Bush: The Secret History of a Reelection -Traps, marketing, & dirty tricks

[pbartch]

I've only posted the first few paragraphs. READ THE REST TO GET A LOW DOWN ON THE PEOPLE WHO PUT BUSH BACK IN THE WHITE HOUSE...... Forward this to your friends.
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http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/012405H.shtml

Bush: The Secret History of a Reelection
By Vincent Jauvert
Le Nouvel Observateur
Week of 20 January 2005

Traps, marketing, and dirty tricks... Today one of his team's strategists confesses: "In July 2004, we thought we were done for." And yet, in spite of the Iraqi disaster, in spite of abysmal deficits and social breakdown, Bush turned the situation around. And beat Kerry by 3.5 million votes. Vincent Jauvert describes the underbelly of a campaign as incredibly sophisticated as it was devoid of any scruples.

That Wednesday, August 4, 2004, John Kerry believed he was protected from any low blow. He had just been nominated by the Democratic convention and all the polls gave him the advantage. He could breathe for a few days. Relax his attention. The opposing side would not attack before September - not in full midsummer. So he thought.

But Bush's men are extremely skillful killers. They chose to strike August 4 precisely because no one expected it. And to strike where it would do the most harm. The surprise attack was a series of advertisements, financed underhandedly by a rich Texas real estate developer, a close friend of "W." There one saw suppositious Kerry comrades-in-arms from Vietnam. They are full of hatred. They utter cries of rage. They assert that the Senator from Massachusetts didn't deserve the prestigious decorations he received in 1971, that he is not the war hero America had respected for thirty years, but a liar and a coward. To hear them, Kerry had not saved his comrades as he claimed. He had, on the contrary, abandoned and betrayed them.

All that is nothing but a barefaced lie, a put-up, a pitch. So gross that Kerry didn't react right away. He hemmed and hawed. He waited for the maneuver to turn against its instigators. But his silence instilled a doubt among hesitant voters. The manipulators hit their mark. Their prey was wounded: mortally: in a few days, Kerry's odds fell. They never returned to their August 4 level. And Bush will remain at the head of America for four more years - to the despair of millions of Democrats and the rest of the planet.

Kerry went up against a remarkable political marketing team - the best in the history of the United States, they say in Washington. A team composed essentially of Texans, disciplined and welded together. Totally devoted to George Bush for more than ten years. A team without scruples and formidably organized. A few days before George Bush's swearing-in ceremony this January 20, we interviewed a few of the artisans of this reelection.



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Translation: t r u t h o u t French language correspondent Leslie Thatcher.
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[liberal N proud]

1. kick

[glitch]

2. Sorry - but without the corporate media collaborating this "remarkable

political marketing team" would've been nowhere.

"Kerry went up against a remarkable political marketing team - the best in the history of the United States, they say in Washington. A team composed essentially of Texans, disciplined and welded together. Totally devoted to George Bush for more than ten years. A team without scruples and formidably organized. A few days before George Bush's swearing-in ceremony this January 20, we interviewed a few of the artisans of this reelection."

[tandem5]

7. yeah exactly... we need to stop labeling them as "evil geniuses"

They're just evil idiots with airtime.

[tommcintyre]

3. Good! More foriegn coverage

It's not exactly what I'd like to see (more focus on electio fraud), but its a step in the right direction.

[southwood]

4. I suspect..

.. that they used the same remarkable datamining machine to target democratic voters in order to keep them from voting (by purges, challenges etc.)

[southwood]

5. Knowledge is power...

"In America," he explains, "there are companies that specialize in collecting and selling information about individuals. It's entirely legal. They can supply an incredible amount of data about each person: the brand of their car, their income, their level of education, their favorite magazines, their favorite television programs, whether the person is a home owner or a renter, the number of telephone calls made abroad, the church a person goes to, their children's schools... Big firms like Visa constantly use this information for their advertising operations." But no one had used it yet to get a president elected. "We bought all the data about everyone (!) registered to vote," Van Lohuizen explains. One important point: some citizens' party affiliation was known from these lists. We crunched all this information in our computers. That allowed us to identify about thirty different types of voter and then to imagine the most convincing arguments for each one of those types. Then all we had to do was classify each individual within those categories and send that person the corresponding message."

And to figure out which corresponding messages were most likely to keep Kerry voters away from the polls: challenges, confusing or threatening phone calls, confusing flyers ...

[tandem5]

6. I acknowledge the source and that this behavior was a component of...

what happened in the last election, but I'm weary of such candid admissions as an effort to defuse larger wrongdoing.

[southwood]

8. I agree...

.. obviously they're not talking about the other stuff they've been up to. My point would be that they have PROFILED all eligible voters, including Democrats, into - so they claim - 30 categories. This makes it possible to target specific democratic voter groups in various voter disenfranchisement or suppression schemes. For instance, the Conyers report found that 35000 Ohio probable Democratic voters were pre-challenged (i.e. before the election), meaning their voter registration was removed and they were issued provisional ballots (which were most likely subsequently rejected).