I’ve seen people make up their mind on how to vote on something as simple as ‘he looks nice’ or ‘he’s got really great hair’. Seriously. There are a lot of really dumb people out there…and a lot more that are just completely disengaged. Candidates cannot get caught up in trying to appeal to such people. Yes, put on a nice shirt, get your teeth cleaned, get a haircut. Then, be done with it.
Karl Rove operated on a fairly simple theory. People really want to know three things about any candidate. First, are they strong? Do they look like natural leaders? Second, are they trustworthy? Do they mean what they say? And, third, do they care about people like me?
There was more to Rove’s playbook, including attacking your opponent’s strength and a toolbox of dirty tricks, but the essentials are in the three examples above. And they aren’t much different from any other consultant’s playbook.
Republicans loved it when John Kerry went windsurfing because they thought it made him look weak and effeminate. They loved it when he said that line about voting for the Iraq supplemental funding before he voted against it. Why? Because it made him look weak (like he didn’t stand for anything)…a flip-flopper who, therefore, couldn’t be trusted. And once you’re perceived as weak and untrustworthy…no one will ever believe you’ll effectively stick up for them.
Democrats need to understand that no swing voter is going to vote for them because they have the most comprehensive energy plan or the best education reforms. Swing voters want to see strength, conviction, and empathy.
The issues matter. They matter tremendously. But they are not the path to victory. The path to victory involves developing your positions and then advocating for them effectively…without apology.
If something isn’t on your agenda…just say so. Tell the American people that issue x is important but it’s not at the top of your priority list. Don’t tell people you’re going do something about their issue if you have no plans to do anything about it. “No, I don’t think I’ll be decriminalizing narcotics in my first term. Not high on my agenda.”
Here’s where our candidates get into trouble. If you don’t think you can get our troops out of Iraq in the next four years, don’t tell people that the first thing you will do as president is end the war. That’s a fucking lie. And once you start telling obvious lies, people no longer trust you.
Don’t plant questions for your audience to ask you. Do that once and no one is going to trust you. “Well…but the Republicans do it all the time.” Yeah…and you know what? The Republicans never apologize. They ask you if you want to get screwed again a little harder. That’s the particular form of strength the GOP prefers to display. Rules don’t apply to them. They’ll disenfranchise your ass if you so much as look at them sideways. People vote for that shit because the alternative is put your family’s safety in hands of a hand-wringing pansy-ass that tries to have it two ways on every issue and can’t seem to tell the truth.
Don’t let anyone tell you that Hillary Clinton, or any of these slag-bags we have running for president, are tough. They’re not tough at all. They’re nowhere near as tough as the people that stole the office of the presidency, invaded the Middle East, gutted the CIA, Justice Deparment, FEMA, and everything else they could get their hands on…tortured us, spied on us, told congress to go get fucked on their subpoenas and then forced them to ratify it all by confirming Mike Mukasey. No!!
None of our candidates are up for a game played on that level. Half of them have been hostages…repeatedly gang-raped in the Capitol Building over the past seven years. They don’t know what it means to display courage. Some, like Edwards, are going for their third pass and just beginning to show they understand it.
People want the truth. They really do. Not all of it. Not the parts that will make them feel stupid or complicit or as part of the problem. But they do want someone to speak plainly and truthfully about the issues that matter to them. And if the president’s been breaking the law…fuck ‘im’…we’ve thrown them out before.
You wanna know who’s trying to be a stand up guy? Chris Dodd. He’s trying to stand up and tell the truth and defend the little guy. But he’s gonna have to get a lot tougher if he wants to break through. Biden’s acting the part but his fucking plan for Iraq is like v.2.0 of Adolf Eichmann’s train schedule. Dreadful…no matter how unintentionally so.
Obama? The guy is like a see-saw. Great one moment, somnambulant the next. He’s gotta walk a fine line…but he can’t take any shit from anyone, especially Republicans. Most of all, he’s gotta convince Democratic primary voters that he will stick up to the Republicans. If there is one thing people know, it’s that Hillary has taken the best the right can dish out and she’s still standing. Of course, she’s still standing largely thanks to this:
DLA Piper $356,100
Goldman Sachs $350,050
Morgan Stanley $323,550
Citigroup Inc $307,350
EMILY’s List $211,642
National Amusements Inc $193,850
JP Morgan Chase & Co $173,350
Kirkland & Ellis (thank you Kenneth Starr) $172,000
Skadden, Arps et al $151,460
Greenberg Traurig LLP (Abramoff’s firm) $150,900
Cablevision Systems $135,113
Merrill Lynch $125,550
Time Warner $124,150
Lehman Brothers $123,450
Bear Stearns $120,580
Patton Boggs $118,400
Ernst & Young $110,650
Blank Rome LLP $105,100
Latham & Watkins $100,950
News Corp $99,350 (keep it coming, Murdoch)
But, what the hell…she is still standing. But who can trust Dick Morris the Clintons anymore? How is she going to stick up the little guy on a DLC platform?
