This is a modification of
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2666542 to reflect some suggestions made in that thread.
1. We are going to back one candidate for president from the very beginning of the election cycle. I have discussed this before and it still holds: more than one candidate in the primaries is inviting disaster. Think back to the last time there was no incumbent--the year 2000. We had a number of candidates and finally came up with Al Gore. The Republicans walked into New Hampshire knowing they were going to run Bush in November. This year, the Democrats had ten "serious" contenders (as Molly Ivins once said, "is he serious?" means "does he have any money?") and the Republicans knew they were going to run George Bush. Sometime next year, the Republicans will have chosen their next candidate. This does two things for them: it keeps the Repugs from tearing each other apart before the general-election campaign, and it allows them to spend all of their negative money working on Democrats. We, on the other hand, spend our negative money working on each other. Result: Bush got twice the mileage out of his negative money, and by the time it was all over Jesus would have come off looking like a scumbag.
We are going to choose this candidate in a smoke-filled room, no matter how loudly some of you may complain. We will do it this way if I have to buy the cigars myself. (Don't worry, I'll get some good ones.) Ever since we dispensed with the smoke-filled room, we've blown 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004. (1980 doesn't count; when you have an incumbent, you have to run him for reelection.) The last two times we put a Democrat in office, the Republican was so damaged we could have won with Adolf Hitler on the Democratic ticket.
The particular smoke-filled room we're going to use will have 2550 Democrats in it. Each state, plus the District of Columbia, will send fifty delegates. The smoke-filled room will be in a bowling center; we will install decking over the lanes and put chairs on the decking. (Bowling centers have incredible air filtration systems--we're Democrats and half of us are allergic to smoke. They also have no windows, which will keep the freepers from peeking in.)
2. We are going to develop a very simple-to-understand program. It will contain no more than six major initiatives. We will be able to describe these initiatives in less than fifteen seconds--not completely, mind you, but well enough that a person of average intelligence can understand them using only the information contained in those fifteen-second soundbites.
3. We are going to run a campaign that does not require a website. Obviously we will have one. You can't run for dogcatcher in America today without having a website. In 2004, John Kerry had some great plans--but because of their complexity, you had to go to Kerry's website to figure out what the hell he was going to do. Apparently, the only thing the average American can do on line is eBay and look at the website for their favorite sports team.
4. Negative campaigning: Folks, if the era of civilized campaigning ever existed, it's long gone now. One of my favorite political anecdotes comes from Hunter Thompson: he related the story of Lyndon B. Johnson running against a hog farmer. Johnson was losing, and he directed his minions to start spreading word that his opponent enjoyed frequent conjugal relations with his barnyard sows. One of his minions objected: "We can't call him a pigfucker!" LBJ grinned and said "no, but let's see the sumbitch deny it."
We are going to run a negative campaign. It has been proven to work. The electorate keeps saying it doesn't like negative campaigns. If this is true, then why in HELL do these people keep voting for the guy who runs the most-negative campaign?
In 2004, we didn't have to go far to run one. Bush, being quite possibly the biggest crook ever to live in the White House, gave us all the ammunition we needed. He outed a CIA agent. He did business with BCCI, the biggest supplier of terrorist funding in the entire banking industry. His brother is an S&L crook. His father put Manuel Noriega on the CIA payroll even though he knew Noriega was a drug kingpin and a terrorist--and we had to go to war to get him out of there. Half of his administration is complicit in either Iran-Contra, arming Saddam, arming Osama or all three. The other half is up to its ass in various domestic scandals. He's allied with Enron, a corporation that gives free sledgehammers and license-plate presses as Christmas bonuses. And let's not even go into the Ballpark at Arlington. His grandfather armed fucking Hitler, fa chrissakes. The fact is that you could have started on New Year's Day 2004, publicized a new Bush scandal every single day until November 2, and still not have run out. We have argued about Bush's next job once he finally leaves office. He's going to go into show business. He will be the swamp monster in B-grade horror movies. He's so covered in slime, he won't need any makeup.
What did we do with all this free help? Not a damn thing. People, when someone hands you a gift, accept it! And Bush's corruption was like manna from heaven! We didn't have to work hard on a negative campaign against George Bush; just telling the truth about him would have done it. Did we? No, we hailed him as a strong leader in the fight against terror. Wrong move: he's a very weak leader in the War Against Adjectives. We know how bad he's fucked up the war on terror. We've got people sitting in Gitmo right now who we can't charge because they didn't do anything wrong before they were picked up, but we can't release because if we do they'll become terrorists.
