We here at the Obama campaign have recently been inundated with a flood emails the tone of which was fairly similar. Basically, many emails were from supporters or erstwhile supporters angry at us for this or that position the candidate has adopted since being declared the presumptive nominee. This has been mirrored in a general drop off in enthusiasm and fundraising. You'll also notice that our poll numbers, ranging from the Newsweek poll to the Rasmussen and Gallup tracking polls have been falling, and falling against a Republican nominee so comically inept that he makes Robert Dole look polished.
So, in the interests of keeping the electorate informed, which is what this campaign is all about, we here at Obama HQ would like to fill in some details and explain how we're going about losing this general election.
It should be noted that whilst we desperately want to lose the general election, there is some suspicion that we will unfortunately win, given the suckiness of the Republicans. But be sure, this is an outcome we are working 24/7 to prevent.
Find out how we can lose in November below the fold.
There are FIVE STEPS:
- DEMOTIVATE THE BASE: crucial to losing any election, particularly one in which the odds are stacked in your favour, is to demotivate the sections of the population most likely to favour your candidate. Clearly, most of these people will note vote for the other guy, but our goal is limit their involvement. To this end, we have persuaded the candidate (who's actually a rather nice and principled guy, if a touch ambitious) to engage in a series of increasingly ludicrous flip-flops and public statements. These policies "refinements" must be done as cack-handedly and brazenly as possible and not have the slightest hint of thought or finesse surrounding them, lest their demotivating impact be lessened. Not only will changing our positions on crucial issues, particularly those pertaining to civil liberties, demotivate the base (the first step), it will also have the added benefit of ceding massive arenas of public policy to our rival and ensuring that he never has to explain himself to the electorate, lest they find out what a quack he is. Everybody wins!
- SIDE WITH SOME OF THE MOST UNPOPULAR POLITICIANS IN LIVING MEMORY: this tactic is particularly effective when used in conjuction with the first. If you can DEMOTIVATE THE BASE (step one) and side with massively unpopular politicians at the same time, you really are on the fast track to a big loss - the ultimate goal.
- APPEAL TO IMAGINARY VOTING GROUPS: clearly when seeking to lose an election, particularly one in which the odds are stacked in your favour, you never want to directly appeal to actual voters. This could lead to people enthusiastically supporting your candidate and that can only lead to the Republicans losing - something we of course NEED to avoid. To this end, we have directed the campaign message towards fictitious voter groups. So, for instance, here at the Obama campaign, we are lookening to broaden the base of our support by appealing to all those Americans who "don't like the 4th amendment, support retroactive immunity for criminals (i.e are opposed to the rule of law), like the people who overcharge them for their phone calls, agree with Scalia about anything and like shooting things."
- APPEAL TO VOTING GROUPS NEVER LIKELY TO SUPPORT YOU - an extension of the 3rd step, really, but also different. Since we don't want to appeal to our own voting groups (our votings groups are bigger than their voting groups, so if it's a contest between these two groups, we win, and that's something we NEED to avoid) and since appealing to imaginary votings groups all the time is dangerous (for the fear that campaign will be viewed as a complete shambles), we sometimes appeal to REAL VOTING GROUPS. Obviously, this is a high-risk strategy, since whenever you appeal to real voting groups, there is the danger you may attract votes. So, what we do here is appeal to people never likely to support us, rendering the dangers as slight as possible.
For instance, evangelicals and opponents of church-state seperation (we pretend they'll forgive us for the gay marriage/abortion thing, but we know they won't, because they're not stupid).
- WHENEVER THE OTHER GUY HAS A BAD WEEK, HELP HIM OUT! - those of you who have been paying attention will notice that over the last few days, we have been losing support, according to the polls. All this while our opponent has been dealing with gaffes and his own campaign nightmares. How did we achieve this? Our plan is clear - to lose, particularly when the odds are stacked in our favour, we must always deflect negative attention onto our candidate, particularly when the other guys economic advisor is having a brain-leak of extraordinary proporitions.
So, friends, this is how we plan to lose this election. It will be tough, particularly because the odds are stacked in our favour. But we'll try. All we need you to do to help us in this campaign is stay silent about our "mistakes" (we'll know what they are really, but don't tell anyone!) and keep reminding yourself - the most important thing is that we lose.
Peace Out,
OBAMA '08 HQ