A piece by rootless2…a very interesting and insightful piece…was posted this Friday.
The conveyor belt:: The “left” marketing of Republican stories
In it rootless2 sketched out the marketing approaches that have been…very successfully…used by the right to portray Democrats as “weak.” (Of course…the fact that the middle class left is fairly weak in many respects is one of the reasons why this approach has worked so well, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic.)
Read on for more.
The argument boils down to this:
Public perception of President Obama…fueled by right wing branding and left-wing attacks on his “compromise or fail” tactics…has it that he is a weak president, and that image is aiding the right wing in electoral matters.
My question is as follows: Given that this conveyor belt idea is self-sustaining…sort of a feedback system that eventually reaches negative stasis and continues to pour out the same idiot noise no matter what minor adjustments are made…what usable options remain available for the left? (I’m sorry…for the Democrats, because true “left” is as far on one side of the left-centrist Dems as is true “right” on the other side of the right-centrist Ratpublicans…who you will notice are very busily trying to protect their nether flank from the whole Tea Party thing.)
Here are the only options possible (short of course of the highly unlikely rise of a couple of new parties that will successfully siphon votes from both sides and thus end the two-party system as it presently stands):
1-Obama has to rebuild his image by actively and aggressively (Image, please!!!) confronting the right on every front, no matter what the cost in terms of short-term legislative losses. If he doesn’t…and if he runs and gets the nomination again, neither of which are by any means a given…the very best that he can expect is a narrow win for himself in 2012, a Republican majority in both the Senate and the House, and most likely a Republican landslide in 2016.
2-The Dems have to run somebody else. Someone more “manly.” Like Hillary Clinton. And no, that is not a sexist joke. Right now she is the only major Dem who can be considered a successfully active, winning force nationally. (Remember…this is all sales. All branding.) She would carry a large part of the female vote (a percentage that I believe would be a winning one all by itself); the educated middle and upper-middle classes perceive her as “one of them”; she is very popular with Hispanics as well and it is also quite possible that her coattails would stop a total loss in the legislature.
I personally do not believe that Mr. Obama is capable of “rebranding” himself. I could be wrong, but it seems to me that his core personality is too complex, that his experiences coming up as a minority striver taught him that his only shot at success was “compromise.” He followed that route (with great success, it should be noted) and standing up on the bully pulpit to call out in no uncertain terms the evil sons-of-bitches who are presently running this system is simply out of his effective reach.
So it goes.
And so this goes as well:
I will be denounced as a “Hillary lover” by the knee-jerk leftinesses…the same ones who are obsessively attacking Obama, by the way and the same ones who have consistently failed to win anything political in the U.S. for well over 50 years…but the fact of the matter is that I am not in sympathy with the whole Clinton take on things. Not Bill’s and not Hillary’s either. I think that we need truly revolutionary changes in this system if it is to survive long-term, changes that are not going to happen as long as the policy-makers in DC are supported by corporate monies.
But…short-term, another total right-wing takeover of the DC machine would sound the end of any and all possibilities for change, and it could quite conceivably mean the end of humankind on earth as well. Nuclear holocaust and other environmental degradations…military and/or civilian-caused…will do us in within only a few more generations if there is not some sort of truly revolutionary systemic change in the U.S, I think.
Dark?
Yup.
Deal wid it.
Hillary Clinton is the only national U.S. politician with the position, talents and sheer, dogged stick-to-itiveness to effectively beat back the nutcase right wing today.
Name another.
I dare ya.
They want a war?
It is on w/Ms. Clinton.
Been on since the Watergate era at the very least.
“Nixon should have been impeached for bombing Cambodia. In Hillary’s opinion, Nixon was ‘evil.’ [An office-mate during her time on the Watergate Committee] says that she believed that Nixon should be prosecuted or impeached not just over Watergate but over his conduct during the Vietnam War, specifically his order for the secret bombing in Cambodia, which she saw as immoral and even criminal.” (“Hillary’s Choice” by Gail Sheehy, p. 90 Dec 9, 1999
“The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.” — Hillary Clinton 1998 Today Show
“I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.” Hillary Clinton, 1997
Bet on it.
You don’t see that fire now?
She’s a political animal.
And a damned good one.
Watch.
It’s gonna get interesting.
Real soon.
Watch.
AG
