Sorry to have to break the bad news, but the Democrats will lose the Presidency in 2008. Never mind the mild bump in support that the mid-term ballots will deliver later the year, the Democrats are in no position to pull off the Big One.
Despite Bush's woeful performance in the polls, even if Hillary Clinton chooses Bill as her running mate, the Republicans are a shoo-in. Why? Because the Democrats have no over-arching strategy about how to get to 2008 without wedging themselves in two, like they did in 2004.
Survey the progressive media - take a look at the issues that the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground are talking about. Are they laying down an agenda for Democratic politicians to latch onto? No. In general, our side of the media are mostly concerned with what the Republicans are doing to this country in Congress and in the Whitehouse. Even the big players such as Wal-Mart Watch are running reactive campaigns in response to a conservative agenda. MoveOn's latest campaign is about trying to prevent a company (the Chicago-Tribune) from doing something it has already done (lay off a whole lot of workers).
Don't get me wrong - we all love to take the glove to the conservatives - but unless we actually start discussing what we want on this side of politics, then the Big Vision Thing that lies at the heart of all Democrat Presidential races will be sorely under-tested when it gets its run in the 2008 Presidential race. We need time to refine our message, and come up with a better new "New Deal" than the one that Kerry tried to run on in 2004.
Forget 2006, the Democratic National Committee should start running advertisements now for the 2008 elections. It should be testing, refining and shaping its messages in the key swing states so that by the time 2008 rolls around, the Republicans will two years behind the game. At first, the issues in the advertisements should vary greatly. Remember, we're looking for the perfect Big Vision message, and the only way to find that is to market-test as many ideas as possible. Free college education, universal health-care, true pay equality for women, a $12 minimum wage. Let's see advertisements about all of these ideas - and lets get them out there now. It's the only we're going to change the direction of this country.
Instead of talking about the problems with the war in Iraq, let's start running ads about our vision for the Middle East - a system where the receipts from oil profits flow through to the general welfare of all Arabs, not just the chosen few. Instead of hoping the Chairman of Wal-Mart will back in John Edward's moderate rise in the minimum wage to $7.50 an hour, lets see some commercials on prime time free to air that pushes for $12 an hour. That would make the Republican majority squirm even while they're getting their weekly dose of Law and Order.
I spent 2004 designing advertisements for the Democrats in Ohio around the issue of gay rights. At the time we thought we were fighting a winning battle. In hindsight we were running on an issue set by the other side, framed to their advantage. This is why I have set up AdBack, a non-profit organization, which is dedicated to changing the world one advertisement at a time. It is only by realizing that the agenda is ours to grasp that we will win in 2008. But just like it takes years to establish a brand, political ideas take years to penetrate the population. Without a full scale roll out of targeted advertising, the Democrats might as just as well pack up and go home now.
The corporate media is against liberal and progressive ideas. It is only by subverting that and reaching directly into people's homes through the power of well-targeted television advertisements that we are going to take back the agenda from the Conservatives.