Imagine how this campaign might be proceeding right now, and on into November, if we could hire Republicans to run it for us. First, you have to suspend your disbelief for a moment, like this was a bestselling novel. In real life, of course, they would sabotage our campaign while smirking and reviling us. But no, pretend there was some way we could convince true-blue (I mean true-red), neocon-to-the-bone Republicans, to design and implement a campaign for our wonderful candidate, Barack Obama. What would they be doing? Well, here’s one version:
1.Screaming from the rooftops about our lousy economy. Screaming, jumping up and down, bug-eyed and red-faced. What’s not to understand about paying the freaking bills?
2.Our opposing candidate is an old man, with serious anger-management issues, living in the past, with a myriad other issues we could be haranguing about. Our candidate is intelligent, young, photogenic, savvy, emotionally stable, and maybe even wise. Hello...this is made-for-Hollywood, people! Can we not run with this???
3.The Republicans are flushing our beautiful earth down the toilet, and our president is making offensive jokes about it at this very moment. How shameful, and McCain would be Bush redux. Our grandchildren are not going to be thanking us if we don’t do something, and do it now. We need to save the goddamn Earth, please. Aaaaaarrrrrrrgggggghhhhhh!
4.Etc.
Admit it, Democrats are not renowned for go-for-the-jugular campaigning. As Eirik Raude quotes Kevin Phillips referring to Democratic politicians in this fascinating diary, "You have no instinct for the jugular. You have an instinct for the capillary."
We Democrats sit around and lament the bad things that are going on in our country today because of this lousy administration, but to the world our lamentations look like angst-ridden sorrow, like deep regret, like attending a college lecture about the life cycle of the dung beetle. We actually reserve our sternest hand-wringing for our own beloved candidate, when he veers from true north. WHAT!!??
We need to get some seriously deep-seated ANGER on, and aim it at the opposition, NOT AT OURSELVES. Let's stop being so reasonable while the opposition is feeding raw meat to their attack dogs.
Look at the list again. We don’t need Republicans to tell us how to win this election, do we?