Hillary Clinton and the Art of Persuasion
It’s me, American-born independent voter with a masters degree who has lived on both coasts, Chicago, and rural parts of Iowa, Indiana and Ohio. Small business owner and senior manager at a Fortune 30 company. Hi.
My parents were immigrants. My friends are city slickers and country fucks, full-blown racists, casual racists and staunch progressive social justice warriors. The diversity of my life is a fun perk of being an approachable white guy with a foreign name who moves around a lot. At least part of me seems safe to everyone.
Politically I’m an a la carte guy, subscribing to components of both the progressive and conservative political agendas. Choosing either one side or the other completely intact means accepting deeply flawed positions. But what you’re about to read here - and what I couldn’t stop myself from writing - isn’t going to be about issues or stances.
I’ve spent all of my professional life in sales and strategic marketing both foreign and domestic and have had to sell ideas to city slickers, country fucks, full-blown racists, etc. Often times this is done through languages I don’t speak, using local assets who are fluent instead. I persuade them to persuade decision-makers. Persuasion doesn’t have one language, nor is it always a simple A to B transaction.
HR departments call this activity Delivering Results Through Others around annual review time. That’s what I do. Coincidentally, that’s also how elections are won and lost. Candidates are part of leviathan machine composed of direct and indirect stakeholders. Some can be controlled. Others, nah.
It’s comforting to believe Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton (in the Electoral College, I know, I know) because America is mostly 8th grade educated Klan members living in Bumblefuck, Alabama who objectify women and are too dim to see the big picture. That may allow the losing side to feel better, but it gets them nowhere - in fact it’s what got them here.
The goal isn’t to feel better. It’s to win over people. That requires selling.
Everything in life is sales. Clinton and the DNC in general are just atrocious at it, even if at the core their product works well enough and has virtuous intentions. The best product doesn’t always win and there’s no such thing as common sense in the marketplace of ideas or anything else. That’s a fantasy. One person’s common sense is another’s crazy talk.
Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan are the models for executive sales among post-television presidencies. What separates those two - to use a sports metaphor - is Reagan left behind a huge coaching tree and masterful succession plan. Obama did not. Reagan is Woody Hayes, and his lineage continues unabated. Obama is Frank Beamer. They don’t know who’s next.
But competent selling could have overcome that transition gap. Clinton didn’t sell well, and even worse - the people she needed to deliver results through - Hillary enthusiasts - are and were often sales repellant. Her coalition faced inward from the start. That’s what happens when you know you’re right, and it’s how sales cycles die. It’s how layup deals are lost.
So here are some unemotional postmortem election thoughts exclusively through the lens of a sales and marketing lackey:
The Product Objectively Sucked
The most inspiring things about the idea of President Hillary Clinton were her gender and tirelessness. Otherwise, she’s a duplicitous government nerd who, as Colin Powell put it in an email that was leaked, screws up everything with hubris. And yet I still voted for her only because to me the alternative was a monster.
People like me were the Reluctant Hillary Voters, and holy hell there were a lot of us. This was obvious in every bit of coverage, at every water cooler and every tavern in America and the world. And yet Clinton said, incredulously, on camera, why am I not 50 points ahead? Powell was correct. She does it in plain sight, not just in private emails.
Campaigns are about the people you still need to reach and keep, not the ones you already have, are getting by default or through sheer reluctance. Broken products are successfully sold all the time, and that was the DNC’s starting point with pre-selecting Clinton.
It opened the campaign by offering voters what they had already rejected, as a replacement to a popular president. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz impaired the sales cycle for her party from the very beginning. Obama is an historically popular lame duck, which makes following him a challenge for anyone. This meant the DNC required a product that was both different and unifying; an upgrade in some categories because holistically it would be impossible. Unfortunately, Frank Beamer didn’t groom a replacement.
Instead they rolled out a retread who had already gotten her ass handed to her by Obama back when nobody even knew who the fuck he was. This isn’t hindsight. It was a bad idea that was greeted with dread from the very beginning. And then they sold it as a foregone conclusion.
