Could we please stop demoralizing potential campaign volunteers?

troublemaker

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Mon Aug-30-04 12:35 PM
Original message

Could we please stop demoralizing potential campaign volunteers?

Edited on Mon Aug-30-04 01:18 PM by troublemaker

When you see posts like "this looks bad" and "I'm worried" and "the Kerry campaign is blowing it" it's not helpful. There are thousands of people who don't post here but do look to DU for inspiration. Why demoralize them? The Kerry campaign is not going to do anything different because some people at DU trash them, so what is accomplished?

And we really are getting negative beyond all reason... case in point: Last Thursday there was a much anticipated CNN/GALLUP poll coming out. Many people at DU were talking about how Kerry would be down 8-10 points. The poll was released and Kerry had picked up a point since the last CNN/GALLUP poll. Yet that poll quickly provided fodder for doomsday posts.

Why? The man picked up a fucking point during a month we ran NO ads and were subjected to an unprecedented national smear campaign with the full backing of the national media.

I could write a book on what I think is fucked up about the Kerry campaign, the candidate, the media and the voters. But the fact remains that John Kerry will be elected with a popular vote margin of at least 5 points. That was obvious four weeks ago and it's just as obvious now. Kerry's 44% core support is MORE SOLID THAN BUSH'S BASE. (Between one half and one third of Bush supporters think the Swift Boat liars are... well, LIARS.)

I don't think much of the people around Kerry, but at least they are pros who understand the basics of campaign dynamics. They had NO expectation of being ahead in mid-September. None. (Blowing resources leading into the Republican convention would only add to Bush's convention bounce. Stories released in August would be buried, etc.)

And even if I am full of shit and Kerry is doomed... before posting fear-filled messages, please consider the effect you have on others. There's a scene in FULL METAL JACKET where they are in Vietnam discussing stories for the military newspaper and Joker is making cynical suggestions about reporting the bad news about Vietnam. The editor asks him something like, "Joker, this paper is for soldiers already in Vietnam. Do you think reading that story is going to help any GI make it back home alive?" The point being that the grunts in the field reading the paper had no practical options other than defecting to North Vietnam, so why wreck their morale? It will not help them survive. A similar thing comes up in the Vietnam movie TIGERLAND. An instructor who has seen Vietnam first hand tells a group of recruits that he knows a lot of them question the war. He says he will he happy to discuss the politics of the war with any of them who are still alive in a year. Same brutal point... they are going to Vietnam either way, and since they have no options, dwelling on the negative will not help them survive.

(I chose those examples because I was and am a big supporter of the anti-war movement. But if I had been in Vietnam even I would have preffered good news while I was in country.)

Aside from expressing one's ego, what real world effect do negative posts serve? If the Kerry campaign spends all their time taking our advice it would be different, but they don't and they are not going to start. That's the reality. So grousing serves no possible real-world purpose other than demoralizing other people.

I prefer to die in bed at home, not in a concentration camp. So, given those things we cannot change, what helps us survive?