Congrats, Karl Rove, you win this round

[yesthattom]

Congrats, Karl. We fell for it. We *all* fell for it.

For the last 2 weeks we Democrats have completely stopped telling people about our plans for making life better for Americans (healthcare, jobs, education, energy) and got totally distracted by ranting about hockey moms, airplanes not sold on eBay, and other things.

As a result, McCain's polling higher and we're polling lower. Yes, you can debate the validity of these polls, but the plain truth is that he got us off message.

Heck! Look at my own LJ! It is full of videos that talk about McCain and Palin being bad, not about Obama and the hope and goodness his policies will bring to America.

• When we bash a "hockey mom", the subliminal suggestion is that we don't like mom's in general. That's bad.
• When we talk about the airplane that didn't get sold on eBay, the subliminal message is that John "I don't know how to use a computer" McCain suddenly knows what eBay is... hmm... now we are subliminally associating him with technology.
• When we laugh that Palin's doesn't know The Bush Doctrine, the subliminal message is that the Democrats are concerned with something that most people don't understand (the association is that "if I don't understand it, it can't be important")
• When we gripe about her church, we sound intollerant of diversity and rally the base (that base that we had assumed would be so un-enthusiastic that they wouldn't vote)
• By comparing Palin's lack of experience to Obama's experience, we send a subliminal message that they are equals worth comparing (we should compare her to Biden, duh!)

Yes, Rove, you've kept us off message for about 2 full weeks. You bastard. I hate when your tactics work.

However, now we see what you are doing. I will not fall for it in the coming weeks.

While we should continue to read the anti-McCain web sites and continue the meme of "If McCain lies in the campaign, he'll lie to us if elected." But otherwise it is back to the message of Hope for me. Obama's policies (especially his Technology and Dealing with the negative influence of lobbyists policies) are exactly what America needs.

Comments

[docstrange.livejournal.com]

Great post, Tom. My only disagreement is that I think Axelrod is to blame for the miscalculation, not Rove, since he is Obama's chessmaster in this game. But otherwise I think you got it exactly. Axelrod is blowing it and needs to get back on track. I really don't know how or why he "fell for it" - he is a master strategist and really should know better.

By that I mean that he should know that the base closes ranks (both sides) when their candidates are attacked on anything other than fine-point detail. The undecided and uninspired voters (so important to winning) are clamoring for actual plans, details, information. Axelrod has to move Obama off the broad hope message (good for his base) and onto the detail method (for the middle). Now that he's inadvertently rallied the other side's base even further, he really needs to figure out how to get them apathetic again while rallying the middle to Obama.

I think part of the difficulty is this is the longest campaign Axelrod has ever managed - the strategy that worked well for gubernatorial races is turning out to be about 3 months short for the presidential one.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

Ayup. I think accurately and negatively defining Palin was the right thing to do when she was first hitting the news, but it's gone on a week too long already, and shouldn't go on longer.

[djmitche.livejournal.com]

Great post. You'll note that the campaign itself did *not* get off message, and is now sending out very strong signals to its supporters to get back on message.