Negotiation And Presentation Skills For Lawyers: - Ohio State Bar: Fill & Download for Free

Updated in March 2020To win in 2020, Democrats must (1) combat the disinformation campaign that resulted in so many people voting against their best interests, (2) nominate someone who can motivate progressive and moderate voters disgusted by the Trump presidency to turn out in huge numbers, and (3) attempt to convince principled conservatives that four more years of Trump would be far worse than a moderate Democrat.Parsing “what went wrong” should delve deeper than ruminating over Hillary Clinton’s negatives, FBI Director James Comey’s interference in the election and how the Electoral College resulted in the last two Republican presidents being elected despite losing the popular vote. While those topics will be discussed by historians, they are unhelpful in pointing to how to win next time. After all, the constitution is not going to be amended to remove the Electoral College anytime soon.What went wrong in 2016 was the Democrats’ failure to effectively rebut the massive disinformation Republican outlets have spread to convince voters to vote against their own best interests. This disinformation campaign, which started long before Obama took office, reached a fever pitch during the Obama presidency and resulted in millions of voters forming opinions and casting ballots based on objectively false information. It was funded by some of the nation’s the wealthiest men and the corporations they control. It was designed to sway public opinion in a manner that benefited the economic interests of these financial backers.The Koch brothers, Karl Rove’s roster of contributors and other Republican backers systematically deployed disinformation through a matrix of internet sites, propaganda outlets owned by Rupert Murdoch (Fox “news,” the neutered Wall Street Journal), and radio talk shows that reached and inflamed mostly older, mostly male white voter who felt left behind by changes in the nation’s demographic makeup and economy.Rove and fellow propagandists skillfully deployed disinformation for years to fuel fears and promote candidates who would enact the agenda of the wealthy financial backers. Lee Atwater pioneered dirty trick disinformation campaigns and, after his death, Karl Rove emerged as the new mastermind. In 1994 a group called the Business Council of Alabama hired Rove to help run a slate of Republican candidates for the state supreme court. Rove brought a no-holds-barred formula of demonizing Democrats, running attack ads portraying incumbent judges as pawns of the plaintiff’s bar and starting whisper campaigns that spread rumors of homosexuality and even pedophilia about Democratic candidates. Back in Texas, Rove helped elect George W. Bush as governor when he ran against the incumbent, Ann Richards, in part by spreading the rumor that Richards was a lesbian. There is an excellent article in the November 2004 Atlantic magazine (it is entitled Karl Rove in a Corner by Joshua Green and is available free online,) that details how Rove started as a direct-mail guru, then developed a strategy for winning through attack ads, rumors and disinformation.Rove’s successes led Republican operatives to us the same tactics to enforce purity in the Republican Party, drumming out anyone deemed insufficiently reliable. In the 2000 Republican presidential primaries, John McCain was the early favorite, having trounced Bush in New Hampshire. But McCain was perceived at the time as too much of a “maverick” to be considered reliable by the big money behind Rove. Rumors began circulating that McCain had “broken” as a POW and had betrayed his country. Someone (Rove has denied it was him) then came up with racist flyers claiming John McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. A photo of McCain with a dark skinned child he had adopted (she was of Pacific Islander heritage, not African-American, but it did not matter) was widely distributed in rural South Carolina just before that state’s crucial primary. McCain looked like the odds-on favorite – until the flyers appeared. Bush won in South Carolina, a victory that marked the turning point for his presidential campaign.Such victories only whetted the appetite for more “dark money” attacks on the truth. The five Republican appointees who issued the Citizens United decision during the Bush presidency cemented the ability to anonymously fund such campaigns. Super PACs abounded, funding negative ads without disclosing who was behind them.The Republican disinformation operatives adapt the campaign of lies to fit the situation. When John Kerry ran against Bush in 2004, Kerry’s status as a decorated Vietnam War veteran contrasted poorly with Bush’s record of evading service in the war by using family connections to join an Alabama National Guard unit. Republican operatives created attack ads against Kerry by creating a group called Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, impugning Kerry’s war record and questioning whether he deserved his medals. Business magnate and oil man, T. Boone Pickens, and billionaire Harold Simmons funded the campaign. Kerry did not fight back aggressively and was narrowly defeated. Had Kerry won Ohio, he would have been president.Then came Barack Obama. Faced with Obama’s intellect, poise and oratorical skill, the Republican dark money