Wordcruncher

Attack, Attack, Attack!

Yesterday, I wrote about how we need to realize, on a national level, that war is being waged against us. So now: What do we do about it?

I think the answer is simple in theory. It’s also simple in practice – for Republicans. It may be more difficult in practice for Democrats, which I will explain in a later post. But here are some of the more obvious solutions.

First: We need to actually be a true opposition, not an accommodationist, party. Begin fighting the Republicans on the Senate floor, on the House floor, on cable TV talking head shows, on op-ed pages. And also on the state levels. Everywhere possible. Make principled obstructionism a constant motivation for opposing the president’s shove-it-down-our-throats policymaking style.

Tim Ryan’s (D-OH) wonderfully fiery, passionate speech on Oct. 4 in the House should be a prototype for how to do this. It cut through the layers of political appeasement and essentially called a spade a spade (and a liar a liar). Ryan’s speech was probably the most-watched speech from the House in at least the past year. Learn from it.

We will begin to win the confidence of even red-state America if we stand up, strongly and passionately, for what we believe. To put it simply, most of the 51% elected Mr. Bush precisely because he is a bully (“he may be a bully, but he’s our bully and these times call for a bully”). Sen. Kerry could not gain their respect because he was not perceived as sufficiently standing up to the bully (and, by extension, to terrorists).

The Republican response will be to attack us as nutjobs, lefty lunatics, whatever. Let them. Republicans will counter by planting stories in the media that we are sealing our own doom by blocking the president’s and the peoples’ will. Let them. This will be a meme repeated from Rush Limbaugh to Wolf Blitzer to the New York Times. Recognize this meme for what it is: an RNC plant. Call it out and call it a smokescreen – then change the subject (see the fourth point, below).

Second: Boil our message down to easily digestible soundbites and repeat them over and over, on municipal and state and national levels. Once we do this, the media will start using our terms simply for convenience. To use an example I posted earlier, “Tax Fairness” can become shorthand for “shifting the income tax burden to those making more than $200,000 a year.”

And do not be timid with the soundbites. They need to hit hard for them to stick. I was appalled to read this in Arianna Huffington’s Salon column (you have to click through the ads):

Bolder, more passionate language that Kerry had used during the primary -- like calling companies hiding their profits in tax shelters "the Benedict Arnolds of corporate America" -- was dropped for fear of scaring off undecideds and Wall Street. Or was it Wall Street undecideds? ("This was very unfortunate language," Roger Altman, Clinton's deputy treasury secretary told me during the campaign. "We've buried it." And indeed, the phrase was quickly and quietly deleted from the Kerry Web site.)

I see this as a tremendously lost opportunity. This was the type of soundbite framing that would have resonated with all voters and would have the potential to be repeated across all the media. Wishy-washyness has no place in politics. And Wall Street wasn’t going to vote Kerry anyway.

Likewise, countering the Swift Boat attacks in August could have been so simple: Dismiss them with two or three words (something like, but more clever than, “disgruntled liars”), and have every Democrat with media access repeat these words over and over again.

Third: Play the media game. The way we need to exploit the media to our advantage is to embrace the media’s ridiculous charade of “fair and balanced” reporting. The current method of reporting goes something like this: “The Republicans say this. The Democrats say that. We don’t know who’s right, but one thing’s certain: It sure is complicated.”

We can’t fight this; we can’t successfully convince the media that this is lazy, irresponsible and reprehensible. So let’s exploit it. All throughout the campaign, Republicans used this to create the noose the Kerry campaign constantly used to hang itself. Republicans fire off an irresponsible, soundbite-ready charge (think, “flip-flopper”), a Kerry spokesperson responds with a lengthy, reasoned explanation of why this charge isn’t true.

It doesn’t matter whether the Kerry spokesperson was dead-on, absolutely right. When politicians explain things, they appear to be dissembling and equivocating – and defensive. It isn’t difficult to turn the tables. For example, Kerry spokesperson: Benedict Arnolds of Corporate America. Bush spokesperson: explanation, stock markets drive the economy, blah, blah. Game, set, match.

Fourth: Bring the fight to our turf. We keep falling for the Republican game plan. To many Americans, we appear to be suckers, played by the GOP again and again. My good friends at Angry Liberal pick up on a comment that typifies us:

We’ve become that one annoying kid that’s always sucking up to the jocks, hoping not to get beaten up this time.

It’s time we start using their favorite tactic. For example, when gay marriage comes up, we don’t need to explain why we support it or civil unions or anything else. Everyone knows our position. Instead, we claim they are creating a diversion from their own failures, and then change the subject to something like “Benedict Arnolds.”

These simple steps can start to tilt the playing field to our advantage. I’ll post more in the coming days, as I realize I need to break these posts down into more easily digestible pieces.