What does a classic WWII song have to do with the Obama campaign? I'll tell you what, after the jump.
Our nonpartisan national poll has him up, 48 to 44, but when you look at the internals by age you see that the group Obama is doing the worst with, by age, is seniors:
Mc Ob
<tbody>18-29 | 30 | 64 | | | | |
30-44 | 46 | 45 | | | | |
45-59 | 45 | 48 | | | | |
60+ | 53 | 40 | | | | |
</tbody>
Now for various reasons, I don't think that Obama can win seniors outright, but he should be competitive: he is offering to make seniors exempt from the income tax, up to 50,000, and McCain does not. What his campaign lacks is a narrative to engage elder voters. If I was giving election advice (and they're lucky I'm not, otherwise it would be all chimpanzee skits, all the time) I would create some ads, targeted to older demographics, that hearken back to the old Democratic party: FDR, WWII, Truman.
Don't do scare ads, with pictures of breadlines and Hoovervilles, but emphasize the national will, and coming together that had got us out of it. Talk about how we pulled ourselves up out of the Depression and won the war that could not be lost, then juxtapose those black and white shots with campaign shots of today. Ask for support, but more than that, ask for advice, and wisdom for troubled times. I think this would put Obama, and the Democratic party, in a context that would resonate well with his overall campaign theme. He talks about it in his books, but Obama does have a strong respect for our republic's statesmen and past achievements, and that should come through more in his public image as well!
Okay, so the actual song has nothing directly to do with the campaign-I haven't edited it, or put campaign faces on the Andrews sisters-but I do think there is a whole well of iconography from that era that Obama can and should tap, to good effect. Remember the best of a Democratic administration that got America back to work, tore Hitler a new one and gave us the New Deal, Social Security and the GI Bill!
Adapted from a post at Reading Our Past