How To Use Video For Political Purposes

This is NOT an abortion article, so read on. What this article is is an explanation of why videos like the Planned Parenthood video will never resonate with the public, and what conservatives need to do to change this.

In pointing out why the Planned Parenthood video will never resonate with voters, I received an email in which I was asked what chance the GOP has “if the media can discredit any video they want.” But this is a false assumption. The media can’t discredit any video. The problem lies with conservatives.

There are three fundamental problems....

1. Credibility

First, any video produced by a political group will always be dismissed by the public as propaganda. Even worse, however, the right lacks credibility with the public on certain issues, i.e. those on which the right has gone batsh*t crazy (the left has a similar problem on issues like crime and the military). So any video created by someone on the right will always be dismissed by the public out of hand as being a political hit piece if it deals with those issues.

What the right needs to learn is to make use of independent videos. A great example of this is the Ray Rice video from the NFL. Here was a video that wasn’t produced by any political group, yet it was visceral and it allowed the left to use the video to attack their enemies. The right needs to learn to make use of video gifts like this.

Now, I know that many of you are saying, “but there are never any videos like that which help our side!” But this is wrong. The truth is that there are tons of such videos, but (1) the right has failed to lay the groundwork to make them relevant, so most of these videos are wasted, and (2) the right has blinded itself to the existence of these videos because it has become obsessed with the home run. Observe.

2. Lay The Groundwork

The first huge problem with the right is that they never lay the groundwork.

When the Ray Rice video struck, it did not appear in a vacuum. It appeared after decades of the left laying the groundwork through political speeches, turning faked studies into news reports, inserting messages into “nonpolitical” films and books, repeating leftist mantra about abuse mindlessly on the net, and staying on point through every other prior incident. Hence, by the time the Ray Rice video appeared, the left had primed the public for decades to the idea that the world is full of violent young males who live to beat their wives and girlfriends and must be stopped by government... and here came visceral proof of that. So when they attacked, everyone on the left knew what to say and said it because they had been telling the same fairy tale for decades, and the public saw the video as confirmation of things they were already primed to believe.

By comparison, the right does none of that. The right avoids the culture. It has fled the newsrooms, except for openly conservative news organizations which are seen as hopelessly biased. It rarely goes online and when it does, it doesn’t interact with the public and it doesn’t talk politics; I’ve never seen a conservative Facebook meme. So when a video comes along which makes a conservative point, no one knows what to say about it, the information does not get passed along, it does not get repeated on Facebook or Pinterest, and there is no foundation through which people will understand and pre-interpret the event. Basically, it becomes a new event, rather than yet more confirmation of conventional wisdom.

The difference is huge. And that’s not all.

3. Use An Appropriate Strategy

The other problem is one of strategy. Once you get something like a video, you need to exploit it properly. The right does it all wrong.

Human nature, human history and psychology tell us that the only way to achieve anything in the real world when you need a consensus is incrementally. Indeed, the death of a thousand cuts is the only way to win in politics. The left gets this. So when a video like Ray Rice comes up, they don’t try to turn it into an all-or-nothing proposition, they instead try to move the ball a few inches. The goal is to keep getting a little more each time until they have everything they want.

In that particular case, the left got everyone repeating their narrative about domestic violence and they did their best to get the NFL to change their policies related to domestic violence, which they hoped to parlay into other Fortune 500 companies changing their policies as well... who would eventually lobby to change the law.

The right doesn’t get this. When they get a video, e.g. the Planned Parenthood video, they demand a knock-out punch. In fact, if you suggest something less than 100% attack RIGHT F**ING NOW! then you are written off as a RINO. And in doing this they (1) create the all-or-nothing scenario which cuts off the chance for any victory other than total victory... which can never happen, and (2) they alienate the public, who will tolerate giving an inch, but will never give a mile. In effect, they have guaranteed failure.

What’s more, this strategy encourages grandstanding, which lets the frauds (like Trump) sell themselves with promises they know are false, which only makes the all-or-nothing issue more intense. It also brings out the worst ambassadors for our side, who then blur their own obsessions along with the video and make it impossible to win because the public no longer sees the video as being about the content of the video so much as being about the usual political fights which they don’t care about. In effect, our tactics neuter the video.

This issue about going all-or-nothing also keeps the right from adopting winning strategies. Consider the Planned Parenthood video. The GOP is planning to shut down the government to try to defund Planned Parenthood to shut them down. It will never work. In fact, it will blow up on the GOP because the optics are: “Obsessed right wingers use heavily edited and discredited video to try to kill company that provides birth control to poor women.”

But imagine if they had instead used the tape as a reason to cut funding only by 5% or 10%. Cutting 5% or 10% will devastate them. Trust me. Any decrease is hard on a business, and something as big as a 10% cut means the end of capital improvements, no pay raises, lay offs, and cash flow problems. Do a 10% cut two or three years in a row and the business will need to restructure completely to survive. And the best part is the optics. In this case, the optics aren’t “evil Republicans trying to shut down Planned Parenthood,” it becomes “Democrats demanding increase in abortion funding” and “Democrats demanding more money for company that sold human fetus parts,” because it will be the Democrats in the media demanding an increase in funding. Look at how that shifts the debate. It makes the Democrats the ones who are making the demands, it makes it impossible to explain how this will hurt Planned Parenthood, and it puts them in the position of demanding more funding for something the public doesn't much like. That's a win.

But you can’t have that when you are only willing to swing for the fences.