This commentary is by Rick Morris, an independent political consultant based in Waterbury.
As the campaign season intensifies, I find myself reviewing two prevailing modes of political discourse from the campaigns I’ve worked on: “Othering” and “Familiarizing.” These contrasting approaches have shaped the political landscape, and it’s time we shift our strategy for good.
“Othering” — distinguishing a group as separate and bad — has been wielded with remarkable success. Historical examples abound: Reagan’s fabricated Black “welfare queen” narrative eroded white middle-class support for stunningly popular welfare programs. Clinton ascended to office on the back of the “super predator” rhetoric, leading to a massive expansion of the prison system. More recently, Trump’s portrayal of immigrants as “criminals, rapists and drug dealers,” and Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” label for GOP voters are but two more examples that drove cynicism and hatred in our body politic.
“Othering” is a simple, effective tool that consolidates a group’s identity against those we construct as the “others.”
In contrast, “Familiarizing” is just the opposite. Familiarizing is a unifying approach — it demonstrates that the “other” group is intimately connected to us. Its strategy is to draw the other into our “in-group.”
The Marriage Equality movement provides a compelling example of this approach. The movement’s ground game used a door-to-door “familiarizing” campaign that achieved a stunning and fast reversal of popular opinion and policy around LGBT issues. Campaign leaders cast a vision of a better world, inspiring thousands of volunteers to knock on doors and share personal stories that touched hearts.
Conversations at the doors brought people to identify their loved ones with that “other” group, and invited people to bring LGBTQ folks into their “in-group” — “We are your brothers, your sisters, your aunts and uncles, daughters and sons.”
The trick of the “familiarizing” approach is that it necessitates a shift to “visionary” and “participatory” politics. It requires us to say, “Here’s a vision of a better world, and we need all of us to get there.”
Visionary and participatory political speech runs against the grain of mainstream democratic politics, which is “managerial” in nature. The “managerial” politician says, “Things just need to be tweaked a bit, and I am the one to tweak them.”
Managerial politics lead people to the ballot box and no further. Visionary and participatory politics rely on people to make the change they want to see. It’s moment thinking vs. movement thinking.
A turn toward “familiarizing” campaigns grounded in “visionary” and “participatory” politics is the antidote to cynicism. It’s a strategy that I regularly see on the progressive left and from nonprofit organizations. However, it’s conspicuously absent from the most prominent political stages this campaign season.
Election campaigns must embrace this approach. It’s not just about winning elections; it’s about healing divisions and building a more inclusive and just society. It’s about casting a vision that inspires people to participate in the political process, not just as voters, but as active contributors to a better world.
