[Lnc-business] Previous Notice - Constructive Candidate Portrayal

Sun Dec 7 19:21:31 EST 2014

I strongly support this motion.  What is at issue here goes back to basic
purposes.  What are publications and literature meant to accomplish?
Purposefully promoting losing campaigns transmits that we are not serious
about winning.  Publications touting a 5% finish as an accomplishment
(other than for ballot access purposes) reinforce an image of this party as
unable to win elections.  Touting that 5% specifically because it "beats
the spread" reinforces a perception that this party is meant to be an
irritant, not a serious political organization.

Why would someone want to promote beating the spread?  The best argument
for it is a strategy that revolves around costing other parties elections
in the hopes that they will adopt our policies as their own.  This, in
turn, envisions us as, at best, a pressure group on other parties.  My
support for this motion is born out of my vision for this party - a vision
that entails increasing freedom by placing candidates in public, elected
office, so that while there, they can act in a libertarian manner.

Wanting a party to serve as a pressure group has some serious problems.
For one, it is rather silly to deal with FEC regulations if you don't
intend to actually run meaningful campaigns.  For another, it assumes that
you have some ability to pressure other parties.  Some would point to, say,
the Prohibition Party spoiling the Republicans enough to get Prohibition.
If our mission were to pressure other parties to adopt policies of greater
control over people's lives, I'd agree, this would probably be viable.
However, we are not the Prohibition Party, and rather than converting
themselves to libertarians, other parties will simply use their ample
resources to put us out of business.  In addition, we are not living in the
same time period as Prohibition, and we have a more rigid ideological
divide from our old parties than they did - Prohibition and related
concerns were mainstream issues already, with bipartisan support.  Finally,
the rolling back of state control, and preventing it from growing right
back - is an ongoing concern, not a one-hit wonder.  Parties that make it
their mission to influence other parties either die or live on so weakened
that they should have - take a look at the Prohibition Party today.

I want to see this LNC take positions that enable the building of a more
viable political party structure and organization.  This motion is an
important step forward, as it stops HQ from doing one of the more harmful
things that we do to ourselves.  A person need only read one article where
the LP itself declares proudly that they came in last but beat the
difference between the Democrats and the Republicans to conclude that the
LP does not take itself seriously, and that the LP itself believes that
there are only two parties of significance when it comes to electoral
politics.  This perception is deadly to a party.  We already have to deal
with people afraid they are "wasting their vote" by voting for us in
preference to their least-hated option among the two braindead parties -
why add to that by saying "by the way, we're not serious about winning" and
telling them that, indeed, we relish the opportunity to take out their
least-hated option by tilting the election to their more-hated option,
without trying to win ourselves?

Consider the problems presented to a person running for a local, winnable
office, either a partisan office or a non-partisan one where he nonethless
ties himself to the LP label to help build this party - when we run an
article about the Congressional candidate, within whose district that local
candidate resides - beating the spread.  Whichever party this shows our
candidate "hurting," the members of that party are now unlikely to vote for
our local candidate.  The remainder of voters are going to look at this
candidate and wonder "who is he going to hurt?" rather than "would he make
a good Commissioner?"

Furthermore, presenting these polls in this way is inherently dishonest.
We know that, just because our candidate has more votes than the spread
between the top two, it does not follow that our candidate has switched the
election.  We say it to desperately claim relevance while punching above
our weight class; they say it to promote adopting stronger ballot access
requirements, keep us out of debates, etc. - we should gain very little
from a misleading presentation while our opponents gain much.

The objections that have been raised:
1.  The horse-race aspect is the most popular part of campaign coverage,
and we can use publications that would fall under this policy to
remind major parties to adopt libertarian positions or face the loss of
votes, and to maintain relevance.
2.  We hire staff to determine what works best, and presumably we are not
better at PR than staff hired for that purpose.  LNC members who disagree
should just try to convince staff that they are right.
3.  This is micro-management and best left to the communications committee.

