In this morning's Abbreviated Pundit Round-up, DemFromCT offers-up an excerpt from a Wick Allison (yeh, I'd never heard of him, either) column from D Magazine:
" . . . THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT 'the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,' the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me. . . ."
See "My Party has Slipped its Moorings"
I watched last week's debate with Kosniac mmcole. We both noticed that Obama never talked about "Democrats". It was always "I". Now it's understandable that sometimes, maybe most of the time, the self-referential pronoun "I" is what Obama should've been using to explain his particular position or platform plank.
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But he had many, many openings to contrast Democrats with McCain and Republicans that he never, ever went took.
Obama's seeming to deliberately distance himself from the Democratic Party Brand would be understandable if (1) the Democratic brand name was in the crapper; (2) the Republican brand name was riding high; and/or (3) Obama's numbers were falling and McCain's were rising. As you can see, none of these things are the case. In fact, it's Pat Buchanan himself who's just this past week written that the Republican Party Brand is:
"now on the same shelf with Chinese baby formula."
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As Markos has said, this election, if at all possible, needs to be about breaking the back of the GOP, or at least a lot of the political moral of the GOP faithful. In order to do that, Obama needs not only to win, and win big, but Democrats all up and down the ticket must win, and win big. Obama can help make this happen.
When, for example, McCain talks about Obama "never parting with his party in a major issue", Obama should take that and run with it and say something like:
"That's right, John. Because over the past 4 years that I've been in the U.S. Senate I've seen how bankrupt the ideas and policies of the Republican Party and George Bush have been . . . and more and more Republican rank and file people are seeing that, too, and are joining us.
"With all due respect, John, it seems to be just you and your running mate who seem to think that embracing trickle-down economics, endless wars and capitulating to 'all-things-Bush' is the way to go. I and the Democratic Party and Progressives and Independents and people who've never voted before and many, many Republicans, who are sick and tired of what your party's done to this country, see another, better way to run things and restore hope and promise and prosperity here at home and respect abroad."
Come on, this stuff just writes itself; like Palin shooting some non-threatening living thing in a barrel.
If things go well for Obama come Election Day, then he'll need as large as possible majorities in the House and Senate as he can get, when the time comes for him and the fam to move into the White House come January.
Of course, there are -- yes, still -- a few Blue Dog races (the irony of that phrase should NOT be lost, you know) where such coattails are neither needed nor necessarily wanted, for now. But those are few and far between and, besides, I'm just talking about Obama's general, stump-speech and Third and Last Debate remarks.