Part 2: Drew Westen on how “The White House has squandered the greatest opportunity to change both the country and the political landscape since Ronald Reagan”
It is a truly remarkable feat, in just one year’s time, to turn the fear and anger voters felt in 2006 and 2008 at a Republican Party that had destroyed the economy, redistributed massive amounts of wealth from the middle class to the richest of the rich and the biggest of big businesses, and waged a trillion-dollar war in the wrong country, into populist rage at whatever Democrat voters can cast their ballot against.
All of this was completely predictable. And it was predicted. I wrote about it for the first time here on the sixth day of Obama’s presidency, and many of us have written about it in the intervening year.
The President’s steadfast refusal to acknowledge that we have a two-party system, his insistence on making destructive concessions to the same party voters he had sent packing twice in a row in the name of “bipartisanship,” and his refusal ever to utter the words “I am a Democrat” and to articulate what that means, are not among his virtues. We have competing ideas in a democracy — and hence competing parties — for a reason. To paper them over and pretend they do not exist, particularly when the ideology of one of the parties has proven so devastating to the lives of everyday Americans, is not a virtue. It is an abdication of responsibility.
What happens if you refuse to lay the blame for the destruction of our economy on anyone — particularly the party, leaders, and ideology that were in power for the last 8 years and were responsible for it? What happens if you fail to “brand” what has happened as the Bush Depression or the Republican Depression or the natural result of the ideology of unregulated greed, the way FDR branded the Great Depression as Hoover’s Depression and created a Democratic majority for 50 years and a new vision of what effective government can do? What happens when you fail to offer and continually reinforce a narrative about what has happened, who caused it, and how you’re going to fix it that Americans understand, that makes them angry, that makes them hopeful, and that makes them committed to you and your policies during the tough times that will inevitably lie ahead?
The country’s progressive political leadership, led by the Obama Administration, has failed to advance a compelling narrative (i.e. frame or extended metaphor), as I noted in Part 1. One of the people who has been out front on this most important of all elements for long-term political success is psychologist and Political Brain author Drew Westen.
I have quoted him before (see “Can Obama deliver health and energy security with a half (assed) message?“). In the wake of the Massachusetts Senate debacle, he has an “I told you so” Huffington Post piece, sarcastically titled, “Obama Finally Gets His Victory For Bipartisanship.” I don’t necessarily agree with everything he says, but his analysis remains must-read. Here’s more:
The answer was obvious a year ago, and it is even more obvious today: Voters will come to blame you for not having solved a problem you didn’t create, and you will allow the other side to create an alternative narrative for what’s happened (government spending, deficits, big government, socialism) that will stick. And it will particularly stick if you make no efforts to prevent it from starting or sticking.
Were Massachusetts voters reacting in part to the health care debate turned debacle? Sure. In a misguided effort to avoid the mistakes of 1993, the President decided that leadership on health care wasn’t in his job description and encouraged the Democrats to make their sausage in public, after making his own deals with the same people who brought us pre-existing conditions and $150 prescriptions (and that’s with insurance). He promised transparency, and he gave the country a huge dose of it. Unfortunately, what was transparent turned people’s stomachs.
The White House allowed the health care narrative to be all about process, and the process the American people saw wasn’t pretty. It scared seniors, who worried what would happen to their Medicare. It scared workers, who worried about what would happen to the plans their unions had negotiated so hard for in lieu of salaries. It scared middle class Americans with good health insurance plans, who had — and have — no idea whether their plans will be deemed — if not today, in three or four years — Cadillacs, which will first be taxed and then discontinued, leaving them with exactly what Frank Luntz told them it would leave them with: a bureaucrat between them and their doctor. And worst of all, it seemed to most Americans that the reason they were being asked to make such potentially big sacrifices was so that health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and millionaires wouldn’t have to. It seemed not only risky but unfair.
So in that sense, the story of health insurance played right into the story that lies behind the looming tsunami that swept away Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat and will sweep away so many more Democratic seats if the Democrats draw the wrong conclusions from this election. The White House just couldn’t seem to “get” that the American people could see that they were constantly coming down on the side of the same bankers who were foreclosing people’s homes and shutting off the credit to small business owners, when they should have been helping the people whose homes were being foreclosed and the small businesses that were trying to stay afloat because of the recklessness of banks that were now starving them. Americans were tired of hearing Obama “exhort” bankers and speculators to play nice as they collected their record bonuses for a heckuva job in 2009. It took him a year to float the idea of making them pay for a fraction of the damage they had done, and at this point, few Americans have any faith that a tax on big banks will ever become law or that the costs won’t just be passed on to them in new fees.
