As liberals continue to get great news regarding our chances for a win in November, it may be easy to become complacent. You may look at the recent polls, which show President Barack Obama beating all GOP candidates, and feel that no further work needs to be done. While this is wonderful news and information that should be celebrated, this does not mean that our work is complete.
It seems that every single day the GOP launches a new attack on a difference segment of the population. While these attacks are designed to speak to their base, which has shifted further to the right than William F. Buckley or Ronald Reagan could have ever imagined, this needs to be our motivation for counter-attacks. While we never imagined that we would be having a birth control debate more reminiscent of 1950 than 2012, this is the deal that has been served to us and we must respond accordingly.
The biggest danger that we face is presuming that our thought process (“Outlawing birth control? Crazy talk!”) is the logical mind-speak of the masses. Remember that you are more than likely surrounding yourself with folks that share your values, not realizing that there are millions of individuals around the country that do not think as you do.
In fact, the common platform theme of all of the candidates is the SOTO policy, which is Someone Other Than Obama. These candidates may not have much going for them, but to their base they have the primary selling point that they are looking for in a potential president: They are not Barack Obama. Sad, yes. Misinformed, yes. Short sighted, yes. Many continue to contend that this is simply poorly cloaked racism, but this is where we are at and let us work with what has been handed to us.
To move our message forward we need to remain focused and we must never believe that some amount of good news is enough good news. The only good news that we want to hear is that President Barack Obama has been elected to a second term. And, perhaps more importantly, that we once again have a democrat dominated congress.
Because our job is far from done, we need to approach each week with a plan to move our message forward. Whether the efforts are large or small, every movement in the right direction will get us to where we need to be. Remember what Pablo Picasso said…
Action is the foundational key to all success.
Here are my top three Election 2012 goals for this week and you are welcome to adopt them as your own. Please also use the comment option to add your own. I will be posting a fresh list each Monday, so that we can all work towards the common goal of a democratic win in November.
Order Two Yard Signs From http://store.barackobama.com
The first one is likely to get stolen, so it is best to be prepared. Many people I know are placing a note next to their sign indicating something along the lines of “If you steal this, I will buy a new one. This will only infuse the Obama campaign with additional funds, so make your thieving choices wisely”
Hold My Nose And Watch A Modicum Of Fox News
Why? Because how can we be prepared for what they will hit us with next if we cannot peek inside of their think tank. Like it or not, Fox News is the GOP campaign headquarters.
Tweet…Thoughtfully and Often
Both sides are really paying attention to Twitter right now, so we need to keep our message fresh on Twitter and not allow them to get the upper hand in this arena.
Listening to conservative talk radio when in the car works too. It is rather unpleasant though - so much unpleasantness and so much hate. I don't listen to it when my kids are in the car!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link, I'm placing an order for 2 yard signs and a magnetic Bo the dog sticker.
We should also keep an eye on Nate Silver. His article in the Sunday NYT, pointing out that any bad economic news will impact Obama adversely, was excellent and points out the need to have ammunition ready for Republican messaging at such times.
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