Is it just me or has the democratic party been victim of a surprising number of acts of violence this season?

The tragic death of Bill Gwatney at the hands of a distraught man should not be seen as an isolated incident resulting from a completely innocuous sequence of events but as the logical result of the Machiavellian right’s systematic manipulation of the general public to blame the liberals in general and democrats in particular for all the country’s woe.

Completely ignoring the fact that, for the last eight years, they’ve successfully run this nation into the ground.

If you’ve lost your job, it has nothing to do with  catastrophic economic policies of the Bush regime, it’s because those heinous liberals have been secretly undermining the foundations of the economy by demanding worker’s rights! If oil prices are high, it’s entirely because those heathen tree-huggers won’t let our patriotic oil corporations, those paragons of civic-mindedness, to drill for oil in ANWR or offshore and has nothing to do with a catastrophic war in the middle-east against one oil-producing country and the idiotic sanctions against another.

The right-wing hate machine has been industriously feeding the seeds of tragedy for years. Of course, tragedies like this have nothing to do with their demented vitriol. After all, they only speak the truth against the evil, unpatriotic liberal media.

There really can be too much of a good thing. 

For weeks - months - Obama has dominated the media like an omnipresent figure at the background of everything. When McCain complains that the media is biased to Obama, he’s got a point. For starters, an old, balding white guy who’s been a fixture of Washington for years is just less interesting than a young, handsome african-american with a gift for public speaking…

…so he probably does have a point about Obama being a “celebrity”.

But the flip side of the coin is audience burnout. I think I’ve mentioned it before, but now quite a few in the mainstream talk about a public burnout on Obama. Obama, Obama, Obama - all hours of the day. It gets wearisome for anyone who isn’t a die-hard Obamaniac. 

Unfortunately, this burnout couldn’t come at a worst time for Barack - at least that’s what I think. McCain has been industriously trying to define Obama on his own terms. With people so worn on Obama, I think it actually makes them more receptive than usual to McCain’s accusations. You know, just for variety. 

And Obama simply HAS to hit back at McCain over those accusations or risk being “Kerry-ised” - finding himself defined as a leftist rock-star or (more…)

The innocence didn’t last even beyond July. To be fair on McCain, it’s been painfully clear that he needed to shape up his campaign into a leaner, sharper-edged machine compared to it’s amorphous and sedate nature to this point. I’m not privy to the quiet machinations behind the Republican’s campaign, but I’m pretty sure he’s been doing his own homework. While it would be nice to think that Obama’s current weaknesses (and I use that word relatively) are due largely to external events, I don’t think anyone should be deluded into thinking that the Republicans are going to take prospective defeat lying down.

It’s been fashionable to compare the elegant, eloquent Obama campaign to McCain’s apparently bumbling, stumbling advertising, pandering and roundhouse gaffes. It’s also fashionable to propose that the panacea to Obama’s current travails is to present concrete, detailed policy positions. By contrasting himself to the bumbling McCain and demonstrating his intellectual and personal gravitas, so the story goes, Obama can counter the Republican’s clumsy, offensive swipes at him.

That’s a big mistake.

Over the past few days, the Huffington Post has had a couple of interesting posts concerning the Republican’s advertising tactics: E-mailing, swarms of ‘flailing’ attack ads, and (and I think this is the most telling of all) simple keyword messaging.

I think the last one sums things up pretty well. It has nothing to do with people “not paying attention” or not being discerning enough. It’s actually a well known science in marketing circles, particularly e-marketing circles, that certain words can subtly influence a reader’s/listener’s/viewer’s attitudes. It’s a  game of putting people in a frame of mind (more…)