The White House has squandered the greatest opportunity to change both the country and the political landscape since Ronald Reagan. It should have started with a non-watered-down stimulus package big enough to stop the bleeding in the job market — and a smack-down of any Republican who dared to utter the word “deficit” after 8 years of reckless, unpaid Republican spending. It should have followed with stringent regulations on Wall Street and protection of homeowners and small businesses instead of with a jobs creation program inside the administration for failed bankers and failed regulators. A stimulus — including a jobs program — strong enough to prevent the hemorrhaging of 700,000 jobs a month and a muscular approach to the bad actors who had crashed the economy would have gotten the public firmly behind the President and the Democrats, demonstrating to the average voter that they have a choice between one party that’s on their side and another that’s not. Instead, the White House just blurred the lines between the parties so the average American couldn’t tell the difference.
With all its efforts to tack to the center, the White House missed the point. The issue isn’t about right or left. It’s about whose side you’re on. In Massachusetts, the voters believe they know. It’s now up to the President and his party to convince the American people otherwise.
Obama has his wake-up call a year sooner than Bill Clinton. Clinton, of course, was reelected, but wasn’t transformational, and ultimately failed to address our energy or climate problems. Is that Obama’s fate?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
You sound more pissed off than I am. Obama needs to get back on the message, tell the story.
-The economy died under Bush.
-We are in deep trouble with climate change and the Democrats will do something about it.
-Democrats care about all the people.
-Republicans are about government of the people by the corporations for the corporations. (One of your other regulars put this comment on another of your posts it is a powerfull message.)
I read this yesterday and printed it out for my wife to read. I think Westen pretty much nails it.
Where are the jobs? 482,000 new unemployment claims
Westen’s last Huffington Post piece was hyperbolic and revealed (to me, at least) that he’s most passionate about advancing his own opinion. I do think he is generally correct re: diagnosing the loss of a competing general narrative opportunity.
But like George Lakoff, however, he thinks his own framework is airtight. He strikes me as having a limited understanding of the diversity and plurality of the electorate and public opinion as well as the policy process, as if good messaging and framing can mask some of the fundamental difficulties progressives face that conservatives don’t. He also doesn’t seem to account for the huge number of ways voters make decisions. His model explains a good deal…but it’s far from comprehensive. Too many voters contradict themselves from one cycle to the next. Westen’s model looks like it works sometimes, but not others.
One key thing he missies much easier to make the conservative case not because they’ve had the advantage of repetition over the years (though that helps) but because it’s fundamentally simpler. And simpler is easier to sell. An affirmative case for government is much harder, and the pain felt throughout the economy is nowhere near as broad as in the great depression, when Democrats had their best messenger/framer.
Note that Westen, like Lakoff (whom I also respect) is especially weak in offering alternative approaches. This is where their armchair amateurness shows. Yet again I think what they bring to the table is valuable.
In comparison to Clinton, however, Obama is far more disciplined. As for climate’s prospects, I think a bill is inevitable within a few years. As to this year? Who knows. As for Obama’s presidency, he has so much room to maneuver, the hand-wringing recently among some is bizarre.
What is shocking to me is the DNC’s utter incompetence when it comes to engaging young people and people of color during off-year elections.
We are their base, and yet they never speak a language or employ organizing tactics that resonate with us. In VA, NJ, and now in MA Dem candidates either gave their victory for granted, or veered right and played their campaigns on the airwaves. These are not ways to engage the millennial.
Unless progressives clean up their messaging as you argue in this post, and return to embracing grassroots organizing (as the Obama campaign did), we will have a deja-vu filled fall.
Let me be really simple: Go read some of the pieces with comments from Obama voters who went for Brown. Let’s say Obama or some mythical messenger comes out and uses the most amazing “I’m on your side” frame.
Will the Scott Brown voters and progressive voters suddenly say, Oh, yeah, we’re all together now! There are so many varieties of ways voters can imagine a politician is “on their side.” There is no way to unite them; that’s a fantasy.
There are several long, thoughtful e-mails up right now on Talking Points Memo from current or ex-Hill staffers. I suggest a read-through.
