Who should Obama and the Democrats run against? And how?
In 2003 Israeli interests commissioned a study on how to manipulate the American public to maximize US aid to Israel. The result was the WEXNER ANALYSIS: ISRAELI COMMUNICATION PRIORITIES 2003 [pdf]. One thing the study recommended was that Israel demonize Saddam Hussein and keep on demonizing him, making him the enemy, using him to scare the American people, even if he was dead.
Saddam is your best defense, even if he is dead…For a year – a SOLID YEAR – you should be invoking the name of Saddam Hussein and how Israel was always behind American efforts to rid the world of this ruthless dictator and liberate their people. Saddam will remain a powerful symbol of terror to Americans for a long time to come.
The Republicans followed that advice on Saddam but they also did it with Clinton. They demonized Bill Clinton and ran against him even after he was out of office, held him up to their supporters as everything they were against, made him the boogieman, painted him in black and red, and ignored the truth.
In the same way Obama and the Democrats need to run against Bush. Bush and Cheney were widely hated before they left office. Obama and the Democrats need to remind people of all the evil that the last administration did and remind the American people that we do not want go back to those policies or people.
It hurts Obama’s chances when he does anything Bush and Cheney would have done, from torture to deregulation, from giving money to the wealthy, to blocking help for the poor. Whenever Obama continues one of Bush’s unpopular policies it makes it that much harder to run against Bush and the Republicans.
All this bipartisan crap is bad for the Democrats. It says there is no difference between Republicans and Democrats, that Republican policies are equally valid. That confuses people. When they had that health reform conference, which CNN showed all day, it gave the Republicans 8 hours to get their lies on TV and only hurt the chances for real health care reform. Whoever proposed it needs to be hunted down and fired.
The Democrats need to draw distinctions between themselves and the Republicans and make those distinctions clear. Every time Obama allows himself to be fooled by Rahm Emanual, or some other Almost-A-Republican adviser, and to compromise, to not act like a Democrat, he weakens his party’s chance of staying in office.
Be a Democrat! Run against Bush! And stop doing anything Bush would do!
How should the Democrats run?
The Bush administration had an echo chamber. It was disgusting because it was inspired by the Nazi daily parole, where the Nazis put out a message of the day to manipulate the German people. Disgusting but it worked.
The Obama administration needs to do something like that. The Democrats need to all stay on a single message on a single day - which will help them get that message in the media and help the American people to hear and understand it. But they need to remember another lesson of the Wexner Report:
Stick to your message but don’t say it the same way twice. If they [the American people] hear you repeating the exact same words over and over again, they will come to distrust your message. If your speakers can’t find different ways to express similar principles, keep them off the air.
The Democrats need an echo chamber to get through to the media, to reiterate the good things Obama is doing, but each voice needs his/her own version of that message so different people will not be repeating the same words. The Bush echo chamber was bad about doing that. The Daily Show used to show video montages of various Bush minions spouting the same message in exactly the same words. If that means the Democrats need to send a different fax to each person, each with a different wording for the Obama Administration’s Message of the Day, then that is what they need to do.
Lastly, Howard Dean needs to reappointed to head the DNC. He is one of the main reasons the Democrats took the House and Senate. Whoever has that job now is nowhere nearly as good.
Hmmm, maybe Dean needs to replace Rahm Emanual.
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© Alllie 2009
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