Matt on lying

Link here

If you want to defeat a legislative proposal, the absolute best messaging tactic you can adopt is just to lie about. Mainstream media coverage of your lies will often treat them as credible simply because the lies are being offered. At worst, the occasional “fact check” item will slap you on the wrist, but inevitably will need to come up with some way to define the other side as being just as bad. Under no circumstances will you get headlines like “Senator So-and-So Lies About Health Care.” And so doubts get planted in people’s minds.


Francois' response: Okay, this is just a theory, but I think lies would actually result in penalties in the realm of public opinion if one side was pretty consistently honest and the other side wasn't. When it comes to health care, a lot of Republicans are telling a lot of lies. But it's not working because the media isn't treating them as credible. The lies are working because Democrats are hiding things.

I'm sure people who follow politics are aware of the concept of getting out in front of a negative story. Health care reform, at least the parts of it that Democrats generally agree on, has very real tradeoffs. Many legitimate points have been made by conservatives and libertarians about how health care reform will lead to some people losing their insurance, paying higher taxes, and experiencing the same rationing that they experience with private insurance if they end up on the public plan. Instead of engaging with these arguments, Democrats are being cute and trying to deny that there are any tradeoffs associated with health care reform at all. Somehow they will cut Medicare by $500 billion, tax only the rich, and provide outstanding quality health care, better than what they get now, to all. That's just not credible and no one is buying it.

So since Democrats are hiding things, when Republicans make up stuff about what they are hiding, people believe them. If the Democrats were out in front, explaining how the tradeoffs would be offset by the benefits, rather than denying the tradeoffs completely, then Republicans couldn't gain the same traction with falsehoods.

Democrats aren't defining the terms of the debate skillfully. They threw out a fantasy and then acted surprised when the people didn't believe the fantasy. If they'd defined the tradeoffs early and minimized their significance, then the debate would have gone better for them.