RE: Camejo's last words in last night's debate

["Jose G. Perez" <jgperez@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Eli, I didn't mean it for it to be a "blow below the belt" though now
reading what you quote back I can see that it could be easily taken that
way, but I was just trying to be funny or clever and talk a little about
the entirely unrelated Saddam thing which I'd been itching to do.

But what you cite, "That is, my impression came from the reading
articles about the Bay Area, 
where I live, which IS losing population," is really my point. The
articles leave you with this general impression, just like all the Bush
and everyone else speeches leave you with the general impression Saddam
was up to his neck in 9/11 and is best buddies with al qaeda though the
opposite is the case, and nowhere are you going to find Bush actually
making a literally false statement. It's the same kind of lying that's
been going on about the California population -- saying partial one
sided things that give a general impression about the overall picture
which is radically false.

What I cited were the two most authoritative sources available for
Calif. state total population, the Census Bureau yearly estimate and the
state demographic unit estimate, the two most recent ones. They agree
fairly closely on the growth of the state population, which is more than
half a million a year, split almost 50-50 between "natural" growth
(births minus deaths) and net immigration (people arriving minus people
leaving).

On the broader issue of "how" to run a campaign that can speak to people
in terms they can understand, I think you take too negative a view of
Peter's failings. The big problem isn't that Peter is popularizing too
much but that many of these issues and especially the way he is
presenting them (in class terms, although he doesn't say that
explicitly) are very very new to most people. 

In terms of carrying out a tactic of "critical support" to this
campaign, I think the emphasis should be on the positive. Peter's goal,
unless I misread everything he is doing, isn't to say as much as he can
to whatever audience he may have today, but to begin winning a long-term
audience for things that will be said for many years to come. 

An accumulation of many radical messages and positions isn't going to
get a greater understanding, but less. He's decided to focus on the tax
and budget issues and on those sharply counterpose a working class
perspective --tax the rich more, tax the working people less-- and use
it as an illustration of how rich people control the government, and the
two party system, and that's why regular people need their own party.
And instead of letting them pit us against each other, regular people
need to stick together, no scapegoating, equal rights for all.

That's a fine message, he is talking to a mass audience where people are
on all sorts of different levels, his campaign's central message needs
to be one that can be reduced to a very few sentences, a paragraph.

That's not all he says, not by a long shot, but it is very important
that he *stay on message* and repeat, reiterate, underscore, emphasize
and highlight the core message.

That, when you think about it, is what the Bolsheviks did in 1917.
Peace, land, bread and to get them, all power to the soviets. His
central message needs to be that concrete, short, to the point. Don't
cut back, tax the rich, and to get that organize into our own party.
That sort of thing.

A campaign really aimed at a broad mass audience, such as the working
class is in the United States *today*, can only carry so much freight.
We should not fool ourselves into thinking working people can assimilate
huge amounts of messages, they can't, not through this kind of exercise.
The likely effect of overloading on message is going to be to come
across as fringe people living in another world not really connected
with the problems and situation facing people in the state.

José


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