Boiling down the politics

[jducoeur]

If anyone with more graphics talent than I is motivated to do a little political CafePress bumper-stickering, a suggestion for one that is simple, pithy, and possibly effective:

[Palin] = [Bush]

with face shots in place of the names. It's a visceral expression of an important message -- that Palin shares most of Bush's worst qualities, when you really look at her.

Optional caption text, nice version: "Look at the record".

Optional caption text, nasty version: add "Change, my ass".

Comments

[jducoeur]

Well, 30% of the country still (unaccountably) thinks he's doing a good job. I assume that those people are essentially unwinnable: that requires a disconnect from reality so dramatic I can't even understand it. But remember, we're not talking about leading questions here: in the straight thumbs up / thumbs down, 70% of the country disapproves of how Buch has done as President.

And really, I can believe that there are more who *like* him, but that's not necessarily an impediment, so long as they've accepted that he was a bad choice for President. Indeed, that's not a bad meme to propagate, and not a bad one to hang around Palin's neck -- the notion that "Just because I'd like to have him/her over for dinner doesn't mean he/she would make a good President".

The essence of the McCain/Palin bounce is that they've managed to turn the election from being about issues to being about personalities: the key to winning at this point is to drag it back the other way again. It should be possible to brand them with "likeable but incompetent for the job" -- there's plenty of supporting evidence for that...

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Yes -- it's important to demonstrate, viscerally, how incompetent and dangerous rule by McCain and Palin would be. However, equating them to Bush raises additional emotion which may make that task difficult. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance to overcome among people who elected Bush in years past; they don't want to be reminded they were wrong.

I guess my point is, sink them on their own faults. There are plenty. And people who make decisions based on facts are already on the ball; it's time to start winning over people who trust only their gut. (And that's a good thing - the gut's a great decision-maker. It's just that you have to explain things to it a different way.)

[jducoeur]

Fair point, and closely related to osewalrus' article that I just linked to...