There has been much discussion of reframing issues and of making sure that Bush and the Republicans get all the blame for every bad thing that happens for the next four years, and especially for the next two years until the 06 midterms.
One way to help that along is to create some sort of powerful and simple mechanism for dumping nastiness on the Republicans.
I'd like to suggest a political version of good cop, bad cop. In the ideal version of this, Kerry (for reasons which will become obvious) and some extremely pugnacious Democratic congressional attack dog would appear in a daily or weekly national television broadcast. That's not going to happen, but there are a number of scenarios short of that which might be effective. I'll go into those below the example that follows.
Attack Dem to the audience: "Bush's Republican allies in congress are trying to raise taxes on your healthcare."
Kerry (looking sad and ministerial): "Really?"
Continued below the fold
Attack Dem: "I'm afraid so, John." Describes Republican comments this week about eliminating employer deduction for health care. Shakes head sadly. "If you had won the election, this wouldn't be happening."
Kerry: "No. It wouldn't. I'd protect the American worker from this blatant raid on their bank accounts. I ran for president because I wanted to help the working people of America. As anyone who has looked at my health care proposals knows, I wanted to reduce the cost of health care for those who have it, and bring those who don't into the system." Details about now entirely theoretical and therefore hard to attack health care plan.
I suggest Kerry for this role, because love him or hate him, he's our shadow president for the next two years at least and that gives him a enormous political value for this kind of thing. However, there are time when other "Good Dems" would be appropriate, including potential candidates for President in 08 and people who we'd like to see have a higher profile, Obama for example.
As I said above, I find it unlikely that we'll actually get major Democratic figure to sign onto this, especially at the outset, but an Air America version, or even just an ongoing place for this on D Kos or some other Democratic blog would be a place to start.
This could be done on every issue that the Republicans blow and hand to us, and on quite a few they don't. It wouldn't always have to be Kerry, and there are good reasons for substituting someone else from time to time, for example when things get too dirty.
An example that I find personally reprehensible, but potentially politically defensible would be the video showing the killing of a wounded Iraqi insurgent by a marine. Bad Dem's attack line would be something to the effect that while the action was appalling, the primary blame did not belong to the marine, but rather to the Bush administrations willful destruction of the laws of war in relation to enemy prisoners. Tie it back to Rumsfeld and also the Gonzales' memo calling the Geneva conventions quaint, and through them to Bush. Good Dem would say that this wasn't an acceptable political topic and reprimand Bad Dem for bringing it up, leading to a discussion of the Republicans politicizing 9/11 and Iraq.
Other issues just from this week, include the incompetent Rice being moved up to State, Gonzales himself, the possible reprivatizing of some airport security functions, the crashing dollar, and other items that have come up on D Kos.
I also mentioned the daily W in my header. That's because we really need to tie every bad thing to Bush himself. This will personalize the issues in a way that just attaching it to the Republicans in general can't, and personalization and demonization are powerful tools. Of course, we have to handcuff the Republicans in congress to Bush and the negative issues too, but that's easier if it's personal.
I'm relatively new here, I have little mojo, and this is a huge job. I can try and find and post some of these issues in a diary with nifty negative framing as provided in the comments or as it comes to me. BTW, I'm going to be much better at the negative side of the frame, possibly because as a science fiction writer I tend to think distopian. That leaves a lot of work on the Good Dem policy side and tracking all of this info.
If somebody with more enthusiasm, and or mojo, want s to take this and run with it, I will freely surrender the job to them. If not, I will try and do my bit, as intermittent as that bit will be. Of course, a lot of it can happen in the comments section if this becomes a regular gig for me or someone else.
So, opinions? Thoughts? Offers to take over, help out, shower me with money and book contracts. All will be cheerfully accepted.