You are not normal
This is the title of one of the standard joint sessions at Camp Wellstone events. There are three tracks—one for issue organizing, one for people working on campaigns and one for candidates. There are also joint sessions at the start and end of the weekends. (For more info, check here:
http://www.wellstone.org/programs/camp-wellstone )
The trainer starts out by asking people who watches C-SPAN, televised city council or school board meetings, even sessions of the British Parliament. Quite a few hands always go up, even for the Brits (apparently backbenchers across the pond can be really amusing). The Seattle camp is held at Seattle Pacific University, directly across from Fremont, where the annual Fremont solstice parade features nude bikers. In recent years, the cops have stopped even trying to arrest them. http://www.solsticecyclist.org/
The trainer then gives statistics as to the very low viewership of the programs mentioned among the general population, and that particular year when the camp was held solstice weekend, said “You all are here under fluorescent lights during the longest day of the year discussing political strategy. All the normal people are on the other side of that bridge looking for naked bikers. You are not normal!” The entire point of Camp Wellstone is to teach serious policy junkies how to talk to the normal majority. Normal people aren't stupid—they are just not particularly interested in public policy or politics.
The common assumption that everyone else is a political junkie just like we are is a pretty good explanation for some of the idiocy we see in GD-P—like frinstance the utter nonsense about Stockholm Syndrome. The underlying assumption of the OP was that most AA voters know all about Clinton ‘s support of the death penalty (with 42% of the people on death row being AA), the effect of welfare “reform” on poor families of all colors, the massive increase in the heavily minority prison population in the 90s due to the War on Some Drugs, and the nasty racist dogwhistles that Clinton used against Obama in 2007-2008—and they still support her anyway. Guess what? They mostly don’t know about or remember any of that. Neither do most white, Latino or Asian voters. Because most people are not policy wonks or political junkies, regardless of race, creed, color, gender, sexual orientation or geographic area.
The Wellstone organizers realize that the assumption that most people care about policy seriously trips up many activists, and are taking concrete steps to fight the tendency. All three tracks are mostly about how political junkies can most effectively talk to normal people, and how to set time frames for checking on how well we have succeeded. When discussing various voter demographics here, we should all remember that as well.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Wow..."normal" has changed a bit.