“Non-college educated whites.”
Code for “stupid country people.” In a selling exercise they’re known as “customers.” And in an election, they’re “American voters.” Flawed people with unmet needs, just like the rest of us. This is the cornerstone of where the venom behind the term elite comes from.
College tuition has quadrupled over the past 35 years while college professor compensation has barely increased. Meanwhile, college administrator headcount has multiplied like weeds across campuses everywhere and their compensation has increased ten-fold. If the cost of a car had done this over the same period, an average automobile would run $80,000 now.
So when attainable Trump voters are dismissed as being part of a stupid and uneducated racist cabal it pushes them further away. It’s anti-selling. They couldn’t and can’t afford the crippling cost of higher education, whether they wanted to go or not. If the car cost parallel had come to fruition it would be like Chevrolet making fun of people for taking the bus.
As for the country part, not everyone prefers or aspires to live in urban areas. It’s a valid life position.
That’s one side of educational resentment. The other goes back to that well-compensated college administrator. I always think of Wisconsin Chancellor Rebecca Blank, who famously called for college football coaches to take on a salary cap. Blank makes over half a million dollars from UW and lives in a mansion for free. College football coaches earn their compensation through market value. Entitled, tone-deaf administrators like Blank - who like everyone in her field doesn’t think college athletes should be paid at all - maintain their bloated salaries through skyrocketing college tuition which keeps much the non-college educated that way.
It’s not just shareholder primacy that’s killing the American middle class. But what does college education have to do with selling during a political campaign? In the 2016 presidential election it represented arguably the biggest missed opportunity to upgrade a broken product.
Bernie Sanders specifically addressed this gaping hole in the American Dream. He put it front and center, actually. Meanwhile, the DNC’s pre-selected candidate spoke to the problem in sterile, throwaway canned phrases and then later paid empty lip-service to it while extending a dead fish handshake to try and capture his supporters.
Nobody bought that bridge. It was catastrophic, disingenuous selling.
Yes, Trump is a demagogue, bigot and misogynist. All true. Three dictionary terms that were tossed around throughout the campaign by Democrats as if Americans knew or cared what they meant.
Common people do not know what a demagogue is (which makes it one of the most ironic words in all of English, along with phonetic). It’s not a powerful or persuasive word to the attainable voters you're desperately trying to steer to your side. There was zero value to labeling Trump with academic language. It actually siphoned venom away from his venom. Only Michelle Obama genuinely seemed to understand this.
The DNC rubbernecked at Trump like the rest of us instead of focusing on making its own product more appealing. It should have been the stark contrast. And it should have used words all people understand, the way Trump did to everything in his path going back to the primary. Demagogue versus Crooked is a fight that will always end with the nerd lying on the ground.
You know what other words people with any level of education understand? Make America Great Again.
Baby Boomer vs. Baby Boomer
Angry rural whites were largely raised by this generation, which did not teach them to think big, courageously, competitively or globally. Too many of them were taught that finishing high school and getting a job in town where they could raise babies with the girl or guy they first held hands with at age 13 would work out just fine.
No wonder they’re pissed. Make America Great Again to them is a flicker of hope for a broken social contract. Even worse, they barely know who to be pissed at - so they shoot at convenient targets. MAGA may seem like Make America White Again, and in some circles it is. This isn’t about those circles. Clinton simply needed to reach the reachable; the attainable, non-deplorable (a voter-repelling moment for her, by the way) voting bloc that she just assumed she would get because her predecessor did.
The irony of a Baby Boomer believing she would just waltz into the White House because it was her turn is the thickest one in modern presidential election history. Yeah, it’s harder now. They don’t just hand out jobs anymore. That was a Baby Boomer thing.
And when Trump’s MAGA promise fails to unbake the global economy cake and leaves his passionate supporters no better off than they are now (shocker!) We Told You So isn’t going to work either. Neither is Now It’s Our Turn.
One of three subordinate and associated movements tangentially related to and associated with the Democratic Party. Remember Deliver Results Through Others? Whether they know it or not, they’re on the sales team.
