What voters care about
Focus on immediate effects
Re: “House approves $2 trillion social, climate bill in Biden win,” (Nov. 18): Seventeen Nobel Prize-winning economists say the $1.85 Build Back Better bill will ease long-term inflationary pressures and lower costs for Americans. So why will this fact likely not be rhetorically effective in persuading Americans to vote for Democratic candidates in 2022?
The answer: The immediate is more persuasive than future projections. Voters who now are experiencing rising prices at grocery stores and gas stations — which impact their ability to make ends meet — will not trust speculations about what will happen in the future.
Long-term projections cannot offset the difficulties voters currently are experiencing.
This rhetorical challenge facing Democrats is reminiscent of failed deficit spending arguments used by candidates in prior years. Voters were not convinced about the long-term harms of deficit spending; instead their votes were based on what they were experiencing in the moment.
Immediate gratification almost always trumps worries about the future.
Democrats must draw upon tangible matters voters currently are experiencing. This holds rhetorical possibilities for the issue of global warming. Unlike previous years, Americans now are feeling the consequences of climate change and therefore may be receptive to scientific evidence showing this is caused by global warming. Fires and floods are real. In short, global warming could become a persuasive issue for Democrats in 2022 and beyond.
Maintaining control of the House and Senate will be a tough lift for the Democratic Party in 2022. Yet it is not too late for Democrats to fully embrace and appropriately respond to the rhetorical challenge facing them.
Richard Cherwitz, Ph.D., Austin
National security
Eighty years after Pearl Harbor, we are no safer.
I am the last Houstonian who remembers the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, 80 years ago. Living 500 yards away from Battleship Row, from my front yard I watched 20 Japanese planes fly 100 feet overhead and seconds later drop the torpedoes that sank the USS Oklahoma and West Virginia. My father, a Navy captain
(USNA 1909), was manager of Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard, responsible for ship repairs and salvage, until the Battle of Midway.
Then, Japan sought to dominate the Far East. Now, China does. With no world power anxious to risk nuclear war, China can dominate the Far East using conventional arms. There, they are the No.1 military power, just as we are in the Americas.
Without conflict, China is seeking to make the United States its economic thrall. In years past Texas Instruments and other U.S. companies produced the microchips used in the U.S. Growth in microchip needs, both military and commercial, has been exponential. Now, more than 90 percent of the U.S. needs are met mainly from China, Taiwan, South Korea and Vietnam. American companies invested there because costs were lower.
National security has been forgotten. Recent supply disruptions prove that. Tariff protection is essential to encourage domestic production of microchips needed for national security and a smooth running domestic economy. This should be a priority item in improving our infrastructure.
As a nation, our country is less safe today than we were in 1941.
Thomas W. Gillette, Houston