Which, more than anything, is a statement at how much better Republicans are than Democrats at controlling their message.
[...]
Part of this, of course, is that Republicans are a lot bigger on ideological purity than Democrats, or at least talk like they are.
Controlling the MSM probably has something to do with it.
The bright side of this is that by the time we all have careers and children and stuff we actually care about the future of, Comedy Central and the like will
be the MSM. And then our children will think we're morons.
You ask them why they don't consider the alternative that way and they'll say, "Well, that's too different."
[...]
The left is therefore always on the offensive, always trying to break through the fortifications of the firmly entrenched right, whose grasp on the reins of power is assured by default unless radical change is needed.
The first and last sentence in that block encapsulate the point nicely.
People fear change a lot less when the economy is in the tank and the country is mired in an unpopular war.
Less, but experience suggests that dear old Granny would honestly rather take the horrific war and depression she's grown accustomed to, than face the unknown equation of how Obama might transform her life.
Everybody wants change right now, it's just a question of how much.
Bingo. Right on the money.
The ground that Obama's standing on is a lot shakier than I think he realizes. Barack Obama says "I will change
everything about American politics," and he embodies the notion in everything down to his name. John McCain says "I will change
some things about American politics, and then I'll keep the country running, just like I have for 30 years."
John McCain
is the moderate candidate. Even though he really isn't, he is now, on the biggest issue of the election: not the war, not the economy, but
what are we going to do with this whole mess.Democrats have wanted change for years, have been screaming for it, crying for it, pushing for it, and now they've pushed too far. Obama was a pretty good flavor for several weeks, but now that he's had his momentum stolen by a simple WTF maneuver from the other side, the middle has a chance to catch their breaths and think, "Now wait, things are bad, but are they so bad that we have to
forever change the face of American politics to fix it?" And the answer is, usually, no. There's still a prevailing sense that we can pull up, even our noses out, and level off before climbing to altitude again. Sometimes I think that's the
real reason people call JM "Maverick".
(And I
just now made the connection to him actually being a fighter pilot. D'oh.)
Barack Obama needs to level
himself off, assure the middle that just because he's a progressive black guy with a foreign-sounding name that he's not going to introduce mandatory ass-sex and vegetarianism, and more importantly, get the hell back out there. The man's been oddly quiet for a while now, letting attention linger on that hellbeast of a figurehead that McCain bought, and he's lost his "media darling" status. That's hurting him, I can tell, and it's going to hurt a lot more because, again, the MSM controls his message... and unfortunately he's given them a lot to work with now.
McCain is trying to paint himself as a change candidate, and his maverick image and the Sarah Palin pick are part of that. Those are the dragons Obama needs to slay. He needs to tie Bush around their necks like an albatross.
He should tie McCain to Bush in every conceivable way. Even if they weren't so similar that The Daily Show could interpose their speeches without any special editing. Bush's name is the new equivalent to Godwin's Law, and Barack Obama should know better than to take the high road after seeing what it did to his peers.
And even the people who buy the "maverick" label are going to notice that McCain doesn't sound that goddamn mavericky on the economy or the war, and those are pretty much what the election's going to be about.
Let's hope. Right now it's mid-September, and the election seems to be about Sarah Palin's rape fetish.
But, liberal and conservative doctrine notwithstanding, Gore wasn't the candidate of change, he was the incumbent VP. Bush was the candidate of change.
And you have to admit, he changed things pretty fucking drastically.
I don't remember Bush exactly running on a campaign of change, but Gore had Ideas, even then (and wisely didn't tell people about all of them, because back then everybody hated his Ideas). OTOH, it barely matters
what Bush ran on a campaign of, because he proceeded to do exactly the opposite of everything he said (which everybody who lived during his father's run had no excuse to not see coming.) Even the briefest rundown of it is like a damned Bizarro World:
In the campaign, Bush criticized the Clinton administration policy in Somalia, where 18 Americans died in 1993 trying to sort out warring factions, and in the Balkans, where United States peacekeeping troops perform a variety of functions. "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation-building," Bush said in the second presidential debate.[26] During his campaign, Bush also pledged to bridge bi-partisan gaps between the Democratic and Republican parties as well.[27]
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.