all of them have consistently spoken out against President Trump’s narcissism, self-aggrandizement, incompetence, and bald-faced manipulations of the press. All of them have spoken out against the majority of Republican leaders who have fallen in line with this president.

This is a group of lifelong Republicans and Conservatives who have based their careers on championing Republican issues and candidates. They, and others like Nicolle Wallace, Bill Kristol, Joe Scarborough, Charlie Sykes, Stuart Stevens, David Frum, Tara Setmayer, David Brooks, Michael Steele, Joe Walsh, Tom Nichols, Justin Amash, Tim Miller, Elise Jordan, Amanda Carpenter, George Will, Max Boot, Susan Del Percio, Jennifer Rubin, Sarah Longwell, Mike Murphy, Mark Salter, and Ana Navarro (apologies for those I missed) still believe in Republican tenets. They haven’t suddenly decided that raising taxes is the way to go or that the 2nd Amendment should be severely restrained or that big government is favorable to small government. They have not become Democrats, they still subscribe to an up-by-the-boot-straps ethos, but, this time, they are willing to look past policy differences to character. And what they see is that the candidate with character is the Democrat, former Vice President Joe Biden.

As a Democrat, I thank each and every one of them for doing this. It is not easy. When we come out of this, when we have a President Joe Biden rather than President Trump, it will be they and thousands (millions?) of Republican voters who are the real heroes. They will be our Churchills and Roosevelts for getting us over the rainbow and back home. And I look forward to the day when Democrats are again debating policy with the likes of Charlie Sykes and Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt, a day that will only come if we elect Joe Biden this November.

Read the Lincoln Project’s endorsement of Biden here.

How We Got Here

When I was young, I used to wish that I’d been born in 1947 so that I could have experienced the tumultuous '60s myself. I imagined a twenty-something me in a paisley mini dress with frizzy hair and smooth words leading a generation in its fight against war and corrupt politicians (conflating the early '70s into my vision) to a soundtrack of Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi, and Janice. I wanted exciting times. And then it happened. I got my wish. Except that it turns out that the transgressions of our self-serving leaders appear far uglier than those of past villains when witnessed contemporaneously and as a grown-up.

It all started with Trump’s campaign announcement. No, wait, it all started with Trump’s battle against President Obama’s "citizenship." Hold on, it all started with the 2010 midterm success of the Tea Party…or the Tea Party’s war against Obamacare. Maybe we need to go back further, to Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America and his iron-fist rule over congressional Republicans. Although, there was the 1993 battle against Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health-care-reform campaign, not to mention about a hundred other battles waged against her in a greater war that’s opening shots were aimed at her hairband and her use of her own last name. Then again, President Ronald Reagan is the one who made “government” a bad word and brought us the “gag rule.” Of course, revelations about the Vietnam War’s grossly inflated body counts and false optimism did a number on our trust in government, too

But really, it all started with Richard Milhous Nixon, an unimpressive politician who was carried to the presidency by an American public reeling from civil rights protests and spurned integration, the Vietnam War, Vietnam War protests, a steep rise in crime, creeping poverty, and a cultural revolution that brought sex, hallucinogens, and wild music to the sleeping masses. Nixon wasn’t pretty, but he was going to bring law and order to a messy world. He was going to make “it” all go away. Until he made it worse. And he got caught breaking the law and covering it up. And the people lost faith in government. And Reagan capitalized on that. The Heritage Foundation and Moral Majority had already started their work creating a Republican Party that could withstand a shrinking constituency. And Gingrich rose to power and started changing the way the House of Representatives did business, tactics that were eventually adopted by the Senate. And moderate Republicans began to get voted out of office while the Tea Party complained that the GOP was not draconian enough. The NRA rose in power, fueling Tea Party candidacies. Political shows started covering Trump’s political nonsense, eventually seizing Birtherism and making it their own until they snapped up Trump and he made them his own.

