Building the Progressive Brand

Conservative think tanks and media have been waging well-funded, asymmetrical warfare for decades. But I’m convinced that big problems don’t necessarily require big solutions. With the limited resources at hand, how can we make that asymmetry work for us in seeding – or re-seeding – progressive ideas in the public mind the way distributing copies of Atlas was supposed to? How can we promote a progressive worldview in ways that don’t require Koch-level backing or building media distribution channels from scratch? (Demonstrating that that could be done on a grassroots level was the point of the eleven hundred 30-second AM radio spots Blue Century ran in 2008.) But whatever form progressive messaging takes, we first have to have the messages. (Here are three we tried in our pilot project.)

The conservative infrastructure sees messaging as an ongoing function — year in, year out — and progressives always seem to be playing defense. Yes, there’s good news out there. The conservatives’ message is starting to fall on deaf ears. But conservative failure isn’t the same thing as progressive success. If 2006, 2008 and the health care fight didn’t make that clear, then 2010 should have settled it.

Reframing the conservative message isn’t enough. We have to begin creating and planting our own seeds, and they might not bloom for some years. The messages don’t have to be detailed — less is more — but have to be more than “their math doesn’t add up” or “they want to kill off the New Deal.” We need to be seeding messages that define us on our own terms — who we are, what we want, how we believe the same, core things about America as most Americans.

Got any? That’s the hardest part.

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