Apparently most people, so bewilder by the only politics we’ve ever know; cannot conceive of anything other than the false dichotomy that the only choices available are to either be passive (as Obama is mostly doing) or just go negative. I totally reject this false dichotomy!
Though I never said he should go negative, this is everyone’s response to my assertions about “making adjustments to the changing conditions”. Of course this is the only possible dichotomy the “experts” offer on television as well. A suggestion, stop listening to the people on t.v. They almost roundly have the same agenda - to stoke the most negative fight that they can for ratings. These are the exact same people who flagged waved you into a fabricated war instead of challenging what was clearly flimsy evidence.
As Barack has correctly noted, this is “all Washington knows”. They have no vision and don’t care about anything but playing politics. They’re not worried about their own health care. Despite the much bandied notion that they’re in the tank for Obama; they’re not in the tank for anyone but their own corporate backers, and are concerned with nothing but them and personally climbing the corporate ladder.
As Barack looked outside of their thinking and conventional wisdom for a starting strategy, he again needs to hoan his vision and thoughtfulness into developing an expanded adjustment strategy to stay on top of the wave of changing conditions.
1. Respond (right his own narrative) - He far to often let’s characterizations and even accusations slide without response, or a minimal one at best. Having your assistant deputy press director whom no one knows make a three sentence reply to the media via email is not really a response.
Instead of thinking he can just let things slide, or just giving some soft peddled, mumbling answer that doesn’t give a good alternative; just leaves whatever’s being peddle out there by someone else to stand as the narrative.
He allows Clinton to write the entire narrative. She defines everything, who’s more experienced, what’s whining, what the commander and chieft test is, what the popular vote count is, and even who he is. He needs to be writing his own story. Everyday he needs to be shapping the message of the campaign, not pretending like the talk on cable news isn’t happening. It is, it’s just happening without much imput from him.
2. Project Confidence, Strength and Fortitude at all times
Too often he acts like he’s scared or dispationate. You wonder where’s the fire in the belly. He studders about, seemingly unsure of what to say.
He talks about conflict ingviews or characterizations of himself with this benign unsure tone, talking about “well, look”. Everytime somebody says “well, look” they’re about to lie or hedge. No confident answer ever starts with “well, look”.
Speak with authority. If you don’t really believe or have confidence in what you’re saying, then why should I?
3. Give more specific policy plans
I’ve both watched on television and been to live where Clinton reels off a litany of program ideals, with “how bout” this, and “how bout” that. An analytical person realizes it’s just a bunch of blather of which she cannot do because she’s not the congress and financially it don’t add up. And it’s pretend populist pandering by someone who’s not even a populist.
The thing is though, most people are not nearly that politically analytical. All they know is they’re hearing ideals to address the problems in their life from Clinton.
Obama makes a great point about how the government works needing to change for anything concrete to be done, and gives a great guiding vision; but that doesn’t resonate enough with everyone.
He doesn’t need to stop giving that vision; but why must that be all. Why can he not speak on the stump more about specific policy ideals. I think if he went just half way between what he’s been doing and what Clinton does, he’ll keep resonating with the people he already is with the whole visionary thing, and he’ll resonate with more people who want to hear about more specific things and in so doing co-opt a significant number of those Clinton is reaching.
4. Highlight Clinton’s constant untrue statements For most people (she has her worshippers) who learn more and more about how the Clinton’s operate and what they’re really about, the less people like them. Hillary on a daily basis tells outright lies, or at least completely contradicts herself.
I think if he’d just take time to walk through her statements and show how they are not accurate, he’d take away about all she has to argue with; because she really doesn’t have much else. He could do it without angry tones and without being rancorous; just a matter of fact parsing out of the truth.
This is not the depth of the explanation behind these points in my thinking, but I’d be writing all day to flush them out in detail; and I don’t want to spend that much time writing it out, any more than I think you want to sit their and read through it all. The above descriptions are just to give an ideal.
Even in response to my piece about Obamanites doing the campaign a disservice, Obamanites still repeated the exact same things that the piece argues against; and saying that he doesn’t need to change anything because what he’s done has gotten him this far. But Two days after I wrote the piece, Barack repeated what I said about needing to adjust because what worked before is not working now:
“There’s no doubt that a campaign has to continually fine-tune itself,” Obama told reporters in Indiana, one of two crucial battlegrounds in the next round of contests on May 6.
“You know this has been a long campaign. What worked well three months ago, if you’re doing the exact same thing now, it may not work as well,” said Obama, who racked up a string of wins in February before stumbling in Ohio and Pennsylvania”; according to Yahoo news.
So at least in word and theory Obama agrees with me. It remains to be seen if he does anything about it. He’s talked this kind of talk before, and then has done little.
