Dem Demagoguery

For a while now, Republicans have been eating Democrats’ lunch when it comes to emotional campaigning (2006 included, I contend). They excel at messaging that is generally nonlinguistic and that ties their opponents to stock negative archetypes or fundamental fears. Why are they better at it? The temptation is great among us lefties to chalk this up to a certain unpalatabilty of the tactic, that it represents a kind of “dumbing down.” That theory may work at a cocktail party in [with emphatic derision] San Francisco, but I don’t think it’s the position of Democratic strategists, because it implies they don’t want to win as much as possible. (I have a suspicion that the difficulty for Democrats comes directly from American culture, such as it is, because it is really a right-of-center culture in which lefty “bogeyman” theories have traditionally had a hard time taking root. BUT I think I would need to do a little more history homework to make this claim in any sort of real way, so within the parentheses I shall leave it.)

Even at this late date and with a slight lead in the polls, I think I’d like to see some emotional attacks on the McCain – I think you can hit harder than the “he’s out of touch” stuff we’ve seen. What might such an attack look like? Well, due to the ongoing economic crisis, a lefty bogeyman theory may actually work – he’s a rich guy with more houses than he can remember. He doesn’t care what you’re going through because it would never happen to him. In fact, he’s the kind of guy who caused this crisis. Once you characterize him, I think you can twist the knife a little more. He’s trying to make his rich friends rich and leave you out in the cold. Tie him to his political party, a party of cheaters. He’s trying to cheat you. This last part, I think, is key – people have a fundamental paranoia of being cheated. As evidence, I cite the fact that there haven’t been any trades in my fantasy league.

The Obama campaign just released this video about McCain's involvement in the Keating 5 scandal, and while it involves all the themes discussed above, it's 13 minutes long and it still makes its point in a pointyheaded way. Still, I personally find it heartening to see Democrats taking this approach. Also I think you could cut a 30 second commercial from it that is emotional/nonlinguistic in the right way.