If President Obama could miraculously do the following:

[Are_grits_groceries]

End the wars
Balance the budget with no tax hikes and more tax cuts
Pass an affordable and rational health care plan
Create eleventy billion jobs
Put more resources into social programs
Shore up small businesses
Reform Wall Street
and a million other things that both sides want,
he would still lose the overall battle for the American people IF he didn't frame the message right, push it first and forcefully, and smack the GOP as if playing "Whack a Troll."

Don't expect people to think rationally or perceive things as they should be. Once messages enter the Great Spin Machine, they are then blared across the land 24/7 by many people and groups. That is what will probably stick. How in the world did an absurd message like "They want to kill Granny" gain traction? First spin, big spin.

One of the changes that has magnified the way events are perceived is the change in spreading news. There are many more outlets and forms. With Twitter, you can have a message going around the world before an event is even over or before someone can respond to a problem.

The Democrats better move and move fast to radically alter the way they get their messages out. There is no use whining about the way things are done because while they are whining, the perception is getting even further away from them.

I read and hear a lot about why and how such and such are misread or misinterpreted because people aren't looking at the whole picture. Newsflash: They won't! They will get a small but sharp message no matter how skewed.

I have been arguing about the problem with the NASCAR racers turning down their invitations to the WH. I believe they aren't intentionally dissing him. However, along with other events, the public is hearing: Boner makes Obama change time of speech, Obama caves on EPA regulation, and NASCAR racers refuse to go to the WH. Whether any of those messages or true or not is irrelevant. What the perceived message that gains traction is the one that will matter.

To round out the whole mishegas, people are scared in these uncertain times. Scared people are more likely to stampede or do irrational things. No matter what a politician's record is or what they are saying, if what finally gets through to the public is that someone will help them no matter how absurd that is in reality, that's all she wrote.

Go first, go big, go constantly or go home!

[ixion]

1. k/r

Well Said!

[uponit7771]

2. Rec, I love the guy but he has stopped talking to America like he did during the campaign. During...

...his campaign he pointed out what was wrong about what Rev Wright did and why it's not good for America. He should be doing the same with GOP policies that are totally asinine

[mopinko]

3. i think we will need to invent a new internet to do that.

this one is, well, we are not the only ones here. (not talking about du)

[Fly by night]

4. Lakoff is for losers.

Here in Tennessee, our hopelessly naive TN-DEM party keeps holding summits and workshops and seminars and prayer meetings to discuss the proposition that -- if only we would hold our mouths right and come up with snappier messaging -- we would start winning elections again.

In the meantime, Republicans keep winning elections from one end of the state to the other, despite Dems having a 5-8% edge in voter preference, not because their messaging is superior (otherwise, our legislature wouldn't be a staple on Comedy Central) BUT because they succeeded in requiring unverifiable voting machines in all our counties that THEY program to create their mandate out of a few lines of computer code.

When Memphis, one of the blackest and bluest cities in America, (s)elects an entirely white Republican slate for county offices, no amount of messaging will accomplish anything in the birthplace of the blues or, for that matter, in the home state of Andrew Jackson.

Except, perhaps, a message to the USDOJ to investigate wholesale and well-orchestrated election fraud in our state.

Oh I forgot -- they don't have any time to do that. Too busy interfering with state-established medical marijuana programs and conducting Rambo-like raids on guitar manufacturers.

[nevergiveup]

5. "They want to kill Granny"

The fact this gained traction was mind boggling but guess we have to face up to today's realities. My biggest complaint about Obama all along has been the total lack of any kind of forceful public relations from the White House. They actually had positive things they could grab and run with and there was silence. It also doesn't help that the Democratic Party is so out of step and disorganized. During the first two years it was Lieberman and the Blue Dogs who got all the press and they were the ones holding Obama and the country hostage. It really is sad where we are and the reality is that once the public is ingrained with the concept that Obama is a frustrated or weak president, game over.