operatives knew better than to challenge him in a debate on the issues. Instead, shadowy Super PACs began spreading lies about Obama’s citizenship. The false narrative about his birth certificate (which Trump harped on endlessly, making a name for himself in politics) was only the beginning. Fox “news” gave the birth certificate non-controversy daily airtime, perpetuating the lies long after they had been thoroughly discredited. The disinformation about Obama spread to questioning Obama’s Christianity (“He’s a secret Muslim! He will impose Sharia law!”) and included incredible claims about his supposed plan to seize dictatorial powers (“Obama’s coming for your guns! He will use abandoned Wal-Marts to imprison resistors). Really. Google “Operation Jade Helm” and read how this bizarre rumor spread among Red State zealots, leading Texas Governor Gregg Abbott (a smart lawyer who served on the Texas Supreme Court and as AG) to cynically exploit this absurd propaganda, vowing to send his own troops to stop the US Army from taking people’s guns.Mr. Rove and his cohorts may have been surprised at how gullible some people were, but I am sure they were elated at how easy it was to convince uninformed white voters that laughably fantastic lies were gospel truth. They brilliantly stoked racism to feed the fears and suspicions of people looking for scapegoats. A huge percentage of Republican voters believed Obama was a Muslim and that he was not born in the United States. Published polls revealed that nearly one in four Republicans thought Obama was the anti-Christ. Poisoning people’s minds with a deluge of lies proved to be remarkably effective.In a twist of fate, the success of the disinformation campaign came back to bite its financial backers who sought to install Jeb Bush as president after Obama’s eight years. The Republican “establishment” wanted a president like Jeb Bush, someone who would reliably support the goals of lower taxes on the super-rich and less regulation of their corporate interests (whether gambling with the Treasury’s money in risky financial maneuvers, polluting the air and water with their extraction industries or looking the other way when mega-mergers killed competition and drove up the prices consumers would pay for daily necessities). Fox “News” endlessly promoted such a platform, which lined up with Paul Ryan’s vapid “budget.” The establishment Republicans, always a very pro-trade group, were initially appalled by Trump. The Republican platform had supported globalization, which large American corporations navigated to obtain lower labor costs overseas while selling more of their products to the rest of the world. Donald Trump hijacked the establishment Republicans’ disinformation campaign, stoking fears and using outright falsehoods about how global economics work. He focused on what he termed terrible trade deals and treaties, dispatching the GOP’s preferred candidates. Trump built on what the Republican dark money had constructed to accomplish a hostile takeover of the Republican Party.Trump understood that globalization, automation, the growing necessity of a computer science or engineering background to compete for jobs all had made many white voters feel like the rug had been pulled out from under them. Trump, with his reality TV background, tailored his message to assure abundant free airtime. Immigrants and politicians who favored free trade made for convenient scapegoats. Trump told the voters that their economic insecurity was caused by illegal immigration (thus the need for a wall) and that a Muslim ban would make them safe. He repeated that “they” sent your jobs to China and Mexico. “They” encompassed establishment Republicans who had supported NAFTA as well as centrist Democrats like Hillary Clinton. Trump promised to “make America great again” by tearing up treaties, abandoning free trade, building a wall on the border and banning Muslims from entering the country. Frightened whites who felt left behind (and whose brains had been marinating in the lies spewed by Fox “News,” Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck for decades) were eager to latch onto Trump’s promises.“What went wrong,” is that Democrats failed to understand the power of the disinformation campaign and did little to counter it. President Obama couldn’t believe that large numbers of voters would fall for such nonsense, and throughout his presidency, seemed dumbfounded that it had worked. He failed to use the so-called bully pulpit of the presidency to set the record straight, all too often acting as though it was beneath dignity to address the misinformation campaign head-on. That mistake should not be repeated.To win in 2020, the Democrats must devise an effective strategy to combat the disinformation that has led millions of Americans to believe things that are simply not true. This is a daunting challenge since so many Americans get “news” from biased sources. But with money like Michael Bloomberg has been throwing around, and a ficus on education instead of promoting a particular candidate, enough deluded voters can be reached.First, Republicans should not be allowed to get away with the false narrative that they are the party of fiscal conservatism and limited government. Republican propaganda has promoted this narrative, not-so-subtly mixed with the racial messages, implying that Democrats favor "tax and spend" policies to coddle the "lazy" lower class. The brazen claim that the GOP is the party of balanced budgets and "small government" can easily be exposed as false, if Democrats will make the case.The last time the US budget was in balance was in Bill Clinton’s presidency. The Republican president who followed Clinton, George W. Bush, had two full terms to enact a “limited government” platform, but instead of defending the balanced budget he inherited, Bush orchestrated a swing from budget surplus to structural deficit via a big tax cut for the wealthy (well before any justifications about spending to combat terror). He then started a needless war in Iraq (which his fired Treasury Secretary’s book revealed to having been planned well before 9–11). The war ended up benefiting Iran and Republican contributors like Halliburton, while destroying any hope of stability in the Middle East.Republicans have in fact been the party of "big government," directing taxpayer dollars to people and corporations who contributed heavily to the GOP. Under Bush, the Republicans pushed through a huge new government program, an expansion of Medicare called the prescription drug benefits plan, which enacted direct-pay of our tax dollars to the drug manufacturers who had so ardently supported Bush and his party. Bush bought the lie that “all regulation is bad,” coddling the "too big to fail" financial institutions whose imprudent gambling led to the Great Recession. Then when the financial crisis arrived, President Bush started a series of bailouts -- $182 billion to AIG alone, the largest seller of the credit default swaps, the toxic insurance-like instruments that multiplied many times the effects of the crash of housing prices. The Wall Street firms who caused the crisis were allowing them to keep their profits, while The Bush administration socialized their losses. The rich got their big tax cut, but millions of jobs were lost and lives were upended.Eight years later, Donald Trump has ballooned the deficit even further with a massive tax cut for corporations and the wealthy. Where are the Republicans like McConnell who frantically cried out at Obama’s deficits? The silence is deafening. The party of Trump (and McConnell, Graham, and every Republican in Congress) is emphatically not the party of “limited government,” much less balanced budgets. If the public’s eyes can be opened to this fact, perhaps some skepticism will emerge about other Republican lies.Second, Democrats must combat the specific false statements Trump employed to win the election. One key to Trump’s victory, especially in states Clinton should have won like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, was the appeal of Trump’s promise to bring back factory jobs to the rust belt, restoring the prosperity that unionized auto workers in Michigan had in an earlier generation. But Trump cannot reverse the laws of economics. Nobody can. He cannot make the concept of comparative advantage disappear. Wages will remain lower in the Third World than in the US. Globalization cannot be reversed.Trump obviously did not magically restore millions of high-paying factory jobs. He could not stop automation or retard innovations like robotic manufacturing. All he could do with a backward trade policy is hurt the American economy. Americans must be educated to the fact that despite the lies Trump spews daily, tariffs are not taxes on foreigners. They are taxes on Americans. We pay them. And the farmers he has subsidized to try to blunt the effect of his trade war are not better off. The subsidies — basically bribes to keep farmers voting against their interests — dwarf the subsidies to the auto industry by Obama that the GOP derided as anti-free market.One-by-one, Democrats must expose the falsehoods upon which Trump’s last campaign was built and on which his 2020 campaign will rely. No, Trump did not create a great economy. The last three years under Obama saw faster growth in every metric than the first three years under Trump. He was not responsible for stock market gains, just as he is not to blame for it crashing as the corona virus spread. His foolish trade war did not bring China to its knees. The “deal” he got fixed nothing, with no impact on intellectual property theft or currency manipulation. He started what became a tit-for-tat tariff was and the Chinese matched his every move (as he should have known they would, since they have a command economy and can hurt their consumers without fear of ballot box reprisals). Trump declared he made a deal, but educate people to look into what he got. Basically a roll back of the tariffs he imposed and they imposed back.As for Trump’s signature campaign promise, there will be no border wall. Any small sections of wall Trump managed to build comes at enormous taxpayer expense, with funds diverted from the military (No, Mexico did not pay for it!). A wall is stunningly ineffective in stopping the flow of drugs and migrants. The cartels will simply dig more tunnels; the migrants will use taller ladders. No, Trump will not “lock her up.” Each of Trump’s principal campaign promises will be revealed as cynical manipulations designed to fool the gullible into voting for an unstable man, empowering a political party that has no intention of helping anyone except the very, very wealthy.Trump promised to make the Obamacare “replacement” better than Obamacare, and cheaper too. What happened to that boast?By ignoring his generals and pulling out of the Iran deal, what did we get? Has Iran stopped its support of terrorism? Of course not. All Trump accomplished was to give the Iranians cart blanche to re-start their nuclear program, People can be educated to see the abject stupidity of that move.Exposing Trump’s campaign promises to be manipulative lies while effectively deploying the truth to rebut the disinformation campaign is a good start. Truth works. Just look at how effective the truth has been in convincing people not to smoke cigarettes, despite decades of lies, propaganda and disinformation put out by the Big Tobacco lobby. Big Tobacco for years put out the lie that there is no link between cigarettes and lung disease. Who buys that now? Why not do the same for Trump’s Big Lies? Most Americans now understand that human activity has pumped carbon into our atmosphere and unleashed global warming, despite all the lies from the fossil fuels industry and their lackey (exclusively Republican) politicians who are beholden to the industry for contributions. Truth can work against the disinformation campaign that put Trump in office too, if a concerted effort is made to methodically expose the lies.Educating the public will not sway the hard-core racists, the willfully ignorant, or the people who reflexively vote for any Republican because they don’t want to pay taxes. But those are not the voters who put Trump over the top in the key states he took from Hillary. Obama won the presidency twice without any support from these kinds of voters. Democrats re-took the House in 2018 without those kinds of voters. We can retake the senate and presidency in 2020 if we join together and get out the vote.Already, those who took a chance on Trump because of his populist promises have witnessed the spectacle of Trump appointing multiple Goldman Sachs alums to powerful positions in the government, breaking his promise to “drain the swamp.” Trump has backtracked on allowing the federal government to negotiate with Big Pharma over outrageous drug costs. His coziness with Vladimir Putin is more than puzzling to people who understand Putin’s record of murdering opponents and invading sovereign nations. The Trump voters who voted against their own self-interests out of ignorance, fear and a sense of desperation can be reached, if the Democrats expose Trump’s betrayal of those who put him over the top develop a message that presents a believable alternative.Democrats must not only rebut the lies behind the Trump victory, but they must put forth a set of understandable, concrete proposals for improving the lives of the fearful people who voted for Trump. Imagine what would have happened if Hillary Clinton had held a press conference after she was nominated and laid out a detailed three-pronged plan for (1) rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure, (2) reforming its regressive tax code to restore fairness and (3) providing free education and training for the next generation. The next candidate can take a page from Ross Perot, with his charts and homespun analogies about balancing the budget, to lay out a plan to build new bridges, tunnels, airports, port facilities and rail lines that rival those in Europe and Japan -– all with artists’ renderings showing the transformed nation. The presentation needs to trumpet the millions of new jobs that would be created in the construction, manufacturing and maintenance businesses, with specific information on the wages and benefits these jobs would confer. Rather than voting for a candidate who promised things he cannot deliver, like bringing jobs back from China, people could vote for a candidate who had a tangible plan to improve lives through jobs and education that opened new doors to compete in a global economy.Sadly, Hillary Clinton did not convince the disaffected white voter that she could do that. The next Democratic nominee must. He (I guess not she until 2024) must also lay out a plan to take control of Congress, so the president will not be blocked from passing such an agenda, as Obama was blocked over much of his by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. Just as Trump built upon the Republican establishment’s disinformation campaign to topple titans of both parties, Democrats can build upon Trump’s populist promises that caused millions of voters to give him a chance, by showing that while he was a false prophet, a true populist can help restore equality of opportunity in America.The Democratic nominee in 2020 needs to able to articulate plans in a manner that allows people to visualize how their lives will change for the better. The frightened white voter needs reassurance that his children and grandchildren will have a chance in the brave new global economy. A crucial part of the plan should be free public education for all, whether a public university education for those who choose that path or effective technical training that leads to highly paid jobs for non-college graduates. Republicans will scream “socialism” when Democrats point to the ways in which Germany and other western European nations have done precisely that to develop skilled a workforce and well-paid positions in successful industries. But they would scream anyway. They howled when FDR passed