AND WHY “OBAMNEY” WON’T REVERSE IT …
Alexander Burns of The Politico has a great story up in which a trio of veteran Democratic strategists refer to an “impossible headwind” faced by U.S. President Barack Obama this fall if he doesn’t figure out a way to better address the nation’s economic concerns.
“We will face an impossible headwind in November if we do not move to a new narrative, one that contextualizes the recovery but, more importantly, focuses on what we will do to make a better future for the middle class,” the consultants (including former Clinton advisor James Carville) write in a memo for Democracy Corps entitled “Shifting the economic narrative.”
Wait … don’t they mean “shift the blame?” Because that’s what Obama’s doing … (once again).
No … they mean “shift the narrative,” i.e. stop talking about the nonexistent successes of the “recovery” effort and start talking about how it’s someone else’s fault that life is not fair.
So yeah …”shift the blame.”
Carville and Co. reached their conclusions after conducting “open-ended focus groups among white non-college-educated voters in Columbus, Ohio and college-educated suburban voters in suburban Philadelphia.”
“These voters are not convinced that we are headed in the right direction,” they write. “They are living in a new economy – and there is no conceivable recovery in the year ahead that will change the view of the new state of the country. They actually have a very realistic view of the long road back and the struggles of the middle class – and the current narrative about progress just misses the opportunity to connect and point forward.”
Ah, political narratives … the mother’s milk of keeping people dumb and broke (i.e. just where both political parties want them).
How’s this for a “political narrative?”
On the one hand we have a candidate (Obama) who promised “change we can believe in” but then did nothing but accelerate the failed policies of his “Republican” predecessor. On the other hand, we have a “Republican” challenger who is trying to make voters forget that he previously championed the exact same failed policies as his Democratic opponent.
Neither candidate can be trusted … and neither is proposing anything resembling the reforms this nation needs if it truly wants to move the middle class (and all classes) forward.
Of course if you express support for a candidate other than Barack Obama or Mitt Romney – a candidate who has actually governed like a Republican is supposed to govern - you’re derided as a kook and told to shut up and “get on board.”
Meanwhile pointless platitudes and pronouncements filter from the candidates through a bought-and-paid for media apparatus to legions of skull-scratchers who, for the life of them, are unable to figure out why it’s getting harder and harder to survive in this country.
There’s your 2012 “narrative,” people … and while all this political spinning may change the electoral outcome, it’s not going to change the direction of this country.
via “Impossible Headwind” :: :: FITSNewsFITSNews.
Related articles
- Carville: Wake up Dems, you can lose… (cnn.com)
- Dems’ Obama Jitters (thedailybeast.com)