BLM is an important movement with the highest ceiling of these three, using basic language and sobering statistics to open people’s eyes to pervasive and institutionalized racism in America. Nothing gets 100% market share, so it does alienate some people who cannot be reached anyway. But like anything that’s sold, its message can be improved.
The spiteful and legitimate use of White Privilege as a term to point out things that are just taken for granted when you’re not black may not be the most efficacious manner of bringing more people into the fold. It forces white people to become self-loathing, and while some of us can swallow that along with 400 years of America’s enduring shame and original sin, White Privilege limits BLM conversions and can foster resentment. Selling is not about being right or righteous - it’s about winning more people to your side and building the largest coalition possible.
I’m not arrogant enough to believe I know the right answer here, but rubbing a dog’s face in its own shit on your living room carpet doesn’t work all that well with humans. Enhancing the outreach to bring more people into the fold is how BLM will advance social change.
This would help bring in votes for the democratic presidential candidate, regardless of who it might have been. Results, through others.
This isn’t a safe space, so brace yourselves: SJWs are the anti-sales pitch.
Pervasive rape culture and subjugation of women in America is appalling and fosters deep levels of hate and resentment toward half the population. Hate and resentment toward institutions can foster a healthy coalition. They’re counter-productive as hell when directed at a gender or race.
Reconciling that rage and organizing to make meaningful change, drive awareness, understanding and be the cure for the disease in this country is something SJWs do not appear to be focused on accomplishing. How they’re presented is more an exercise in group venting.
They’re not wrong. They’re just ineffective.
Combatting subjugation with man-shaming makes enemies of us all. It turns males who possess that understanding and awareness into betas and cucks, two of the dumbest terms to come out of Trump’s ascendance. SJWs are rightfully mad as hell and they’re failing their own cause by abandoning the art of persuasion in favor of sweet, righteous anger.
It should be about getting results you want, which requires selling; not repelling. For one, stop telling harmless men they’re mansplaining things. Not all of them think you’re too dumb to know better. A lot of them are just trying to be helpful and enjoy that rare opportunity to describe stuff they can actually explain.
By the way, you know who is extraordinarily talented at handling the patriarchy with grace? Hillary Clinton. SJWs work against her. Being offended or triggered is not only not a political strategy, it’s the world’s worst sales pitch.
Do you want to know how Democrats lost North Carolina? Because this is how Democrats lost North Carolina.
Yes, I know all about voter suppression, intimidation and gerrymandering - that’s outside the scope of this discussion. This is still about selling. The advancement of gay rights in America was sold brilliantly, finally, once politicians stopped trying to take all sides of the issue. Love and family were the centerpiece instead of sexual orientation. This expanded the coalition for human rights and ultimately gay marriage, which is now just “marriage.”
And then there’s inserting government into public restrooms on the backs of trannies, and making that a nationally-televised fight for equality. Restrooms, man. Urinal cakes, blow dryers and private parts.
This isn’t a discussion of its merits or rationale. I can only comment as a non-resident observer of North Carolina - trying to advance the transgender/public restroom cause is the hill Clinton’s chances died on in that state on election day. It was and is a bridge too far, and it became an anchor for social progressives. From a sales perspective it’s the customer objection that overshadows every positive feature, benefit and aspect of the value proposition. It crippled the sales cycle.
This issue reminded me of the discussion between staunch abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens and Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln about the point of knowing where pitfalls and swamps were in between points A and B in getting slavery abolished and the 13th Amendment passed through the House. The transgender/public restrooms debate was a swamp where too many attainable votes drowned in the other direction. It’s what Stevens would have done without Lincoln in his ear, and he would have lost it all.
So now we’ve got four years of President Trump and the clock doesn't even start ticking for a few more months. The next time he runs for president it will be with an incumbent track record people will have seen and endured.
When the time comes for his opposition, regardless of who the DNC is selling in 2020, it’s going to have to market that candidate both directly and through others far better than it just did with Clinton. The good news is that it’s nearly impossible to do worse than it just did.
The bad news is that better still might not be good enough.