I am a social Progressive and fiscal conservative, and haven’t registered Dem since, oh, maybe 1982. Dems are the best party evar at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, and the e-mails at TPM do a good job, IMHO, at explaining why.
Our bifurcated society is poor at getting anything done, and if you think there are still things that Progressives can get done, then don’t read any stories, articles, e-mails or listen to the radio about the SCOTUS decision today.
We wonder how our families feel about an 18-hour plane trip to NZ to see the grandkids once a year…
Best,
D
[JR: I'll run one of these Hill posts soon.]
Long game, short game.
Westen is coaching the short game. I think – I hope – Obama is playing the long game. Congress is currently the playing field of the short game. We can win the short game over a cycle or two, but our country is losing the long game badly – our democracy is in serious trouble.
We have to get back to where policy matters in Washington, and our citizens are informed and engaged. Westen says voters saw transparency, saw process, and were disgusted – maybe, but his conclusion that they shouldn’t is dead wrong. It may take a couple of cycles, but I think there’s a fighting chance that as voters see process and see content, they will be increasingly engaged on that scale – and not solely engaged by packaged, messaging positions (which is what Westen recommends). If we’re only fighting the messaging war, devoid of content and process and giving up on trying to bring Americans together as one people that have to solve these problems together, then we are in an unsustainable, fundamentally flawed position.
And honestly, we’re likely to keep losing the short game. Today’s bombshell: Citizens United v. FEC. Get ready to be absolutely blown out of the water on messaging.
“What good am I?”
“What good am I if I know and don’t do,
If I see and don’t say, if I look right through you,
If I turn a deaf ear to the thunderin’ sky,
What good am I?”
– Bob Dylan, “What good am I?”
The analysis in this post is right on target. I agree with most of it. In trying time after time after time after time to be “a nice guy”, many of the voters who elected him are now concerned that Obama (and his administration) are just a bunch of ineffective “nice guys” — and worse, that they are ineffective nice guys who are also insiders and don’t get why they were elected in the first place.
After all, everyone talks about people still “trusting” and “liking” Obama — he’s a really nice guy! — but nevertheless voting against his administration in increasing numbers, and becoming increasingly frustrated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:
“Your goodness must have some edge to it,–else it is none.”
He was right, especially in cases like the one we’re in. Obama should read Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance”.
(He should also learn some lessons from MLK Jr’s approaches.)
And I must say: One of the hardest things for me to watch over these past couple of nights has been David Axelrod trying to clumsily explain that everything is OK and that, with time, people will see. I don’t think David Axelrod gets it, or at least he certainly doesn’t come across as if he does, and that’s adding to the problem. And I wonder if the President’s other main senior advisors “get it” too. Indeed, it seems like they don’t. And there is no more time to waste. I think it might be time — or past time — for Obama to change advisors and get rid of the old guys. Voters are sending signals. The point is NOT that goals should be watered down and that you should try for the tenth time to shake hands with those who are kicking sand in your face. The point is that more people than not want EFFECTIVE CHANGE. Period. Can it be more clear?
There is, perhaps, still some hope that Obama himself will “get it” and may be able to deliver EFFECTIVE CHANGE. But, not if his advisors don’t get it and keep trying to talk him out of it. I, personally, don’t want to see David Axelrod tell us that things are fine. They aren’t.
As Ken Kesey used to say, “You are either on the bus, or off the bus.”
The bus needs to take its emergency brake OFF and clear the slush from its windshield.
And another (KEY) thing:
Thomas Jefferson once wrote:
“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the designs of ambition.” (Thomas Jefferson: “Notes on the State of Virginia”)
Because of the past year, the Democrats in Washington (far too many of them, including the administration) are now seen by a growing number of people as being subservient to Big Money, Wall Street, and etc. Or, at least they are seen as being deferent to it — and thus ineffective. That is what makes many voters THE MOST FRUSTRATED and ANGRY. The administration had better “turn on a dime” and adopt a stronger and more effective strategy on that issue. Otherwise, that issue will be their demise — and a quick and painful one.
The sky is thunderin’ — will Obama hear it and SHOW that he “gets it” through EFFECTIVE ACTION.
Sigh!!
Perhaps a link to these lengthy emails on TPM would help, I’m unable to find them.
Credit: I should give credit to Larry Lessig for pointing out that Jefferson quote I used in my earlier comment, above. He gave a great lecture at Stanford this week — “Understanding Institutional Corruption” — and is doing a great project at Harvard over the next five years on that subject. Bravo to him!
