From the classic movie, Spaceballs:
Dark Helmet: So, Lone Star, now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb.
I hate the Democrats. I freaking hate them, Obama included. Always bringing a goddamned knife to a gun-fight.
So, Obama says about McCain's claiming of the change theme, "You can put lipstick on a pig … it's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years." I thought to myself that it was a great line, and riffed perfectly on Palin's "pit bull-hockey mom" line. It'll lead the news and is a direct attack on McCain's strength -- his brand of Maverickyness.
And McCain's team responds with crocodile tears about the sexism (never mind that McCain said the same thing about Hillary). Ok, predictable. So what does Obama do? He dismissed it as a "made-up controversy," and claimed that this just shows how out of ideas the republicans are, blah blah blah.
No! That is not what you do when you are running to win. What you do when you have landed a blow is hit them again, and harder. You come out the next day and repeat the line, and you repeat it again and again until you find a better one. Maybe make it funny -- say that he was imagining the lipstick on McCain, not Palin. Whatever.
Look, Barack, you hit him. You landed a blow, just when you needed to. They tried to hit back, but missed. And then you went and changed the fucking subject. You need to take the fight to him, stop explaining and apologizing and hoping the american people will see through the crap. Play some goddamn offense and stay on offense, fer Jeebus' sake!
Keep on like this, and the election's a toss-up at best, when you should be winning in a cakewalk. It's how Kerry lost, and how Gore lost.
Fucking democrats. They are right on all the issues, and just don't know how to win to save their lives.
2 comments:
Certainly part of it is that Democrats don't run national campaigns well. They're enormously condescending to the conservative people of the United States and they can't, can't, can't just pretend they're not, even for six months every four years. It amazes me.
But the other half of it is their consistent refusal to accept that half this nation actually *is* conservative. Switching to a more personal statement, you think that if you just explain it hard enough, the entire bible belt population will have an "Aha!" moment and they'll all turn Democrat. The truth is that they very well understand your arguments, they just don't agree with you. That's an important part of the equation I think you need to recognize. They're not stupid, and they're not wrong for placing their morals ahead of their economic interests, they just prioritize their world-view that way. If you insist on continuing to just explain to them that you'll give them more stuff for free, they're going to ignore you because they did the math two generations ago and made their choice already.
Whoa, hold on there, maestro. You're projecting. *I* may be the caricature of the liberal elite who thinks that the entire state of Alabama is comprised of subhuman rednecks who should not be allowed to vote. But I am not sure where you base the argument that "democrats" are condescending. It's a popular right-wing framing, and when you have people like me that seem to fit the smear, that reinforces it. But it's bullshit.
What would you have the democrats do? Accept the fallacy that the nation is conservative, the debate is over, we've lost, and just accept a permanent minority status?
I do not buy the notion that believing in progressive ideals and continuing to make the argument for them is "condescending." Yes, it can be poorly received when you tell someone "I'm right and they're wrong," but that is an implied message (from both sides) when you are trying to convince someone that they should vote for you.
Don't forget that we're not trying to convince the kool-aid drinkers that they are wrong. It would be foolish and a waste of resources. The target audience is the 30% of people in the middle who don't think about politics or ideology that often, whose votes are up in the air, and who are open to hearing the argument about why our perspective is the right one for the times.
Flip the perspective, and tell me why the conservatives are not insulting to liberals when they decry our lack of family values, morals and patriotism. I'm not one to look for a false equivalence, but I don't see much difference between the manner in which the two sides claim superiority. The republicans tend to be more vitriolic, and are better at controlling the debate, but the "condescension" (if you choose to call it that) is no different on either side.
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