Yes, I agree with Rick Davis. I'm an unrepentant Deaniac, a rock-solid Obama supporter, a lifelong liberal Democrat and proud of it, and I agree with Rick Davis: this election is not about the issues.
In fact, none of the elections in my lifetime have been about the issues.
And this election in particular is most definitely NOT about the issues!!!
If we keep acting as though the election is about the issues, we will squander an historic opportunity, lose this election, and put our country and the entire world in serious danger.
We have seven weeks left to get our best minds around this.
Lately I have seen a lot of detailed well-researched reality-based diaries outlining exactly what is right about Obama and exactly what is wrong with Palin. (John McCain might as well be Mr. Cellophane.)
I'm sorry to be a party poop and I don't mean to rain on your parade, ShadowSD and BoBo2020 and others who have spent hours and hours compiling these link-rich fact-based diaries.
But it does not help us to encourage the kind of thinking that imagines the way to sway the electorate is to have more detailed facts at our fingertips. Kind of like the SNL sketch where the Hillary character is accused of not wanting it enough. We have plenty of facts! But even if we all turned into Lt. Commander Data with perfect recall of everything Obama has ever done or said, it wouldn't be enough.
Why?
You cannot beat an emotional campaign with a factual campaign.
Without emotion we do not have people's attention to get them to listen to the facts.
otherwise stated:
People who make bad political decisions based on emotion cannot be persuaded to make good political decisions based on facts.
Come on. Haven't we learned that command of the facts is irrelevant? That we can lose even when the facts are on our side? The facts are ALWAYS on our side! Rs don't bother to appeal to people with facts. They know there are huge segments of the electorate who do not respond to fact-based campaigning.
This is EXTREMELY hard for rational thinkers to grasp. The idea that someone could know a fact, and deliberately refuse to respond to it, is crazymaking for us. (1) "But... but... Palin's views are exactly the opposite of everything Hillary stands for! How can HRC supporters vote for her?" (2) "But... but... Democrats want to provide universal health coverage and keep jobs from going overseas and stop home foreclosures. How can struggling working class/ethnic/rural voters choose Republicans instead?" (3) "But... but... people want their sons and daughters in the service to have clean water and uncontaminated food and adequate body armor, and want them to have good medical and education benefits when they come home, and basically want this war to be OVER. How can military families vote for McCain when he is opposed to all these things?"
Answer #1: because the emotional appeal of a woman as (vice)president gives some women who have felt overlooked and underappreciated their whole lives a chance to see someone like themselves in a position of real power, and a reflected sense of self-respect.
Answer #2: because the "God Guns and Gays" message touches religious/cultural values that are the only foundation their pride has to stand on when everything else is collapsing around them. (Obama's "bitter" remark was actually right about this. If only he had said it in a different way...)
Answer #3: because "we are about to lose the second war of my lifetime" is a powerful message to people who think of VietNam as the one blot on an otherwise perfect record (damn those NY Giants!) and they know McCain feels the same way and will do anything to keep it from happening again.
Whenever the PUMAs mystify you, or you wonder why the poor rural voters persist in voting against their economic interests, look to the emotional appeal and you will immediately see the reason why. Rs have built their empire on emotional appeals and Ds have frustrated ourselves by watching our fact-based appeals go down to defeat.
when people are frightened or under stress they are less likely to make fact-based decisions.
Until Dems learn this, we can only win the votes of the informed/intelligent/aware electorate, and we need a majority.
Fortunately for us, Obama has the ability to make BOTH kinds of appeal. He is gifted enough to offer a double whammy: command of the facts for the reality-based and tremendous passion for the people who need to be moved on an emotional level.
THIS is the problem we should be working night and day here. THIS is the angle we should be brainstorming with our best minds:
What is our emotional hook for the people who don't read newspapers and don't click links and don't make their political decisions based on facts and have been primed for decades to distrust Democrats (and blacks too, for that matter)?
We need to give Barack Obama a
- short (seven syllables or less),
- memorable/repeatable
- emotional button-pushing
campaign message in these last 49 days or we will lose.
