Why a Message Committee?

To win America’s hearts and minds, Democrats must speak in words that reveal our values of fairness, optimism, proven know-how, and love of country.  The Message Committee’s purpose is to develop clear, accurate, persuasive, and unified Democratic messages.  Communicating in pithy, easy-to-digest, bite-sized words and phrases, Democrats can energize and persuade voters to volunteer their time, talent, dollars, and votes for the Democratic ticket.

 

What does a Message Committee create?

The committee's products are talking points, tabling literature, and generic speeches for the speaker's bureau committee.  Talking points are used for writing letters to the editor and for calls into talk radio programs.  The Santa Clara County Message Committee is creating talking points and speeches on a wide number of subjects, including Economy, Civil Rights, National Security, Environment, Energy, Education, Health Care, and Social Security.  See our Website, sccdp.org, to download our talking point documents.  

 

How to create the talking points?

When creating talking points, credibility and integrity are paramount.  Talking points rely upon only credible, well-known and reliable sources of information and are highly vetted documents.   Here are some samples of good sources of information. 

 

Newspapers: Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, and Times of London as well as Associate Press and Reuters.  

Magazines: Time, Newsweek, CNN’s Money, Fortune Magazine.   

Government Documents: GAO Reports; Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Think Tanks: Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Center for Responsive Politics, Center for American Progress, Economic Policy Institute.

Coalition Partners: AFL-CIO, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, National Resources Defense Council, sierra Club, League of Conservation Voters, NARAL Pro-Choice America, People for the American Way, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State

Who are the Message Committee members?

Members of the message committee must be committed to doing research-based writing.  The Santa Clara County Democratic Party’s Message Committee members have strong backgrounds in political and legislative research, journalism, engineering, law, accounting, science, and legislative program auditing.

How does the committee conduct its work?

First, committee members choose topics that interest them, then they research the topic using well-known, credible, reliable sources.  The aim is to boil down the information into 3-4 talking points, which would end up being a one-page document—front and back. Members find pointed pieces of information about the negative impact of Bush policies and the positive ways in which life was better under a Democratic Administration and/or how Democrats are fighting to improve the lives of Americans now.  Each piece of data is backed up by full documentation—including the website—from which the information was garnered.

 

The member sends the talking points to the Co-Chair in charge of vetting the information.  She conducts additional research to round out the talking points document then massages the data to create a sound bite talking points that will resonate with the Democratic market.

 

The document then goes to the Call to Action Coordinator and County Chair for review and approval.  Lastly, the document is uploaded on our website and emailed to interested parties for their immediate use.