McPain : In the dust of Herstory
Thanks to a number of Parlortricks readers for insightful replies to my previous post "George Lakoff: Don't think of a Maverick"
Howard wrote:
Peter, It's not a simple problem...I don't know how they should deal with it, either. I think that dignity goes a long way, but people are somehow snowed by Palin. Part of it is that she is a FRESH FACE. Great strategy to unleash someone who nobody had seen or heard, so she sounds fresh.
Yep. It's a pure Karl Rove masterpiece. However, I think that Obama has known such a moment would arrive, and they are responding with the plan. It's ok to be boring with policy wonkishness for a couple of weeks. I'm hoping that he will save the best for last... three weeks from mid-October onward of soaring inspirational dynamism. It will be time then to leave McPain in the dust of herstory.
The campaign is so long that it wears out the public, and the candidates, too, I think.
Indeed.
In some ways, Obama needs to grab the ball and then hold it to run down the clock.
His ground plan and operation will be executed successfully, as it was in the primary campaign. He struggled against Hillary in the late primaries but never gave up his early lead and stunning early success. This was the strategy and it was executed as it needed to be. It don't matter if it's pretty, what matters, in this game, is whether you win!
Ren wrote:
Peter, I kinda like the idea of "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". It really bugs me when the supporters start criticizing their own people. That's all people who can't think for themselves need to hear... "Sarah Palin is effective and Obama is not effective" (they don't even hear the rest of the sentence...that the Obama campaign is not effective in dealing with her...whatever that means). What crap. She's an idiot and he's not. That's all they need to say. ...
Yes, I agree. And you are effectively criticizing Lakoff using his very own idea!
I do feel like George Lakoff has a very important point, though, that it's not about numbers or policy or issues.
It's about who can be a leader of hearts and minds together. A leader whose personal commitment and ideas should inspire us all, American, Earthian, Human. That we aspire to make manifest an awareness of the inter-relatedness of all life and to make being a good American about being a good human being, and a responsible citizen and inhabitant of Our Only Home Planet.
Not about McPain's "Country First" but "We the People".
LEADERSHIP >> IS << ABOUT THE SPEECHES YOU MAKE
Building consensus, pointing direction and raising optimism is what a leader does! Obama does that very well, and I look forward to his returning to that role full time.
- Dorothy sent this link to Andrew Sullivan's article in The Atlantic : "McCain's Integrity"
- For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?
Full article: http://www.truthout.org/article/mccains-integrity
And now, with Beyond the Palin having finally deigned to be interviewed by the fourth estate, we see, as the New York Times Editorial Board put it:
"""It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness. What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications."""
Full editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/13/opinion/13sat1.html?em
I am seriously beginning to wonder if the Republican strategy is built on mental illness. Maniacal delusions of grandeur in those raising this intellectual light-weight nutcase Governor to an undeserved pedestal, added to the denial-of-reality psychosis of glazed over lower-middle-class sub-racists ("I'm not racist, but I'd never vote for a Muslim") creates a hot bed of know-nothing populism that only a Hitler could know and love.
John McPain has sold whatever was left of his soul to the reigning demons of Pennsylvania Avenue, hoping in exchange to get the keys to the mansion. By recruiting a full fledged neo-Aryan Amazon to his side, he diminished himself into irrelevance. How dare the Repuglicans complain about references to his age. If Sarah Palin isn't a good enough reason to consider McCain's health and welfare, what the hell is?
"Country First"? What a load of * * * * coming from these obscene neo-fascist theocratic panderers.
Fortunately, there are hundreds of millions people, Go Team!, who now see through this crap.
I just hope they get out and vote in November. ESPECIALLY in IA, WI, PA, OH, MI, CO, MO, FL, VA, etc etc!
Both MoveOn and the Obama campaign have rolled out voter contact tools, which enable supporters to contact both current supporters as well as 'undecided' voters in critical swing states.
http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/create.html
Resist Cognitive Dissonance!
Keep the faith!
P
PS Keep writing!