"Change we can believe in", "The Change We Need", and "More of the same" meet criteria 1 and 2 but not 3.
frankly, Yes We Can is better than all three of them as far as emotional button pushing is concerned. VOTE HOPE also has great power. I'm still very fond of "I want my country back" and "I'm taking my country back". But they mostly work for the mindset of people in Left Blogistan. They do not have the same resonance for Joe and Jane Sixpack, Pam and Paul Purplevoter, or Ron and Renee Ruralvoter.
I am confident that in this community we have people who, once we put our collective mind on it, can craft an emotional appeal that will cut through the BS and GOPropaganda in these last few days when the casual voters are just beginning to pay attention and the swing voters are just beginning to make up their minds.
for the general campaign [what is the best emotion-based answer to "Country First" and "Not ready to lead"?]
for domestic policy [what is the best emotion-based answer to "Dems want to kill babies" and "Dems want to raise taxes"?]
for foreign policy [what is the best emotion-based answer to "terrorists want to kill us" and "stay in Iraq till we win"]
When low-information/fact-resistant voters say "I don't know what Obama stands for, what they mean is: "I can't tell you what he stands for in seven syllables or less."
They have memorized a bunch of slogans for the Republican brand.
WE NEED TO GIVE THEM SOMETHING EQUALLY EMOTIONAL TO MEMORIZE ABOUT OBAMA.
Before the debates next week (yes, NEXT WEEK) we need to come up with about half a dozen or so "ten-word answers" with some emotional punch, defining Obama's positions on the Iraq war, terrorism in general, the domestic and world economy, abortion care, patriotism, and racism.
Put down the snark and the parody. They're fun for us, but satire and sarcasm require too much mental processing. Comedy is OK though--comedy works because a laugh is an unfiltered emotional response. TDS/TCR-style political humor works because it blends emotional appeal with facts. And we can still use facts. We just need to put forth the facts with simple emotional passion better than Republicans have put forth their lies with simple emotional passion.
This would also be a good time for some of our composers to come up with a song along these lines. American Prayer flopped because it was too celebrity-focused. We need a supporter video that will feature in the chorus video of ordinary people in the heretofore neglected demographics repeating our new slogan while holding Obama/Biden signs or O logos or HOPE posters.
What is the emotional hook that unites them with us? "Enough is Enough"? "They broke it. We'll fix it"? "I can't take four more years of this"?
This is where we need to put our energy now. On the gut-punch. Not on more well-intentioned lists of facts that only reinforce the "aloof elitist" meme. An even temperament is a great thing in a president. It is one of the things I admire most about Obama. And I know if he presses the "angry black man" button he will lose. But if Obama has a "what if Kitty Dukakis were raped" moment in the debates, answering a question that calls for sharply focused emotion with a rambling paragraph of dispassionate but accurate facts, we are sunk.
The speechwriters, poets, preachers, and lyricists in this community need to help our candidate sound like the enthusiastic visionary man who surprised everyone at the DNC in 2004 and captured the imagination of the world in 2008. We need to give him some well-crafted phrases to demonstrate appropriate passion and righteous indignation and prophetic thunder in these final weeks. Our candidate can be cool, calm and collected and still be on fire for truth, justice, and the American Way.
Because the stakes are too high! Our lives and futures depend on this! Our nation is at war! Our planet is in peril! Tap that place in you that just wants to scream WAKE UP at everyone! The part of you that wants to scream "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" The concern that keeps you up at night worried about wars McCain wants to start, freedoms Republicans want to take away, people who will freeze this winter, cupboards that will be bare this fall, and all the other damage "Bush 44" could do to our country, to future generations, to the entire world.
A lot of those low information voters feel the same way. But they have never heard us talk about it. The debates may be the only chance Obama gets to talk directly to them.
Where is the common ground? How can we boil it down to a few phrases that will be on everyone's lips from September 26 to November 4th?
If there were not so many brilliant people here, many of whom with the same background as the voters we have yet to reach, this would be an impossible task in the time alloted. But I have seen the reach of this community and I know what we can do.
"Enough is Enough"
"They broke it. We'll fix it"
"I can't take four more Republican years"
That's the best I can do today.
I know there are people here who can do better.
Get on it everyone. Now. Please.
So many lives are at stake.