Thomas Veil
Mar 21, 2004, 06:17 PM
A week or two ago, news reports were stating that George Bush intends to spend the next 90 days "defining" John Kerry, i.e., taking advantage of the fact that many people don't yet know a lot about him.
It looks like that process has started (http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1131&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20040321%2F0417811074.htm&sc=1131).
Though this story is maddening, it is also instructive in telling us just what Kerry has to do from now on. He has to hit back hard and immediately. He can't let any claims like this go unanswered.
Back in the 1988 election, Michael Dukakis tried to take the high road and talk positively while George the First trashed him. Ideally that should work, but realistically, it doesn't. Dukakis lost more and more ground...until he began fighting back. Only then did Dukakis start to regain his lost standing in the polls. Alas, by then it was too little, too late.
So Kerry needs to be smart and aggressive. Because Bush knows he doesn't look good on issues like the war, health care, etc., he's going to have to tear down Kerry another way...and the tried-and-true Republican way of doing this is to portray your opponent as an irresponsible spendthrift. (This despite the fact that the deficit typically has soared under recent Republican administrations.)
Though we have tons of other real issues to talk about, like the Patriot Act, the war and Social Security, this phony-baloney tax talk does win votes among less educated voters. Sad fact is, it seems to work, whether it's true or not.
Which leads me to the second half of my post. I hope we are going to see some of the best liberal-progressive guys, such as Al Franken and Jim Hightower, go out on the road and give speeches, not specifically for John Kerry, but to teach people how to separate the truth from the lies in a political campaign. Franken has started on this trail with his book, but I'd love to turn on C-Span and watch these guys educate voters on how politicians attempt to mislead them. Heck, if you listen to Bush, we've got a thriving economy...and from the cheering crowds, you've actually got some people believing him!
I think we especially need to target young people, to break the "chain of ignorance", where kids are easily influenced and actually believe it when Daddy tells them that liberals are a bunch of lazy, queer, communistic leaches. We also need to get the apathetic young adults off their butts. We recently had Super Tuesday in my state, and it pained me to talk to so many young people, because virtually every one of them had no idea what any of the candidates stood for, nor seemed to care to learn.
I don't know, those are just some of my thoughts. Maybe you have others. What do you think liberals need to do, not just to win this election, but to define ourselves more truthfully for the voting public, and to therefore become an ascendant power again?
It looks like that process has started (http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-APO-1131&idq=/ff/story/0001%2F20040321%2F0417811074.htm&sc=1131).
Though this story is maddening, it is also instructive in telling us just what Kerry has to do from now on. He has to hit back hard and immediately. He can't let any claims like this go unanswered.
Back in the 1988 election, Michael Dukakis tried to take the high road and talk positively while George the First trashed him. Ideally that should work, but realistically, it doesn't. Dukakis lost more and more ground...until he began fighting back. Only then did Dukakis start to regain his lost standing in the polls. Alas, by then it was too little, too late.
So Kerry needs to be smart and aggressive. Because Bush knows he doesn't look good on issues like the war, health care, etc., he's going to have to tear down Kerry another way...and the tried-and-true Republican way of doing this is to portray your opponent as an irresponsible spendthrift. (This despite the fact that the deficit typically has soared under recent Republican administrations.)
Though we have tons of other real issues to talk about, like the Patriot Act, the war and Social Security, this phony-baloney tax talk does win votes among less educated voters. Sad fact is, it seems to work, whether it's true or not.
Which leads me to the second half of my post. I hope we are going to see some of the best liberal-progressive guys, such as Al Franken and Jim Hightower, go out on the road and give speeches, not specifically for John Kerry, but to teach people how to separate the truth from the lies in a political campaign. Franken has started on this trail with his book, but I'd love to turn on C-Span and watch these guys educate voters on how politicians attempt to mislead them. Heck, if you listen to Bush, we've got a thriving economy...and from the cheering crowds, you've actually got some people believing him!
I think we especially need to target young people, to break the "chain of ignorance", where kids are easily influenced and actually believe it when Daddy tells them that liberals are a bunch of lazy, queer, communistic leaches. We also need to get the apathetic young adults off their butts. We recently had Super Tuesday in my state, and it pained me to talk to so many young people, because virtually every one of them had no idea what any of the candidates stood for, nor seemed to care to learn.
I don't know, those are just some of my thoughts. Maybe you have others. What do you think liberals need to do, not just to win this election, but to define ourselves more truthfully for the voting public, and to therefore become an ascendant power again?