5. On the other hand, we know the Republicans will do anything to run a negative campaign against us. They will make shit up if they have to--we saw that with the Swifties. We simply must have a staff on standby monitoring at least the national news channels (plus probably FR, WorldNetDaily, townhall.com and lucianne.com) for any hint of negative advertising, and we must IMMEDIATELY slap it down. Immediately means "before the big hand is pointing straight up." When they impugn the war record of our candidate, we must do two things: prove it wrong and hit them harder--and on an unrelated subject. "Dr. Louis Letson, while he may be a beloved family physician, is also a damn liar. There is no way he could clearly remember Senator Kerry's wounds because he never treated Senator Kerry's wounds. And John O'Neill, who went to Vietnam after John Kerry left, is not an expert on John Kerry's Swift boat service and he's a Nixon sympathizer anyway. But backstabbing is nothing new to President Bush; he stabbed Mr. and Mrs. John Jones of Arlington, Texas in the back when he seized their land under the principle of eminent domain to construct the Ballpark at Arlington, paying them far less than its market value. The Bush team then discovered they didn't need the Jones' land and sold it at a healthy profit." I tried to work in that Bush also raised the taxes of the citizens of Arlington to build the park, but it didn't work in that context.
6. We are going to dress our candidates and their families in tasteful, attractive yet reasonably-priced clothes, hair, accessories and makeup. A recurring theme on DU is the disaster that exists in Laura Bush's closet and on her dressing table. Serious people present themselves professionally and attractively but don't look like they fuss over themselves for hours on end. We are going to run serious people.
7. We are going to target the "flyover states." We are better for the heartland than the Republicans are. We value labor, not old money; lifetime commitment, not "trophy wives"; living within your means, not maxing out the nation's credit card on unwise purchases like preemptive wars. We are going to do this by sending popular Democratic leaders--not entertainers, but elder statesmen--into the big red blotch dividing the country and convincing the people who live there that we want better for their states than the Republicans do. Remember, there is not one "red state" that went totally for Bush this election. (In fact, Montana--a very red state--has a blue governor and a nearly-blue state house.) Also remember that Bush won this election by one of the thinnest popular-vote margins in history. The red states are not a lost cause, and by properly managing the message, we will reign supreme.
Flyover states care about three things: jobs, quality of life and freedom to do as they wish. Can they pay their bills? Can they let their new puppy run around in the yard without worrying that if he drinks out of a mud puddle he's going to die? Can they go hunting, fishing, play on the water? They want Social Security fixed, not privatized. They want affordable medications that won't kill them. (They would prefer to get them from American pharmacies, which leads me to the next question: if the United States government pays for the development of new drugs, which we do, why can't we demand that the price of the drugs which result from this development be set to cost plus 25 percent?)
8. We are going to follow the Republicans' lead and change the subject any time someone asks a question we don't want to answer. It's evasive as hell, but it works. If Tom Brokaw would have asked Bush when he stopped beating his wife, Bush would have started talking about Saddam Hussein and how the world was better off now that he's in jail--and We Would Have Let Him Get Away With It. No one seems to mind. Since it works, we're going to do it too. And when the reporter chimes in with the question we've longed to ask, "Sir, would you please answer the question I asked?" we get the ultimate retort: "George Bush did this exact thing for eight years. Now it's a problem? What's your problem? Why do you hate America?"
9. Please understand that this is in no way a repudiation of our core principles. It is how we will campaign. We will run left and govern left and bring people who claim to be on the right with us because we are correct and the right is not and we will make people understand this. (I can put more instances of "and" in a sentence but not tonight.)
10. We are going to attack the right's main campaign point: "traditional" marriage. Everyone on the right thinks gay marriage threatens traditional marriage. People on the left think divorce and infidelity threaten traditional marriage in a way gay marriage never could. Because of this, we will come up with ways to preserve traditional marriages. (Besides "not allowing Republicans to get married," that is...but do this: Think of five couples you know who have been married ten years. Think of five who have been married 25 years. And now five who have been married 50 years. Of these fifteen couples, how many are Republicans? In my case, it's only one--and both husband and wife are on their second marriages.)
If we do all of these things, no Republican will ever darken the doors of the White House again.
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