And here we are. Babies in cages and airless vans, hate speech and violence raging from the top down, voting rights trampled indiscriminately by Republican state officeholders and the GOP generally, women’s reproductive freedoms and gender freedoms severely eroded, regressive tax cuts growing an already bulging national debt and deficit, the inexplicable use of tariffs against friends and foes alike, pervasive and unprecedented corruption, NATO and worldwide democratic alliances under siege, treason at the highest levels, and nuclear codes in the hands of a narcissistic and largely ignorant president. I wanted exciting times, and that is what I got. In case wishes are horses, apologies for the wishes of a naïve kid.

Why I Like Mayor Pete for President

These are exciting times. What we do now, matters. How we move forward with structural and policy reforms and who we elect to lead us to a better place will have historic consequences. We must speak locally and nationally to the concerns of Americans who feel disregarded and taken for granted—people of color and whites who have in common feelings of alienation, detachment, and distrust, despite their contrasting stories. We must speak to the concerns of people from the cities and people from the country, Americans on the coasts, in the South, in the West, and in the Heartland. We need a leader who can convey nuance with precision, who can be a teacher, and who, though a student of history, keeps his or her sights aimed on what might be. What America needs is Pete Buttigieg as president.

I love this country, and I believe in us. One of our greatest strengths is our diversity because from it pours a wealth of innovation, inspiration, ambition, and, eventually, tolerance. We persevere with our founding principles of self rule, hard work, and dedication. We endure because of our humanity and our sense of obligation to one another. The next president of the United States must understand this, Pete Buttigieg understands this.

Voters, notwithstanding recent election results, often have a keen sense for what America needs, especially when those needs are most acute. We should listen to those who voted, and those who didn’t, as they cry out for leadership. Russia’s interference with the 2016 election was subversive and an act of cold war. It employed ugly propaganda to convince voters that, among other things, Democrats do not care about us and are cynically opportunistic and Donald Trump is “the real deal.” I don’t believe that any of this is true, but, here’s the thing, it often takes a grain of underlying truth to make a lie effective. Perhaps Democrats have unintentionally taken some voters for granted over the years or maybe we haven’t quite delivered on a generation of promises made. And Donald Trump, compulsive liar though he is, is emotionally transparent and did run on a vow to disrupt. Despite the unfortunate result, we should listen to the messages voters sent.

In every speech, in every interview, Pete Buttigieg tells me that he gets it. He understands that America’s political leadership has not helpfully addressed the needs of millions of voters. The daily stressors that wear on us: traffic, child care bills, health care bills, education bills, substandard schools, unwarranted attention from law enforcement and worse, unappreciated dedication to a difficult job and worse, wages and salaries that can’t pay the bills, alcohol and drug addiction and PTSD, the ever-diminishing right to choose, the high price of housing, the low demand for domestic crops, growing threats of storms and droughts and fires, constant threats of terrorism foreign and domestic, unpaid maternity leave or no leave, limited freedom to be who we are, unequal pay or consideration, more traffic. These stressors affect each of us every day, taking their toll, knocking us off our game. While all of the Democratic candidates understand each of these stressors, Pete Buttigieg seems to grasp the bigger picture, how together they demand a fresh approach to governing, how voters are crying out for something new.

The United States, and much of the world, is at a crossroads. In this age of philosophical, social, and technological transition, the choices we make now will determine who we will be for many, many years to come. I recognize in Mayor Pete a vision and mission I can embrace and a manner I have missed.

Buttigieg’s approach to voters and issues, how he emphasizes what individuals need from their government, is compelling because it exhibits a penetrating impartiality that has the potential to heal our country’s great rifts. This refrain from judgment when addressing demographic groups and his sense of history while looking forward makes Buttigieg stand out from the crowd. The way he connects with people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all interests, from everywhere, this is the stuff of great candidates. The way he looks at old problems through a modern frame of reference and has a creative sensibility, this is the stuff of great leaders. And the way he dances with Trump is masterful. Combine these rare qualities and abilities with a mayor’s appreciation for practical innovation, and you get someone special, someone new.

As Buttigieg says, where there is nostalgia in the past for some, there is pain for others. Even if we had come from a utopia, you can’t ever go back. Change is certain, for better or worse. We need someone who not only recognizes this, but who embraces it and is able to convey to the American people an excitement, maybe even anticipation.

Mayor Pete has the ability to build bridges, rhetorical and real, to a better America. Pete Buttigieg is the best candidate for president.