Man, I'm tired of hearing that we just need to do a better job of "branding" liberalism. I actually read one entry about how we should do this with a nice subtle "positive branding campaign." This is naive and troubling because it indicates that that we really do not get it. Folks, they know who we are and they don't like us. We ain't gonna change that with a puny ass advertisng campaign.
Couple of points on this front --
Effectively "branding" something costs well over $100 million (as much as a Presidential campaign). Coke spends hundreds of millions of dollars getting us to love a soft drink (and not an abtract concept).
We will be drowned out by the opposition. Because of the success of Fox and how it has forced the other cable news nets to go to the right, we basically are in competition with a constant "billion" dollar anti liberal campaign. You would literally have to buy up all the available advertising time on the cable news nets and would still be unable to match the air time given to the "valueless liberal elite concept"
And, last key point, WE ARE NOT LOSING JUST BECAUSE THEY DON'T KNOW THE REAL "US." Guess, what they know the real us and they DON'T LIKE US. Dick Vigeruie, Rove and other (including Nixon) realized this antipathy towards the elite and have spent the last twenty years capitalizing on it. Now, even Tip O'Neil's former chief of staff (Chris Matthews) gets a kick out of talking about the liberal "disconnect with the real people."
We should be focusing on how we can demonize and undercut our opponents (there is a lot of material here) and get away from think that "if only they know how nice we are, they'd like us. "