House Democrats hosted an expert on racial messaging and fiscal policy last week, and President Obama commemorated Mother’s Day by implementing her tactic of using corporations as “useful” enemies.
Maya Wiley, founder of the Center for Social Inclusion, taught the House Democratic caucus last Tuesday how to incorporate racial messaging into their defense of government programs during budget fights.
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Wiley declared that “typical conservative messaging” is “racially coded” to convince white voters to vote against government spending perceived as beneficial to people of color. (Her organization, CSI, believes that “right-wing rhetoric has dominated debates of racial justice – undermining efforts to create a more equal society, and tearing apart the social safety net in the process” since the Reagan Administration.)
“The opposition usually makes poor people of color or government or both the enemy,” Wiley wrote in her presentation. “Sometimes it is useful to identify a different enemy and even call attention to the attempt to divide us,” she wrote [emphasis added].
Wiley reminded House Democrat that her tactic succeeded during the Obamacare debate, “where messaging positioned insurance companies as enemies, which, again, turned people who work for a living into victims,” she wrote in her distributed remarks [emphasis added].
Here is one of Wiley’s examples of demonizing insurance companies: “It shouldn’t be up to insurance companies to decide who to cover, what to cover, and how much to charge for it,” she wrote in her presentation.
President Obama deployed that messaging tactic using a White House e-card that ostensibly honored mothers on Mother’s Day by praising Obamacare.
“Happy Mother’s Day from the Affordable Care Act,” the card reads. “Prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could deny coverage for women with pre-existing conditions ike breast cancer or pregnancy, and women could be charged higher premiums because of their gender.”
The tactic has some risks. “You don’t get people to like you by attacking them or demeaning their success,” as Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), said recently.
