Thursday, August 01, 2019

That Which You Most Oppose


Rick Wilson is a political consultant, but he's never handled a national campaign; so his expertise stops at the Florida state line.

My expertise, admittedly, is non-existent.  But this "advice" from non-experts is getting a bit silly, and damaging in its own right.

Just explain why Trump must no be re-elected and why you should be.

And that results in Kum Ba Yah and we all hold hands in kind and loving Democratic unity?  Quite often explaining why you should be elected means clawing your way over the back of the other guy to stand on their shoulders and shove a sock in their mouth.  Politics, as I think someone has said, ain't bean bag.  I can think of several candidates right now (O'Rourke, Castro, Buttigieg, all come to mind) who tried the "mild-mannered nice guy vote-for-me-because-of-my-policies route, who are sinking fast in the polls and may soon be barred from the debate stage (not to mention the forgotten ones who have already left that stage).  Last night the first thing CNN's pundits wanted to talk about was who "won" and who "lost" and the first criteria was, quite simply, who provided the best reality TeeVee soundbite.  Props to Corey Booker for a remark about Kool-Aid (that sounded clever but I guarantee almost no one outside Jersey understood)!  Boo to Kamala Harris for not going junk-yard dog on Biden again!  Cheers to Kristen Gillibrand for mentioning Clorox and bringing up an editorial Biden wrote when he was in his 20's!  Who among us isn't embarrassed by what we did in our 20's, especially in our 70's?  And when is somebody gonna throw a chair and turn over a table?

Now how do you envision this "why you should be" being conducted, again?

Because what every citizen wants to hear from an aspiring politician is a detailed account of how the incumbent is screwing up a very, very specific issue, and how you will fix it when you get into office?

Besides, that's different from what Elizabeth Warren is doing how, exactly?  Not enough detail about Trump?  Best way to win an argument is to first be sure the audience knows exactly what you're opponent has been doing?  Please never represent me in an argument where something important is on the line.  Please.  Never.
No, THE argument is all about Trump, I take it, and what he's up to.  And I'm not sure how I learn to trust a candidate who seems obsessed with everything Trump is doing.  After all, one of Trump's obsessions is to undo everything Obama did.  Is that what we need, a replacement Trump on "our" side?
But I don't remember him campaigning on "Everything W. did, I'm gonna undo!"  Maybe my memory's just bad....
Tell us how fucked we are; then tell us only you can save us.

Hell, it worked for Trump.
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2 comments:

  1. June Butler2:15 PM

    How does a candidate stand out from a crowd of 20-plus other candidates except by talking about differences? Maybe I'm alone, but I was interested in the discussion of healthcare policies.

    Also, Joy Reid is beginning to get on my nerves. In fact, she began to get on my nerves when she would not fully own her past anti-gay commentary in her blog posts from a decade ago. That's quite a while, and we can all change and evolve in a decade. Forgiveness is possible, but own up and apologize for the mistakes of the past. Reid never has. Hackers wrote the posts. Really?

    I don't trust the advice of recently-converted anti-Trump, but still conservative, Republican pundits who tell Democrats how to win.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rmj6:57 AM

    Exactly. Smacks a bit too much of "We'll tell you how to save us from ourselves."

    ReplyDelete

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