the Social Security Act in 1933 and modern day Republicans recycled the same arguments, often verbatim, against the Affordable Care Act in 2009. Democrats must prove them wrong, as FDR did.Democrats need to take a fresh approach and prove to the American public that Republicans do not have the best interests of 99.9% of Americans in mind when they seek to reduce taxes on billionaires, allow dirty industries to pollute the air, ground and water with impunity, and to allow the Wall Street institutions to gamble with public money, assured of another bailout when their gambling inevitably causes a crisis. Make clear who these Republicans are working for. It is not the disaffected white voter who took a chance on Trump in 2016. Republican policies only hurt this kind of Trump voter.Democrats should embrace big ideas and bold proposals. Gradualism has failed. Bernie Sanders generated passionate support by being bold and calling out the structural inequality the government policy has created. Contrast that with more tepid support for Hillary, who failed to get everyone who voted for Obama to turn out. Yes, free college and effective technical training costs a lot of money. But the United States is a wealthy nation. Do we really need troops in 178 countries? Or would our money be better spent at home on education and health care?We are experiencing the greatest degree of income and wealth inequality in US history. This inequality, worse than in the Robber baron days of the 1890s, is in large part due to government policies enacted by politicians beholden to the super-rich for contributions. Foremost among these policies is a tax code tilted cynically against everyone who works and makes a living, and in favor of those who earn “passive income” from trust funds, inheritance, and accumulated wealth. Instead of cozying up to Goldman Sachs, Democrats must directly challenge the accepted notion among the Republicans that the super-rich (being “job creators”) should not pay as much in taxes than their pilots, doctors and drivers. Why not make a point of the unfairness of the fact that a wealthy inheritor can put $100 million in municipal bonds and live on $3 million or more a year in income, entirely tax free? How can it be fair that his servants will pay 20%, even 30% of their hard-earned income in federal taxes – or that his accountants and interior designers pay 39.6% -- while he pays zero? Highlight the hedge fund rule, the unlimited 1031 exchange rule and the lower capital gains rate. Propose a minimum tax on all income, from any source, above $500,000 a year. Then use the money to pay for better education and training for the next generation of Americans.Hillary based her campaign on Trump’s considerable negatives, not on what she would do in office. She only vaguely described what she would do as president, most of which can be summed up as being more competent than her opponent. While that was no doubt true, it did not give voters anything concrete to grab onto. The next Democratic candidate must articulate a plan that voters can visualize and get excited about. Education, tax equity and a massive jobs program spurred by infrastructure rebuilding can be explained in terms that everyone will understand.By the same token, Democrats need to deemphasize identity politics, whether it be gender, race or sexuality. Black lives do matter, and the facts of the police shootings are undeniable. The transgendered are fragile enough, without cruel laws designed to single them out. But progressive voters already understand that Democrats are compassionate and dedicated to protecting the rights of all people. There is no need to distract from an agenda that offers to promote prosperity and dignity for all by falling into the trap of being portrayed as an amalgam of identity politics advocacy groups. Bernie Sanders instinctively grasped this fact when he emphasized reforms that would life all Americans and he was attacked by some who, unfairly and without justification, questioned his commitment to civil rights. People who will be unquestionably better off under a Democratic administration should refrain from trying to undermine a Big Tent message.Finally, Democrats need to get behind their nominee, which looks like it will be Joe Biden. He needs to be prepared to debate and he needs the help of everyone who wants to end the Trump nightmare. Revulsion over Trump’s cruelty (like having ICE round up mothers and taking them away from their citizen-children), his crassness, and his ineptitude, especially in foreign affairs, should motivate a groundswell of opposition. His inane comments on the corona virus (a “Democratic hoax,” that it will “magically disappear” in April, etc) must be broadcast far and wide, so people who only watch Fox “news” get to see what he says that their favorite network will not show. Expose the “very stable genius” for what he is and maybe enough of his 2016 voters will think twice about giving him another unhinged term in which he will be even less restrained because he will not be running again.Trump’s presidency is sure to bring more surprises. Trump evidently cannot help himself from doing stupid things, like he has about the corona virus. Trump will continue to shoot himself in the foot. We had better join together before his incompetence, greed and narcissism destroy what it took 250 years to build.�<����