What Are We Fighting For?/ Naomi Klein on Election Mistakes and The War.

[KoKo]

What Are We Fighting For?
By Lakshmi Chaudhry, AlterNet
Posted on January 27, 2005, Printed on February 2, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/21099/


Lakshmi Chaudhry: What is your take on why the Democrats lost in 2004?

Naomi Klein: The Democrats didn't fully understand that the success of Karl Rove's party is really a success in branding. Identity branding is something that the corporate world has understood for some time now. They're not selling a product; they're selling a desired identity, an aspirational identity of the people who consume their product. Nike understands that, Apple understands that, and so do all the successful brands. Karl Rove understands that too.

So what the Republican Party has done is that it has co-branded with other powerful brands — like country music, and NASCAR, and church going, and this larger proud-to-be-a-redneck identity. Policy is pretty low on the agenda, in terms of why people identify as Republicans. They identify with these packets of attributes.

This means a couple of things. One, it means people are not swayed by policy debates. But more importantly, when George Bush's policies are attacked, rather than being dissuaded from being Republicans, Republicans feel attacked personally — because it's your politics. Republicanism has merged with their identity. That has happened because of the successful application of the principles of identity branding.

The difference is that Bush fully inhabits his character, his character being the most powerful enduring character created by Hollywood: John Wayne, who in turn actually modeled himself after McCarthy. There are no more powerful icons in American culture. And it's not something Bush does for campaign commercials, or just something he does when he plays dress up. It's a 24-hours-a-day performance. Kerry tried to counter that by playing dress-up a couple of times, wearing costumes and things like that. A real honest populism could answer that fake marketing. Instead, the Kerry campaign just did bad marketing.

So the answer is not to beat the Republicans at their game but counter it with something real.

When you have genuine conviction standing next to extremely expert and successful marketing, it exposes the latter as marketing. Whereas when you have bad marketing next to expert marketing, it actually makes the other person look good. The more Kerry tried to be a third-rate John Wayne, the more believable Bush looked as John Wayne.

You've also taken on the Kerry campaign for their failure to tackle Iraq. How did that play to the GOP's advantage?

Karl Rove understood that if he wanted to galvanize his base, he should make sure they could vote for the things that stirred the strongest passions — which in his analysis were abortion and gay marriage. The Kerry campaign took the exact opposite approach. They felt that the best strategy was to muzzle their base on the issue that they cared most passionately: the war in Iraq. And the campaign so took for granted their loyalty that they ran a pro-war campaign.

MORE at...........
http://www.alternet.org/story/21099/

[TomClash]

1. Earth Tones

$1 million to tell Gore he should wear earth tones.

Naomi, which is it? Social issues like gay marriage and abortion? Or identity branding?

Bush has been acting like this for two decades - I'm not so sure the branding was as extensive as she thinks.

[Demeter]

2. Yes! Yes!

When men decide they must be Republican because the Democrats are sissies, that's branding (also stupidity, but people can be educated or manipulated. Which way do we want to do it?).

I think you cannot manipulate people into acting intelligently, but you can educate them. We can do it the humane way, the GOP does it the brutal way--by screwing people over until they decide they've had enough. Haven't reached that point yet, but we're getting a lot closer.

But we must deal in FACT, and stick to fact, and work with the facts. We cannot do as the GOP does. That is the main advantage to being non-GOP. Reality will win in the end. It will win sooner if we use it.

And by the way, this branding has been going on since Nixon at least. That's 30+ years. Like Coca-Cola, sticking to a proven product. Well, facts cut into Coke's branding. That's why the bottled water is booming.