Plaid's "This is Not an Endorsement" on FP is a Great Read/ Electability!

[KoKo]

The whole article is interesting, but this particular excerpt is one that maybe we need to discuss. Are some of us here too focused on "Electability?" I've seen that word creeping into so many arguments on threads. And, the argument that Chimp is so "powerful with the sleeping public" that we Democrats must pick a Giant to confront him.
For those of us who are "religious" the story of "Little David" overcoming "Mighty Goliath" with a slingshot and a stone comes to mind.

We need to be careful and look beyond "Electability" and realize is it decided by our own thoughts about the candidate based on principles that the candidate embodies, or is it based on what the "Talking Head Pundits" are telling us? And that includes even our "left leaning" pundits and bloggers.

An excerpt from Plaid's article:

"Why do I hate electability? Well, let me count the ways. First, it drives me insane - I mean, more insane than usual - to watch the pundits and talking heads discuss 'electability' as if it is an essential asset that a candidate either is born with or isn't, when they must know perfectly well that they are the ones who create it.

Second, the obsession with 'electability' short-circuits discussions of the issues by trapping the entire debate inside the repeating loop of a maddeningly self-fulfilling prophecy. Because of course if enough people believe a candidate is not electable, then they won't vote for that candidate, and consequently that candidate will become unelectable. What we won't ever know is whether that candidate could have been electable - indeed, elected - if instead of trying to pick a winner, people just picked the person who they actually wanted to have running the country.

'Electability' does not reside in a candidate's hairstyle, biography, accent, or platform; it is an airy nothing formed of pure perception which then becomes incarnated in reality because no matter how much we may criticize the national media we are all still their creatures. How else do we come by our perception of what the rest of our fellow-Americans want? We can't run our own polls; we can't call up people from Missoula to Miami and ask what they really want; we don't know from statistical sampling. It's the media, not the American people, who manufacture this national consensus that determines 'electability.'

[cthrumatrix]

1. Translation --- the MEDIA picks your candidate --- not the people

this is wht they prefer...no discussion on issues...just fights, snippets and no substance