As suburban independent woman recently began to succumb to the "She's just like me" complex, I developed a deeper appreciation of Rovian tactics. He knows how to pull the levers of identity politics.The victims comply on cue.
Obama's only hope seems to be to hammer McCain-Palin for lying and hope that the media join in enough to seal the deal. I like his tactic, because there's such compelling proof that they're lying. I only wish he would make a bit more pointed statement directly in the second person to the independents who are swinging to McCain-Palin. I have a modest proposal here.
I'd say,
I know that many people identify with Gov. Palin. She seems like the kind of person many people would like to know.She seems like the kind of person who knows many of you well enough that she can represent you. She seems to be as trustworthy as one of your good friends. But she only seems that way."
"Sarah Palin is not like you in one extremely important respect. You're not bald faced liars determined to deceive people into liking you and gain influence. She is. So is John McCain. Does that accusation sound too harsh, just another campaign attack. It would be only if I didn't have solid proof and the agreement of even conservative people who investigated her. Here's what happened.
She got up on one of the biggest world stages, The Republican National Convention, and told a huge lie. She said that she opposed taking funds from the taxpayers, from the lower 48, to pay for a frivolous public project, the so-called Bridge to Nowhere. She was trying to make you think that she is one of you, that she is a person who wants to put an end to wasteful spending; she's gonna shake things up in Washington, just as you might. She tried to back up that claim by lying, by deceiving you in the grossest manner. The news media investigated and found out that she was, as they put it, a liar, and it wasn't only the so-called liberal media. It was also the conservative Wall Street Journal. Now, a month later, she had to admit that she didn't tell the truth, because news journalist Charle Gibson confronted her with detailed facts about the bridge. Then she told another lie to try to make her first lie seem unimportant. She said to Gibson that she didn't keep 70 million of the money in hopes of building a scaled down bridge to an island with only approximately 50 inhabitants. The truth is that she still wants to build that bridge and is holding on to that public money.
We hunger for a politician we can trust, and it's very difficult to figure out whether a politician is trustworthy. So we often rely on our sense of the person, on whether they are like us enough to be on our side. We think we can trust people like us and can't trust people who are different than us. That is a powerful idea that Bush, McCain, and Palin exploit. Don't let them do that to you. Don't let them fool you.
Lincoln said, "You can't fool all of the people all of the time." No you can't, because most people eventually get burned enough by corrupt, lying politicians that they begin to question them. Americans have been burned to a crisp by George Bush, by his lies and manipulations of your sympathies, by his good old boy manner and his aw shucks personality. We've lost huge amounts of money and lives on a war that he fooled us into. He even fooled Colin Powell who has now admitted that he was fooled. And he fooled us about cutting taxes on the rich down to nothing and about outsourcing jobs. He's been the flim flam artist, and now McCain and Palin are continuing his tactics. Don't let them fool you.
Take more time to look at their positions, as what they and the other Republicans say they want to do. They want to keep Bush's tax cuts on the rich. They want you to keep paying more than your share. They also want to keep outsourcing jobs and thereby making your job life more difficult. McCain thinks of the war in Iraq as a big success. He says we are victorious. General Patreaus disagrees. He was recently quoted as saying that he thinks there will never be victory in Iraq. Who can you trust?
Take more time to think about these big ticket items that directly affect your lives and the life of the nation. We absolutely cannot afford another four years of these policies and the lies that enabled Bush to get enough support to push them through.
I may not be the person you want to go to the mall or barbeque with, although most of the middle and lower class people I have one-on-one relationships disagree. They end up liking me and feeling that I'm on their side. And my stated polices that are supported by most democratic leaders are truly on your side. There's no disputing that. I'm giving you a tax break. I'm cutting back on outsourcing. I'm ending the war and making America safer by going after Al-Queda in Pakistan and Afganistan. I'm on you side much more than you think than if you just think about my personality and my life story. Remember, I'm not putting these policies out there by myself. The entire Democratic leadership will hold me to them. Think about it.