I’m convinced a significant segment of the voting public might align themselves with the Dems if they felt the party had the balls to stand up to a GOP whose administration lied us into war; drafted a secret energy plan without oversight; outed a covert CIA agent; fired Attorney Generals that failed to enforce partisan prosecution; and then refuses to comply to congressional subpoenas, all without any consequence for their actions. You wouldn’t have much faith in them either, right? That’s why Sen. Obama and his campaign need to take a page from the Bill Clinton handbook—but not use the man himself, for the love of God; he’s damaged goods these days—drag John McCain into the quicksand and bury his candidacy right there. (The GOP don’t hate Slick Willie ‘cause he can pick up chicks, but because he knows how to beat them at their own game.)
Michael Moore's got his list of six ways for the Dems to blow the election; I've got 5 to help 'em win. Nothing new under the sun, here. (You may even have some better ones.) Just some points that need to be hammered home on a daily, intensive basis by the Obama camp and the DNC in order to have a real fighting chance in November.
Here they are:
1. When it comes to putting up a finger to see where the wind of polls and public opinion blows, John McCain is flakier than Mitt Romney’s dandruff. Document every significant change in position—a.k.a. “flip-flop”—he’s made on every issue of importance to the voters: abortion, torture, the economy, MLK's b'day, etc etc etc and back ‘em into a corner on each one, making a point of showing how they are signs of his weakness and lack of solid judgement. (Not to mention hiring the same team that viciously smeared him in 2000 to head his campaign in 2008.)
2. It never hurts to remind the voters REPEATEDLY that McCain is the candidate endorsed by the worst/least popular president in history. And how McCain’s policies mirror or exceed W’s.
3. Drill into the voters the idea that a man who has admitted knowing very little about the economy; wants to keep their children fighting in Iraq for 100 years (yet routinely confuses Shia and Sunni); and despite his claims to the contrary, has no real foreign policy experience—making trips to foreign countries don’t count; if it did, the average American backpacker through Europe could be Secretary of State—is the wrong choice for president. And that the last time we elected a similar candidate we got 8 years of W, marked by an unnecessary war, soaring gas prices, rampant foreclosures, a wounded dollar, record tax breaks for the rich and 48 million people STILL without healthcare. Lt. McCain may have been a war hero, but Sen. McCain has been a bust and will be even worse as president.
4. The 1980s Savings & Loan Crisis/Scandal was the Enron/sub-prime mortgage fiasco of its day, which makes it very relevant now. And John McCain was smack-dab in the middle of it. Gather up the details and let him try to explain his involvement in “The Keating 5” and those subsequent accusations of corruption. Make him sweat. Use this as a starting point for all those instances where he failed miserably to put country before party and self-interest.
5. Republicans loooove to preach family values but fail to live up to even their basic definition of them. So, how well will it sit with voters to pointedly remind ‘em that McCain left the mother of his children—who stood by him while he was a POW—for a 24 year-old, flithy-rich, rodeo queen, when he came back from Vietnam and found his wife to have lost her looks due to an accident? There’s gotta be a lot of decent, GOP-leaning people who have a big problem with that. (Not to mention PLENTY of jilted women. Hey, every little bit helps.) Remind those unrepentant Hillary Clinton supporters—who are mostly of the "first wife" demographic—of this nugget on a daily basis. It's gotta hit close to home.
I wish we could engage the American people on a more substantive, common sense level, but the majority seem to fall for cheap code words like "evildoers" and "activist judges", as well as empty phrases like "fight 'em over there, so we don't have to fight 'em over here", so this is the hand of ignorance we've been dealt. Roll up your sleeves, Obama. You're about to really see how the hot dogs are made.
