Envisioning Life After Bush is Ousted

[gulliver]

We Dems have to be careful to avoid playing Bush's game. Our candidates attack Bush, and that's fine. Then his defenders challenge us for our "alternatives" and we dutifully pony up ideas, strategies, and plans. That's fine too.

But what do we do to keep Bush from co-opting those plans or engaging (like Microsoft) in a kind of embrace and destroy strategy as was done with the recent Medicare legislation? How do we keep him from carping on and exaggerating the political weaknesses of our plans and falsely embracing the political strengths?

I think we need to envision every one of these plans as "post-Bush plans." In other words, the plans don't stand or fall on their own merit. They absolutely live in a world where Bush is no longer the president.

I'm waiting for a candidate to envision the world after he or she becomes president. I'm not talking about saying what they are going to do. They already do that. What I want them to do is imagine for us what things will be like when they are president -- paint us a picture. Then explain their plans and strategies in that wonderful context.

I'm a firm believer that to achieve something, you must first envision it. Plans are important, but it is hopes and dreams that sell plans -- not the plans themselves. What are some visions for the good things that will start to happen once Bush is sent back to Dallas (we all know it won't be Crawford)?

[salinen]

1. The right wing media

will not tolerate vision.

[tom_paine]

2. Yes, they will squirt their posionous propaganda in a cloud of confusion

Future generation living in the Free World will point to Imperial Amerika as how democracy can be subverted and as a model to never let it happen again.

Just as we pointed to Hitler and took note so that it would never happen again.

And yet...now it's happening again. At least this incarnation of Totalitarianism is "kinder and gentler" (for the moment, anyway)

[gulliver]

4. The are great at creating negative visions.

For example, consider Bush's Iowa ad where he advised us how afraid everyone should be. Right now that's the default vision of the GOP, a nightmare with Junior our only hope. It shouldn't even pass the giggle test.

We should be selling the vision of Bush the way it will actually be if he is elected in 2004. More saber-rattling, wars of adventure, more terrorism, less respect for our allies and constitutional rights. Under Bush, we will see more of the same only moreso. That's the true picture, and we ought to be painting it.

On the other side, if we oust Bush, we can picture the world heaving a sigh of relief, government Medicare money being spent primarily on patients and not drug companies, a truly international approach to solving terrorism, etc.

[Mattforclark]

3. blindness is preferable

it makes a better story, apparently. Running into brick walls sells.