This Isn't Hard

Look, Kevin Drum here and Matt Y. here both worry about messaging on a Capital Gains tax hike. On the one hand, they're right that Democrats need to be better about messaging on this. It's true that if we want more services (like national health care! Please!) we will need to pay for it, and the current bond market conditions and horrible current debt and deficit position of the United States makes borrowing it all unattractive. Democrats do need to message this better.

On the other hand, IT'S EASY! The average voter isn't dumb, you just need to explain complex ideas in familiar language with real life examples. Increasing the Capital Gains tax provides a good illustration. So here it goes.

Obama, this is what you do:

Carry around a roll of pennies when you give interviews. If someone asks something dumb like, "wouldn't increasing the capital gains tax hit average americans with 401k plans" you say "that's just not true." Pull out your roll of pennies and hold it up for the camera. "This roll of pennies represents the capital gains tax." Break the roll open and pull out one penny, hold it up. "of all that roll, this penny is the amount paid by everyone in america that makes less than $200,000. This, [dump out the remaining 49 pennies onto the floor] these other pennies are all the rest of the capital gains taxes. Now you tell me, do you think this is a tax that hurts the middle class?"

It's really that easy. Come on, remember Ross Perot? All his charts and graphs were kind of goofy, but sometimes they were effective. The key is not to bring a bunch of pie charts though. Pick one message, break it down to use common terms that you don't need a financial degree to understand, and then illustrate it with a real life example that average people can relate to. Get on it!