He's not going to change any minds. He's got to get the undecideds to come out in force AND to mobilize his base, whose minds don't have to be changed.
I think that this is exactly the strategy to take-- so far. Shrubya gained nothing by blowing a big chunk of his wad on a negative campaign in the battleground states. Kerry just absorbed it all. The result? Kerry was leading by 7 points in the battleground states, with Nader taking 7 as well, so Kerry my have a 10 point lead.
A negative campaign has two audiences: the core constituency and marginal voters. The goal is to mobilize the core while simultaneously keeping the marginals home. The marginals are too volatile. Who knows who they'll hang a chad for?
If the republican strategy is to simply fire up it's base, but not try to get the marginals, then let Shrub look like an asshole, let the republicans annoy the crap out of the undecideds. For now.
When the public tide against Bush has turned decisively, that's when to ride it. If Kerry is perceived as riding it too early, he'll come under fire as the messenger bearing the bad news to u.s. public. Attacking too hard on the war and foreign policy front will only alienate people. After all, THEY supported the war.
You need to give them time to absorb the fact that they were marks. If every mark want they scrilla back, you'd better stay the fuck out of the way when they start realizing they were duped. Otherwise, they'll just turn into macks who want a Cadillac. (cred to The Coup, Party Music)
At 12:17 AM 5/5/2004, Doug Henwood wrote:
>But Nader isn't running with or trying to build a party. He's a lone
>ranger, out for himself, and it seems out for personal revenge.
>
>Doug
Frankly, it has always appeared to me that a goal of supporting Nader is to punish the two parties. And revenge does seem to be a common theme: the Democrats constantly betray us and they'll betray us again.
But here's the thing, how many voting lefties are there? Some of them, like me, never vote for a dem let alone register as dem. How many lefties register as dem? independent? Do we even have a back of the envelope calculation to show that we'd register more than 5%?
If we doubled our numbers and got 5% showing in the primaries, this would hardly make a dent. Hence, the democrats don't care what we do or say. Voting for the, against them, or against the Republicans doesn't make a dent. They don't care.
In order to harness the political wind to the Democratic sail, we have to work on which direction the wind is blowing and how hard. And here I'm in complete agreement with Jon Johanning. If you want to provide an alternative to the huge conservative voting block and political movement we often conceive of as the "christian right," we're going to have to do practical things that address the "struggles and wishes of the age," as Marx described them.
"...(T)he critic not only can but must concern himself with these political questions (which the crude socialists find entirely beneath their dignity). By demonstrating the superiority of the representative system over the Estates system...he will force this party to transcend itself --
FOR ITS VICTORY IS ALSO ITS DEFEAT. (is this not dialectics?--k)
Nothing prevents us, therefore, from lining our criticism with a criticism of politics, from taking sides in politics, i.e., FROM ENTERING INTO REAL STRUGGLES AND IDENTIFYING OURSELVES WITH THEM. This does not mean that we shall confront the world with new doctrinaire principles and proclaim: Here is the truth, on your knees before it! It means that we shall develop for the world new principles from the existing principles of the world. We shall not say: Abandon your struggles, they are mere folly; let us provide you with true campaign-slogans. Instead, we shall simply show the world why it is struggling, and consciousness of this is a thing it must acquire whether it wishes or not. http://marxists.anu.edu.au/archive/marx/works/1843/letters/43_09.htm
The old man had it exactly right many years ago.
Kelley