In 2000 and 2004, we saw how the Republican propaganda machine can take a decorated war hero, a veteran who served more nobly in the service than dubya did, and make him appear cowardly, inept, everything their own candidate actually was. In 2000, they attacked John McCain in the primaries; in 2004, they attacked John Kerry in the election. They may try something more obvious this time.
If, as appears increasingly likely, Barack Obama receives the Democratic nomination, we can expect the Republicans to hit him with every form of a liberal label that they can. And they will be right this time. Obama is a liberal.
And that’s precisely why they may not succeed. If he embraces the label, if he stands up proudly and has his own hatchet speakers call his opponents reactionaries or some similar, negatively connotative term (how about “floggers of dead policies that kill”? or some other mixed metaphor), we may actually see this election depending on new young voters, and middle-aged and older voters, who also embrace the label. “Liberal” is a dirty word for many Republicans, but Barack Obama could have the opportunity to reclaim the word—and the Presidency.
He must not apologize for being liberal. He must not back down from the term. He must show how his proposed policies are good for the country. NOT apologizing for being liberal, NOT backing down from embracing the term: this is strategy number two for the Democrats this fall.
Strategy number three is a contingency strategy. In case neither the presidential nor vice presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket has significant foreign policy experience, the Democrats should leak the name(s) of the one or more people who may be considered for Secretary of State (Bill Richardson is one who comes to mind, but there are others) in order to assuage the concerns of those who recognize how badly we’ve fared under dubya’s administrations. This is, incidentally, another reason why Obama’s VP candidate doesn’t have to be a governor. As I’ve indicated in post #9’s rebuttal of Liz Sidoti’s 2/23/08 Associated Press article, the Democrats also don’t need to run a governor for VP in order to get his “managerial” experience; other members of the Obama or Clinton administration can serve that function, though I suspect that Hillary—should she somehow recover and get the nomination--is a pretty darn good nitty-gritty manager.
As always, I welcome your comments, your emails, or, as one of my not-favorite televangelists used to say (one word spelled a bit phonetically), "your prayers and your corntribushuns." While he meant money, I mean your ideas on the strategies for the upcoming election.
triton
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First, I agree with you, if you are saying that Obama does not have to embrace the word "liberal." He just does not have to run from it. He should embrace the contributions that great "liberal" politicians have made: social security, medicare, roads, bridges, infrastructure, etc. But I would not be surprised if he tries to identify himself with a new term: like progressive, or non-partisan, or "freedom loving American."
Second, of all your proferred V-P candidates, I like Jim Webb the best. I think he can help attract votes in the South and in mid-west swing states. I think his international and military bono fides are invaluable to any Presidential candidate. And I think he is a courageous man for telling Bush off in public.
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