Democratic majority triggers cluster[bleep]. Everyone here who’s surprised by this turn of event will now sprout wings and fly to the moon. [peers out window, sees no one flying moonward] That’s what I thought, and I say this as a lifelong Dem.
On the climate, I think we’ve been reduced to actually hoping for something truly scary and awful, a scenario Joe mentioned on this site not too long ago: A really large chunk of Antarctica breaks off, instantly raising sea levels by a foot. (I have no idea how likely such an event would be, just to be clear.) That’s the only “climate 9/11″ event I can imagine that might (and I stress, MIGHT) be able to get enough Americans moving in the right direction without definitively signaling that we’re already screwed beyond all hope. But the price we’d pay for that wake-up call would be extremely high in both human and economic terms…
Sometimes, I hate us all.
But only for a few minutes, and then I get back to work trying to fix this mess.
Somebody needs to explain to Obama that the 63 million people who voted for him are more important to his success than the banks and corporations who financed his campaign. That means he will have to betray his major funders, because they saw him strictly as an investment. I certainly hope he’s figured that out by now.
He needs to shake up his Cabinet. That means getting rid of Salazar (before he quits to run for Governor), Gates, and Geithner, for starters. These people represented economic sectors, not America, and would have fit right into a Cheney cabinet. While Obama’s at it, he should ditch Emanuel, too, who also has no feeling for or interest in the people. They are the kinds of people who are comfortable in a room with people like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, who would make an intelligent person retch.
That’s a big reason Coakley lost. We knew where we stood with Bush. Getting the same treatment from the great conciliator is just too much to take. Health care sealed it: he may as well have announced that writing health care legislation had been subcontracted to the insurance and pharmacuetical industries, the key “stakeholders”. Yeah, so they can drive a stake into our hearts.
If we end up with a climate bill essentially written by people like Landrieu and Lieberman, why bother?
Wake up, Obama, and stand up for the people, and the land and atmosphere that are going to have to sustain us. It’s not too late. If you want to talk change again, do it for yourself. Please.
Post in spam queue. Just look on the TPM site for morning posts on 1/21/10. Not hard to find.
Best,
D
I think folks might be reading a bit too much into the MA Senate election. The repercussions of the election are very strong no doubt, particularly with healthcare, perceived vindication of obstructionism and a drumbeat of extreme rhetoric as a viable political strategy. It will additionally disenfranchise many Democratic voters, as abandonding significant healthcare reform is much more politically harmful than passing it – back to the “Do Nothing Congress” as a talking point.
The reasons for the Coakley loss are a combination of factors. Take away her Curt Schilling comment and we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion about messaging. Moreover, Brown was able to win over independent and some Democratic voters by taking a strength of liberal policies and using it against them. The perceived success and popularity of the MA near universal healthcare system (about 2 to 1 support vs opposition) was used successfully and ironically by Brown as reason to oppose the national system, the reasoning being that the national system doesn’t add any value for MA and will interfere with it, producing negative results (the last being a bit disengenuous). Significant healthcare reform in DC is ironically halted because similar significant healthcare reform in one state has been so successful. How’s that for clever messaging from Republicans – turning an opponent’s strength into a weakness?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012005042.html
I disagree somewhat with the article above. Obama certainly has assigned blame to the previous administration and has repeated that, perhaps not to the same level needed, and not enough by his party members, which is probably the point. But it ignores simply realities. The American public has a very short memory and little patience. They’ve not experienced a near Depression-level recession (most haven’t). They think that all economic indicators should turn around much more quickly. Financial market stability or GDP growth is secondary to jobs. On the whole, they give 6-12 months of slack for a new leader at most. Then that leader owns the problems. Reagan learned that. His party, already a minority in the House, got clobbered in the midterms. As true as it might be, Obama gradually loses effectiveness going forward assigning blame to previous administrations.