1.  I would have to agree that almost all campaign coverage focuses on
horse-races rather than issues.  It is also true that, other than reporting
the "spoiler effect" the LP has trouble saying much about horse-race issues
that are helpful to us.  The solution to that, in my opinion, is to remedy
the underlying problems - primarily, too much energy spent punching above
our weight class and too little success to actually tout.  If we can change
those things, we will have more horse-race aspects to report.  Relevance,
also, can be maintained by winning elections - facilitated by running for
offices that can win.  Candidates respond to incentives, and one way we
incentivize candidates to run for unreasonable offices is by running this
type of coverage.  A person can, by beating the spread, gain notoriety
within the party through our publications.  We should not be encouraging
candidates to run for this reason, but to influence the outside world.

And, yes, we do need to punch too high sometimes, particularly for
ballot-access purposes, but even those campaigns can be taken seriously and
relevant statements can be made without promoting this spoiler effect.  In
fact, maybe this party can use its resources, when it comes to those races,
to try to pressure the media into actually reporting about issues of
relevance to a race.

2.  As a board, we mostly do not write our own press releases, it is true
that we hire staff with PR expertise to do that for us.  A board's job is
to present a vision and present a direction, though.  It would be
micro-management to tell staff exactly what to write, or to stand over
someone's shoulders saying "no, no, the active voice."  It is not
micro-management to specify the type of publications we wish to see and the
type we do not; it is part of responsible board governance to give broad
directives of this sort.  We employ staff to carry out our vision and to
execute the strategy we have come up with - demanding that they do so is
just proper corporate behavior.

3.  The APRC has no power on this issue.  The APRC can check for compliance
with bylaws, platform, and policy manual.  This motion, if passed, would
essentially give the APRC the ability to handle exactly this type of
question.  At present, for the APRC to say "this portrays a candidate as
not serious" has no policy implications and can't justify a refusal by the
APRC to allow the publication.  This motion would enable the APRC to use
this as a reason to reject a publication.  So, if you think the APRC should
be handling this, you should support this motion.

Joshua A. Katz
Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)

On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 5:12 PM, Marc Allan Feldman <marc at openivo.com> wrote:

> I disagree.  Out p.r. people  should be skilled enough to see what
> works best.  If you think you have better ideas, then present the
> evidence and educate them.  Micro-managing p.r. by LNC policy makes no
>  sense to me.  Shouldn't this be an issue for the communications
> committee?
>
> On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 4:58 PM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Rich,
> >
> > Thanks for the good question.
> >
> > The portion of my proposal in question reads (caps added for emphasis),
> > "They shall not be portrayed as spoilers, either directly or by
> implication,
> > such as NOTING that the candidate's performance spans the margin between
> two
> > other candidates."
> >
> > With this wording, I would interpret it as the latter of the two things
> you
> > asked about.  Poll results can be shown, even if they happen to
> demonstrate
> > that the candidate spans the gap, so long as that detail is not the
> point of
> > what they are saying.  The surrounding text should not about some
> "spoiler"
> > angle of that data.  The news should rather be that the candidate may be
> > poised to retain our ballot access, or that the polling may suggest we'll
> > see better results than past similar candidates, or some other positive
> > news, etc.
> >
> > -Alicia
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Dec 7, 2014 at 11:14 AM, Rich Tomasso <rtomasso at lpnh.org> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 11/29/2014 4:59 PM, Alicia Mattson wrote:
> >>>
> >>> 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.
> >>
> >>
> >> Just to clarify, with your proposed language, would an article
> >> highlighting a poll showing the Libertarian candidate polling at greater
> >> than the difference b/t his or her opponents be considered in violation
> of
> >> this? Or should there simply be no text pointing out their percentage is
> >> greater than the difference of the other candidates?
> >>
> >>
> >> ~Rich
> >>  Region 8 Rep
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >
> >
> >
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> >
>
>
>
> --
> Marc Allan Feldman
> CEO
> OpenIVO, Inc.
> Beachwood, OH
> marc at openivo.com
> http://about.me/marcallanfeldman
> 216-312-4169 (direct)
>
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