The Nation: Upton Sinclair's EPIC Campaign

[highplainsdem]

http://www.thenation.com/article/155381/upton-sinclairs-epic-campaign

Upton Sinclair's EPIC Campaign
Greg Mitchell
October 13, 2010 | This article appeared in the November 1, 2010 edition of The Nation.


Nearly two years after a Democrat promising hope and change entered the White House, amid an economic crisis left behind by an unpopular Republican, unemployment remained at century-high levels. Despite new stimulus programs, recovery seemed far off. Opponents in the GOP (and even some in the president's own party) called for cutting spending to reduce an exploding budget deficit. Democrats were split: Was the president acting as boldly as possible—or was he not nearly bold enough? Pundits on the left accused him of dithering or caving in to "big business." Yet as a midterm election approached—one that might decide whether the president and his programs had much of a future—right-wing demagogues on the stump and in the media accused the White House of imposing socialism on America.

The year was 1934; the president was Franklin Roosevelt. The economic crisis FDR faced was far worse than what President Obama confronts today, but many similarities exist.

-snip-

Of all the left-wing mass movements that year, Upton Sinclair's End Poverty in California (EPIC) crusade proved most influential, and not just in helping to push the New Deal to the left. The Sinclair threat—after he easily won the Democratic gubernatorial primary—so profoundly alarmed conservatives that it sparked the creation of the modern political campaign, with its reliance on hired guns, advertising and media tricks, national fundraising, attack ads on the screen and more.

-snip-

A lesson for today? Mobilizing to prove grassroots support for a "radical" option usually produces positive results, even if that's not certain immediately. It wasn't exactly an EPIC movement, but as Ari Berman shows in his new book Herding Donkeys, Howard Dean's 2004 race for president—and the once-mocked "fifty-state strategy" he carried out as Democratic Party chief two years later—led to Obama's election in 2008. Berman also points out that part of Obama's problem is that as president he has ignored much of his grassroots operation, until recently.

-snip-

[Hannah Bell]

1. the advertising corp that defeated epic was whitaker & baxter. baxter was born a country girl in my

neck of the woods, which is how i know of her.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitaker_and_Baxter

They were not above dirty tricks, as seen in their work for the 1934 re-election campaign of Governor Frank Merriam in his push to defeat social reformer Upton Sinclair. The major thrust of their work was a smear campaign against Sinclair, alleging in newspaper stories that he seduced young girls, and placing filmreels that depicted Sinclair's supporters as socialist pro-Soviets.

http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/smithrd/PR/pioneers.htm

LEONE BAXTER and her husband CLEM WHITAKER in 1933 founded the first public relations agency for political campaign management. The agency handled campaigns for several California governors and for President Eisenhower. Eventually Ms. Baxter became head of the agency, Whitaker and Baxter International.

[defendandprotect]

2. Didn't they use Hollywood and film to defeat EPIC ... showing thousands of poor/hobos on way to CA??

[pnorman]

3. Yes, and they we presented as regular newsreel footage in the theaters.

They even included bogus "man in the street interviews", with an obvious slant. Somewhere in my DVD collection, I have those film clips.

According to my hazy recollection, that Whitaker & Baxter PR outfit had once been "socialistic leaning"!

[Hannah Bell]

4. their first big job was against a power company/for a public works project.

but then the power company put them on retainer & the rest of their careers they were working for the wingnuts and the money.

i think they had a hand in nixon's smears of helen...(?) memory fails, but he smeared her as a communist.

from baxter's background you never would have predicted her end.

[pnorman]

5. Helen Gahagan Douglas

That that PR outfit was involved that smear job, also accords with my own hazy memory. Perhaps Google can help here.

I also have a faint memory of them orchestrating a vicious smear campaign against Congressman Jerry Voorhees, thereby giving Nixon his first shot at national office.I believe that Voorhees had earlier been part of that EPIC movement, Much to Google later on!

Also, Nixon was supposed to have had close ties with Mickey Cohen, local gangster boss..

[defendandprotect]

8. Also agree ....

lots on Nixon's ties to organized crime --

but then again - - as Sarah McClellan -- who was an independent journalist in DC for eons --

and others tried to point out to us many times, there is little difference between the

"suits" like Nixon/Prescott Bush and organized crime.

Organized crime needs the protection of the "suits" to stay in business --

and "suits" need the criminal expertise of organized crime to clear the pathways!!

[pnorman]

9. Murray Chotimer and Mickey Cohen: my first Google hit"

http://dspace.wrlc.org/doc/bitstream/2041/53839/b20f22-1101xdisplay.pdf

[defendandprotect]

7. Thank you ... this is what I love most about DU posters ....!!

Didn't know anything about that particular company --

strange how the dollar bill works so often to destroy democracy and freedom - and truth!



:)

[defendandprotect]

6. True -- they ran it as "news footage" .... wow -- !!

Interesting subject --

learned about it a while back and always anxious to learn more about it --

When they forced FDR to drop Wallace -- and when Upton Sinclair was so deceptively attacked --

we lost a great deal in America.

Then, of course, McCarthy's attacks on the "ideals of democracy."

They used a great deal of propaganda about democracy -- until the war was over!

Then the McCarthy Era helped purge government of liberals and progressives.

Alger Hiss had worked on prison reform -- look where we are now!!

The rise of the right is always and only thru political violence and lies -- stolen elections.



:)