I hesitate to give strategic advice to the Obama campaign, which has shown it knows what it's doing. But I remain concerned that we -- both the progressive community as a whole and the Obama/Biden campaign -- are missing our opportunity to convince a substantial tranche of swing voters to swing our way. And that the reason we're missing that opportunity has to do with one of our strengths: a considerable depth of knowledge about policy and politics.
And we forget that there was a time when we didn't know that John McCain was a dangerous hard-right idealogue with ethics issues in his past, and that the McCain of the 2000 campaign (whether that McCain was a real person or a skillful illusion) is not the McCain we've known since 2002 or so. The general voting public still doesn't know that, and until they do, we're not going to see the mass movement to Obama that we should be seeing.
For the inevitable tl;dr explanation, follow me over the fold.
When you've spent enough time acquiring expertise -- and virtually every person here on dKos has at least something approaching expertise in U.S. electoral politics, as compared to the general population -- it is almost impossible to remember accurately what the world looked like to you before you had that expertise. Lawyers forget that there was a time when they didn't know what the differences between the federal and state court systems are, and that non-lawyers still don't know it. Doctors forget that there was a time when they didn't know that "breast cancer" isn't one disease but a whole constellation of different diseases, and that the lay public doesn't know that.
So it's all too easy for us to forget that we once knew very little about John McCain, and to remember and believe that for most normal people, the John McCain running for President this year is the guy they remember liking back in 2000. So we don't bother to explain that he isn't that guy when we make our arguments against electing him: without even stopping to think, we just assume that everybody knows that. And our arguments fail, because our listeners can't reconcile what we're trying to tell them with their own impressions of John McCain. They assume we're overreacting, or repeating unfounded rumors, and tune us out. Until we fill in that missing step, we're going to get nowhere: we'll have no emotional credibility.
Many of us here, perhaps, were never attracted by the John McCain of 2000. Those who weren't will have to take me on faith when I say what others of us know from personal experience: that John McCain was an extremely attractive candidate. He was poised and charming, seemed disarmingly honest about his own flaws, was blunt about the things he thought were wrong with Washington, and of course he had that compelling backstory. He handled interviews with fairly tough reporters with grace and aplomb (his live radio appearances were impressive), and he gave the general impression of someone who changed his mind about issues if his information about the facts changed.
So it was possible to believe that he might come round on things like his hard pro-life stance, that he wouldn't seek to appoint fringe-right judges, that he'd continue to reject the Christianists as divisive lunatics: in fact, that he'd be the kind of old-fashioned grown-up Republican that New Englanders have long been willing to vote for. Many voters in the Northeast, and probably across the entire country, strongly preferred him to George Bush, and might well have gone Republican in the general election that year if he'd been the nominee. For that matter, many Republican voters who did vote for Bush that year would have preferred to be able to vote for McCain.
The last eight years, for those people and even for the initial Bush believers who've become disenchanted with Bush but still want to believe in the Republican brand, have only reinforced the feeling that McCain would have been a better choice back in 2000. It is easy for the Republican loyalists to tell themselves that if only they'd picked McCain to begin with the country wouldn't be in this mess, and this is their chance to get it right. And even for the non-loyalists, the McCain of 2000 represents a compellingly attractive road not taken.
There's the problem for us, and the great opportunity: in the mind of the general public, including responsible and would-be informed voters who don't happen to follow politics as a kind of sport or fandom, John McCain is still the John McCain of 2000. We know better, but we've had years to come slowly to the realization that the 2000 McCain was either a political illusion or a man who, for whatever reason, has changed so dramatically in these past eight years that he's no longer the same man. We've known it now for so long, and it's so enormously obvious to us, that it's impossible to fully understand how thoroughly the rest of the country doesn't know it.
That is the key thing that they need to know: until they know that, and really believe it, none of the details about who McCain 2008 is, and what he'll do in office, will get through the wall of emotional and intellectual resistance. And once they do fully understand it, all the rest will be easy.
The best approach is probably to make the case that McCain has changed: that something horrible has happened to him (who knows what? there's no reason we have to bring up age and illness explicitly, everyone's aware of it as a background issue). That allows people who once admired him to turn to Obama without feeling that they were wrong in 2000 (almost everyone will resist coming to the conclusion that they were wrong; it's easier to convince them that they were right at the time, but things are different now), and without making them feel that they're being in any way disloyal to someone they may have admired in 2000. As Howard Dean has reminded us, the John McCain of 2000 would not support the John McCain of 2008. Loyalty to the Original Maverick means voting against him now: out of respect for him, as well as self-interest and policy.
And the best part of this, in terms of emotional force, is that it has the great virtue of being true. If we assume that the John McCain of 2000 was the true John McCain, that the man we've been seeing slowly emerge since 2002 or so is the slowly-crumbling ruin of a hero and a great patriot, who had his faults but surely loved his country more than himself, we can best honor him by following what his wishes would have been, that we not be so blinded by personal affection for him that we stand by and let his shadow lead this nation to ruin.
One way or another, though, the case has to be made, and soon. Some voters will get there by themselves in the next eight weeks, but not all of them: they have some six years of catching up to do, and a powerful set of old impressions to overcome. The sooner we focus on this and start helping these voters come up to speed on this, the better and safer we will be.