Thursday, September 18, 2008
Quick Thoughts
* Obama gave an excellent sound-bite which was almost Rovian in attacking McCain for his experience. Kudos to Obama! More of this, please. And would it be too much to ask that next time Obama deliver a line like "McCain calls a meeting of 7 top lobbyists a staff meeting" with a bit of a chuckle (but not a big laugh -- it's a sin to laugh at your own jokes in the circles we're trying to reach here: think Ronald Reagan chuckle not Jon Stewart "can you believe this" chuckle ... the latter strikes some people as condescending and cocky) rather than in a strident manner? Couldn't Obama have delivered his killer line with a cadence more like Bill Clinton and less like Hillary Clinton?
I suspect what could have been the killer line of the whole campaign has been ruined because it seems that, like every Dem., excluding The Big Dawg, since Truman (including honest to goodness salt of the earth types like LBJ and JC), Obama has flunked Folksiness 101.
Come-on folks ... the reason why we Dems do poorly in Red 'Murka is that we don't make an effort to be folksy. Let's at least try a little (but without seeming like we're trying too hard). Think Ronald Reagan. Think Bill Clinton. Please, Mr. Obama -- you're lines are witty enough and you have the voice for it ... just look at their body language and cadences ... we know you can do what they did so well!
* (extra credit for guessing the relation between this point and the last ... rephrasing a slightly different post made on another blog, I forget which): it isn't that Americans reject the politics of class warfare. It's that the "proletariat" vs. "bourgeoise" politics of class warfare in this country are being waged by an aristocracy (and their "clerical" retainers in the media and the mega-churches) to their own benefit. Communism's class warfare assumes a prior death of the aristocracy and liberalism assumes unity of the bourgeoisie and proletariate. But what happens when neither obtains? Neo-conservatism, I guess ...
I suspect what could have been the killer line of the whole campaign has been ruined because it seems that, like every Dem., excluding The Big Dawg, since Truman (including honest to goodness salt of the earth types like LBJ and JC), Obama has flunked Folksiness 101.
Come-on folks ... the reason why we Dems do poorly in Red 'Murka is that we don't make an effort to be folksy. Let's at least try a little (but without seeming like we're trying too hard). Think Ronald Reagan. Think Bill Clinton. Please, Mr. Obama -- you're lines are witty enough and you have the voice for it ... just look at their body language and cadences ... we know you can do what they did so well!
* (extra credit for guessing the relation between this point and the last ... rephrasing a slightly different post made on another blog, I forget which): it isn't that Americans reject the politics of class warfare. It's that the "proletariat" vs. "bourgeoise" politics of class warfare in this country are being waged by an aristocracy (and their "clerical" retainers in the media and the mega-churches) to their own benefit. Communism's class warfare assumes a prior death of the aristocracy and liberalism assumes unity of the bourgeoisie and proletariate. But what happens when neither obtains? Neo-conservatism, I guess ...
# posted by alberich @ 11:37 AM 