On to the issue of messaging. It’s true that support for healthcare reform dropped in the polls throughout the course of the year, until it’s no better than 50/50. Many progressives abandoned it too, so it’s not simply a product of anti-health-reform folks, but that played a large role. Republicans basically went after the people who had healthcare and were satisfied with it, which was generally 70%+, telling them it would make them pay more, would worsen the quality, result in higher taxes, higher national debt, death panels, etc.. Make it personal. Broad support for universal coverage often begins to evaporate when individuals generally feel threatened by it. So progressive messaging needs to include more than “it’s good for the country” or “it’s good for the world”. Clean energy messaging needs to focus heavily on how it’s good for the individual, because we know that their opposition will be making many claims (most of them wrong or misleading) on how it’s going to be bad for the individual (“adding thousands to your electric bill”, “government will take away your truck or force you to drive unsafe small cars or you’ll lose your job”). Green jobs, cleaner environment, long-term mitigated global warming, less dependency on foreign oil – all good things – but these are mostly indirect benefits without an immediate payoff. How will they help the individual? It’s not always enough to refute anti-clean-energy claims, as the public is left with “it will either not benefit me or it will harm me a lot”. How do you tie in the broad society-based benefits in with the individual? That’s not an easy sell, especially in a society that has a strong individualistic bent.
Long-term, progressives shouldn’t abandon the idea of person responsibility, just because it turns people off. It’s responsible to use less energy. Of course, they need to avoid any hint of preachiness. Instead of condemning high consumption activities, instead, illustrate the benefits of energy efficiency – lower energy costs for them, lower consumption means lower demand, which means lower energy prices, helping the individual. When emphasizing non-individual benefits, turn it also into a patriotic theme. It’s patriotic to be energy independent, to generate home-grown energy that never runs out, and to encourage the development of such energy sources. It’s patriotic to help protect our country from the worst impacts of climate change. It’s patriotic to stand up to entrenched fossil fuel industries making huge profits at our expense.
“Just look on the TPM site for morning posts on 1/21/10. Not hard to find. ”
Well, I guess I’m going to have to miss it. I don’t see anything remotely pertaining to morning posts. I see blogs on the left, links to Twitter pages, news items on the right…nothing about posts.
[JR: I'll post one of them.]
Posts are entries. With headlines. They have date-time stamps on them.
Best,
D
OK, I found them (actually emailed TPM because I thought I was going nuts, and they pointed me in the right direction). Some are embedded in the blog entries on the left hand side with the time stamps and all that. Now it’s all clear.
I was looking for something completely different. Thanks for bearing with me.
Obama has surrounded himself with mostly establishment (“white”) technocrats who have substantial interests in maintaining the status quo. It is as if the president has stepped into a netherland where he has become part of a white aristocracy, i.e. corrupt. These advisors have profited handsomely from national or transnational corporations and are still (in)vested one way or another. Only one example is the handout or public fiancial backing to the extent of trillions of dollars to some of the richest people on earth, instead of backing small business and homeowners when the financial scam was revealed.
Failure on “financial regulation,” “health care reform,” and the Copenhagen fiasco are indicating national failure. He is our (the people’s) president. I want him to create a revolution to save the nation from corruption and fascist trends by, at least, using the bully pulpit to the point where corporatists, foreign government lobbyists and Republican nut-jobs are foaming at the mouth. He might start with proposing a new law: “No person shall lobby Congress who is paid to do so.” (K Street could return to the honorable-by comparison “profession” of prostitution.)
If he goes down fighting, we will remember him fighting for the people, by the side of the people and of the people, and the sun will rise again tomorrow. Our country and planet are in deep trouble. Take no comfort, hard times are just beginning.
Two quotes from G.K. Chesterton come to mind:
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected.” – ILN, 4/19/1924″
…and on a slightly more positive note with respect to current affairs:
“It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on.” – “Patriotism and Sport,” All Things Considered (early 1900′s sometime)
Here’s a problem I see. Does anyone else share the feeling?
Progressives still seem to feel some obligation to stick close to the truth. They even can get defensive when opponents lie about things.
Conservatives dumped inconvenient truth years ago and never looked back.
With regard to President Obama, I agree with many of the above comments. I worked to help get him elected because of his climate platform. Since the election he has softened.
It’s time for a more active approach to things. Comments aren’t enough. At the risk of repeating a bit: People in the climate movement must stand together in powerful unison.
United we stand, divided we fall: Meet in Washington on Earth Day, April 22nd, at 1 P.M. (“WED1”) at The White House for a unified Citizens Climate Congress (CCC).
We will ask President Obama: 1) To inform misinformed Americans of the urgent need to deal with climate change, and 2) To exercise the bold leadership that the science demands.
If just a fraction of our climate-oriented groups will cooperate to FOCUS our attention on this ONE place, on ONE day, at ONE time, on ONE VIP, we will have a huge impact!
