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There have been lots of speeches attacking McCain pretty brutally. Unfortunately for us few have been featured by the either the cable networks or the broadcast networks. So the anti-McCain message has barely gotten out. Even Hillary's broadsides at McCain were relatively mild. And I'm not really talking about trashing McCain personally -- though a little bit of that wouldn't hurt, if it were done with finesse -- I'm talking about giving a relentless indictment against the policies of the last 8 years and McCain's plans to basically continue them for another 4. I'm talking about combating the image that he will try to cultivate as a different kind of republican and all that.
I just don't feel as though we've taken it to them enough yet and I don't feel as though we have forcefully enough articulated a vision of the future. Of course there are still big moments to come. I expect both former president Clinton and Joe Biden to give big time speeches.
But I feel pretty certain that the Republican Convention won't replicate this flow. They are not at all defensive about who McCain is. Consequently, they will not feel the need to sell him, as a person, to the voters. They won't feel the need to showcase his family in prime time and all that. The certainly will tell some of his story at some point. But i don't expect the first night to focus on that. I expect the first night of their convention to be about framing the choice in terms favorable to them and unfavorable to us.
There will be an assault on all things Obama -- though the attacks will probably not be directly about Obama's person. They will try to paint the democrats as the opponents of capitalism and entrepreneurship and feckless on foreign affairs and all that stuff. Depending on McCain's VP, he may feel the need to throw some red meat to the looney social conservative wing of the repugnants too.
While I understand the felt need to reassure certain voters that Obama and his family are a family just like theirs and all that, I wonder if that couldn't have been somehow relegated to subtext rather than text, if you know what I mean. I know some think that Obama needed to introduce or reintroduce himself to some significant segment of the electorate -- especially since he's a new face on the scene and is regarded by some as exotic and all that. And maybe they are right. But thinking about that first night, as heartwarming as it was in many ways, it still felt defensive rather than offensive. And we still haven't really taken up the offense fully yet. Hillary got it started. But even that was pretty mild stuff. I don't think she swayed anyone except possibly the "Hillary but not Barack" crowd AWAY from McCain. But that's a special group of alienated and angry and broken hearted democrats. We need to get them back in the fold, but we also need a lot more than them.
When I say I want to see more offense -- a lot more offense. I mean two things. First, I mean I want to see more relentless focus on our ideas and policies and plans. THis is the last time before the debates that our guys get to talk in more than 30 second sound bytes, relatively unfiltered by the media. We should be firing the imagination of the electorate up with what democratic ascendency would mean for our nation. We should be detailing, with passion and excitement, the concrete effects that our plans will have on the real lives of real people. Hillary did a bit of that last night. We need more of that.
And we should be framing the choice between Obama and McCain as at bottom a choice between two competing visions of America. It shouldn't really be about personalities and identities at all. I think you reveal who you are to the voters, at least in a way that really matters to them, by revealing what you want to achieve and by making it clear what you will fight for.
Secondly, though, I think we do have to take McCain down a notch in a funny sort of way. But this depends on what kind of contest we are really in. Let me explain. Given that we dems are WAY ahead on all the issues, one might think that if we can just make our guy acceptable, we almost automatically win. If that's right then time spent making Obama and his family seem less exotic and more accessible to those who find him inaccessible and exotic is well spent. And that would mean we don't have to worry so much about McCain. But I worry that there's another way of looking at the contest. It's pretty clear that we're going to have an even larger majority in the Senate and the House than we do now. So a president McCain, heaven forbid, would have to work with the democrats. That would force him to moderate certain rightist tendencies. And it would force the dems to moderate certain leftist tendencies. I can see ticket splitters feeling comfortable casting a vote for McCain and a democratic senator or house member if they are secure in the knowledge that we will once again have divided government. Divided government is the best friend of the "perpetually undecided, middle of the roader, just don't do anything crazy on me kind of voter."
But if we want to accomplish big things, we don't want divided government. And we've got to make people WANT, even yearn for a unified government. To do this, we've got to play up our ideas more and why they matter. We've got to make this not a contest of personalities but of ideas. And we've got to hammer away at the republican ideas as ideas that have had their day and need desperately to be discarded. We've got to outline the concrete changes that we will bring about and the concrete effects those changes will have in the lives of real people.
I actually don't think that most people who are not political junkies like us and who haven't been living and breathing the primary fight and now the run up to the conventions have much of a clue what exactly Obama stands for except change and sort of the generic democratic brand of being more progressive, pro-government, pro-environment, anti-stupid-war than the republicans. That is, his brand is not yet associated with a thick, passionately articulated and defended policy agenda. That needs to change, I think, if we are to win this thing. And I hope tonight and tomorrow start to change that.
So I say let the battle of ideas be more fully joined. I wish we had joined it the first night. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if you win the "foreground" battle of ideas, the background battle of personalities and identity and character and "leadership" will mostly take care of itself.
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