[Lnc-business] Previous Notice - Constructive Candidate Portrayal

[Daniel Wiener]

You're right, Alicia, this will be more controversial.  I have pushed back
against our representing ourselves as being "spoilers" or costing a major
party candidate an election, since I think that just feeds the "wasted vote
syndrome" and also tends to get us labeled as anti-Republican (since many
Republicans and conservatives see us as stealing their votes).  Instead we
should play up the fact that many of our candidates draw as many or more
Democratic votes as Republican ones (in addition to attracting voters who'd
refuse to vote for either major candidate).

Nonetheless, I think there is also value in pointing our that our
candidates are having a significant impact on important races, as evidenced
by the fact that our vote totals often far exceed the difference between
the major candidates.  After all, this is what attracts a lot of media
attention -- the horse race aspect.  That's why we've gotten so much extra
publicity in many of these races.  We want both major parties to be worried
that we're siphoning votes from them, and that the less libertarian their
candidates sound (be they Republicans or Democrats) the more they have to
worry about us.

It's a fine line to walk:  We don't want to claim that we were responsible
for defeating a Republican or Democrat just because the Libertarian's votes
exceeded the margin of victory.  But we do want to claim that we are
significantly impacting the election, as evidenced by the fact that both
major party candidates fell well short of 50% when a Libertarian was in the
race.  I think we're doing better at walking this line than we have in past
years.

I don't want to straight-jacket our messaging, so I am not inclined to
support this proposed Policy Manual amendment.

Dan Wiener


On Sat, Nov 29, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com> wrote:

> Attached is another policy proposal I would like added to the agenda for
> the December meeting.  My sense is that this will generate more debate than
> the previous one, so I'll ask for 15 minutes.
>
> This new policy would require that our public communications portray our
> candidates as people seeking to change public policy by getting themselves
> elected, not as spoilers who get their kicks by just being monkey wrenches
> in some other candidate's election plans.
>
> Over the past few years, a large number of state chairs have complained
> repeatedly about spoiler talk in national party communications.  In the
> 2012 election cycle, one state chair repeatedly asked that one of their
> candidates not be portrayed that way, yet it continued.  Half of the front
> page of the most recent LP News edition was a table of which candidates
> might be spoilers.
>
> First is the obvious philosophical point that other parties don't "own"
> anyone's vote, therefore we're not "stealing" votes from anyone.  Second, I
> don't think it's true that the presence of our candidates frequently
> changes the outcome, as exit polls suggest that if our candidates had not
> been on the ballot, those votes would have been fairly evenly divided
> between Democrats and Republicans, or those people wouldn't have voted at
> all.  Third, I think we just shoot ourselves in the foot for ballot access
> fights.  The reason the GOP tries so hard to kick us off the ballot after
> we have qualified is because they believe we play the spoiler role for
> their candidates.  Why would we perpetuate that idea, when we see how many
> hundreds of thousands of dollars it has cost over the years to defend
> ballot access challenges?  Fourth, it tells the world that we don't even
> see ourselves as serious candidates.
>
> Overall, I think this approach to our image is self-destructive.
>
> -Alicia
>
>
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-- 
*"In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we
guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we
compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if
this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare
the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or
experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works. If it
disagrees with experiment, it’s WRONG. In that simple statement is the key
to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it
doesn’t matter how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is.
If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”*
-- Richard Feynman (https://tinyurl.com/lozjjps)
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