Daily Kos: Hurting Your Favorite Candidate (in 2 parts)

Part 1: The Importance of Not Pissing People Off

by lifelongactivist
Thu Jan 18, 2007 at 08:23:29 PM PST

In a posting today, Kos wrote:

“There will always be a number of people who aren't happy that I don't worship at the altar of their favorite candidate. Anything but blind worship is considered disrespect….Every election there's a crew that screams about biases and the like….Really, all the whining does neither you, nor your favorite guy any favors. It does the opposite -- it turns people off from your guy.”

I discuss this phenomenon of "activists influencing people AWAY from their cause" at length in my new book The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (graciously reviewed on DK by both SusanG and OrangeClouds115).

Part 2: The Third Bitter Truth

by lifelongactivist
Sat Jan 27, 2007 at 07:51:09 PM PST

This is the second in a two part series on the fundamentals of effective activism, adapted from my book The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way, and written in response to a posting by Kos about how people who whine about how their candidate isn’t given fair exposure on Daily Kos, “[do] neither you, nor your favorite guy any favors. It does the opposite -- it turns people off from your guy.” UPDATE: Granny Doc just posted a powerful diary along the same theme here.

In the previous diary, I discussed the fundamentals of persuasion, focusing on two “bitter truths:” (1) “The success of your venture depends much less on the quality of whatever it is you are selling (including political candidates and social causes) than on the quality of the marketing and sales you use to sell it; and (2) "People buy a product (or candidate or cause) not because of its intrinsic qualities or characteristics, but because they believe it will either solve a problem or meet a need that they have."