There’s an art to the presidential race. So far, I haven’t seen any candidate in either party that knows how to do it. All I see is weakness and insufficiency.
Yet, someone’s got to win.
Systems theory says that if one part of a “system” is altered the rest of the system has to react to take account of the change in the system. Wolfowitz took it to the extreme–“blow the damn thing up!” “We can control the aftermath” Much as I hate what he and the others have done in the Middle East, I’m not entirely sure that it isn’t the only viable option for the political system in the US. I’m not talking about violent revolution but I don’t believe that the Democratic party can be other than the corporate party it’s been for a lot of years. It needs to be blown up. Clinton, Emanuel, Obama, Hoyer, Reid, et al –this list goes on and on. It’s nothing but a damn sporting event if winning means nothing more than your party “won.”
more than once i have bemoaned our lack of a cut-throat democrat, like the good ole days w/lbj.
“How is she going to stick up the little guy on a DLC platform?”
Shouldn’t that be “stick up FOR the little guy”?
Cus we all know how Clinton and the DLC plan to stick up the little guy and swipe his wallet.
it’s a typo I decided to leave in, cuz it was funny.
I believe it may be part of the Party DNA, so to speak – it is as unnatural for the dovish party to stand firm and fight as it is unnatural for the hawkish party to be empathetic. The Right hasn’t sold people on the fact that they care about people like them, they’ve sold people on the fact that they will fight against the people that they don’t like, be that terrorists, immigrants, criminals, minorities, or whatever the bogeyman de jour happens to be. It is the Left – and only the Left – that values candidates caring about them, the whole “I feel your pain” thing. Independents, Moderates and Conservatives couldn’t give a rodent’s sphincter about what a candidate feels, they want to know what you’re going to do about it and that you’re going to fight to fix it.
Voters want to see strength and conviction – empathy can help, but it is a distant third to strength and conviction. They’ll vote for a b*tch before they’ll vote for a punk.
People want to be inspired and that’s the art that needs to keep coming. Obama’s getting there.
I don’t think Hillary can do it. Manipulation is boring.
It seems silly to me to allow ourselves to be distracted by a personality contest as if the voting process had any meaning.
The worst part of Hilary’s question planting is that it is seen as just another politician playing us for fools. It makes people question the ethics of all of the Democratic candidates. Bush isn’t so bad after all if everyone on both sides does it.
And the media discussion surrounding it is “Everybody does it, so it’s no big deal”. No big deal that these people are so inherently dishonest that they can’t answer spontaneous questions in front of a live audience?
It’s a big deal to me. I’m tired of liars. Especially if my taxes are going to pay for your salary and a level of healthcare I can’t afford for myself.
Seems to me Bill Clinton negates your theory. I don’t believe he was seen as all that strong and forceful, or even honest. He was seen as empathetic, feeling all that pain and all. He was the biggest serial apologizer in presidential history, and his ratings went up more the more he apologized. OTOH, we have the decider, maybe the LEAST apologetic president ever, and he’s not doing so good, and neither is his party.
The slam on the wishywashy Dems resonates deeply with me, but I think the problem is more the dense fog that their timidity creates. People want to vote for change, maybe radical change, but there’s nobody making a clear offer. Well, there are — did you hear Obama’s speech at the Iowa fundraiser on Saturday? And Edwards and Dodd have been consistently out there, but they get lost in media babble about “electability” and “inevitablility” and money.
The problem at one level remains what it’s always been: it’s a lot easier to arouse people with hate and fake emotional crap than with policy and principle. Do we really want the Dems to emulate the GOP’s mastery of selling themselves like toothpaste or SUVs? Seems to me they do way too much of that already. Once again I offer the evidence of folks like Feingold and Kucinich who don’t pull their punches and win easy reelection in purple states and districts.
Okay, I’ll give you Feingold, as he is the prototype and ideal of what I am talking about. But Kucinich does not represent a purple district. And I predict he is going to be primaried out of the House by another fairly progressive candidate. That’s how effective he is.
As for Bill, he made up for his lack of integrity with his empathy and his campaign’s toughness. But he also is such a skilled politician that he can’t serve as a template for other candidates. You don’t teach someone how to play the guitar by playing them Jimi Hendrix.
You really think Kucinich is going to lose his primary for his House seat? Interesting – I haven’t been able to get the pulse on that one but I could see it happen.
And yes – Clinton was a master. But we mustn’t forget his opposition. Bush the Elder gave up the “integrity” position with his “read my lips” silly promise in the ’88 election – effectively neutralizing his ability to criticize Clinton’s integrity. He gave up the “empathy” position based on his record for 4 years as president and his apparent awe at seeing a supermarket price scanner. He never had the “strength” position – he was fighting the “wimp” narrative from day one (admittedly he mostly lost out here due to comparison with the characters that Reagan played in movies, rather than comparing his strength to real people).
And then in ’96 Clinton had 4 years of good results to run on and the GOP fielded Dole. So while Clinton was a masterful politician, one does have to remember that he had some things to his advantage in both of them that other Democratic challengers didn’t have.