By the way, I’m a MA resident, and I apologize to everyone for Tuesday.
As I previously wrote privately to others, the degree of craftiness, the amount of money spent, and the overall greasy political machinery operating here to get Brown elected was nothing short of incredible.
To cite one example, I got a more than a dozen automated-but-personalized (“Hi Roger…”) pre-election calls from Brown, Brown’s family, Pat Boone, Red Sox players, etc., vs. one call for Coakley.
One last thing: For those groups and individuals interested in coming to Washington on Earth Day for WED1, the Citizens Climate Congress,
there is some more information available at http://www.gwenet.org.
We have already invited numerous well-known climate-oriented organizations to join WED1. We hope to see ALL of the groups who cooperated in the March 2, 2009 Capitol Climate Action–the action that got Congress off coal–and many more! (Each group is encouraged to do its own thing on the OTHER 343 remaining days of the year, but our motto for this one day of focused action, for WED1, is “All Together Now!”)
Earth Day, April 22nd, is only three months away. So, make your travel arrangements now. Don’t be disappointed, nor left out. We want each and every one of you there to help us speak with ONE powerful voice!
Roger and James Newberry;
Thanks for great posts.
And many others as well.
There’s a movement building in many places because people love their children and have no more patience for a 19th Century Fossil Fuel / Dirty energy industry.
21st Century clean energy economy, here we come!
Earth Day in Washington DC — Sounds Great (and Necessary)
I agree with Roger (Comments 22, 23, 24) and think that Washington DC on Earth Day is a GREAT IDEA — something TO DO. The clock is ticking and the last couple days show clearly that concrete and focused action is needed. Obama himself has said, and has quoted others who said, that the people need to “make me do it” … not his exact words, I think, but I don’t have the quote in front of me. Well, although I am still “hopeful”, it seems to me that he has made clear that citizens DO need to “make him make change” — giving him support, of course, AND insisting, at the same time.
In any case, it’s clear (and it always has been) that the internet alone will not sufficiently prompt the sort and scale of change necessary. MAJOR events — and visible ones — are needed.
I DO HOPE that the key climate organizations can cooperate and be together on this one. Washington DC. Earth Day. It makes beautiful — and necessary –sense. As John Lennon (and the Beatles) sang: Come Together. Right Now.
Good idea Roger.
Cheers,
Jeff
Doomsayer (#1), I came up with that line years ago, except I said it this way– “It’s supposed to be our country, instead it’s turned into “of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations.”
Why wait for Obama to do this? One of the big problems of the liberal/progressive movement is that we’ve let conservatives define us since before Reagan. For the most part I stopped giving money to Move On because I felt they just don’t get it. They run commercials about specific issues when what they really need to be doing is redefining the liberal/progressive movement. Since we don’t have our own 24hr network the best way to do this at present is through commercials. Exxon and BP get this, why don’t we? We could run commercials extol what liberalism has done for this country. For example:
1. Liberals have given us: The 40 hr work week; Time and a half pay, holiday pay, rural electrification, Medicare, Social Security, civil rights, environmental and consumer protection, the interstate highway system, etc. Most of these were opposed by conservatives.
2. Run commercials painting the GOP as rich fat cats stealing all the wealth. A good model was the WAMU commercial with the old out OF touch bankers standing around confused about free checking. Or the Lending Tree commercial where the giant banker tries to crush the small lender. Or my favorite, the commercial where they ask the little girl if she wants a pony. Tweak that to make a point about the unfairness of the tax system.
3. Tie GWB around their neck, but don’t stop there, go after Reagan and his legacy. Also tie the extreme elements of the Tea Party around their neck. And include Fred Phelps, because after all despite the tactics isn’t the GOP message on gays that “god hates fags”?
He is simply incompetent. Don’t you get it?
“Run commercials painting the GOP as rich fat cats stealing all the wealth. A good model was the WAMU commercial with the old out OF touch bankers standing around confused about free checking. Or the Lending Tree commercial where the giant banker tries to crush the small lender. Or my favorite, the commercial where they ask the little girl if she wants a pony.”
Maybe they could airbrush in Lionel Barrymore from__It’s a Wonderful Life__.
Well said: the democrats have not gotten the message out that controlling greenhouse gases, health-care-insurance reform are necessary for our economy. We must and will do better.