NEWS: Tactical Animal: On Politicking

CULTURE: Tactical Animal: On Politicking

by ChrisSick

Or, a helpful guide for aspiring Werewolves and how that leads to the strangulation of senatorial aspirations by very expensive coattails.

Let us, for a moment, in a relatively slow week that's already been much dissected and discussed, get a bit...elemental.

Politicians, at bottom, have only one job that comes in two parts. Traditionally they really only had to work at this job in the late summer and early fall, but these days they tend to be year round affairs. To be a politician:

1. Move in a straight line.
2. Move your opponent off their straight line.

That line, of course, being basically a straight shot to whatever office they're running for.

This is politics at its most basic, and come debate night, as you soak in the warm stream of disinformation fed to you by professional talking heads — many of whom should probably be in prison — you'll probably hear the phrase on-message quite a bit. You'll hear, and surely have heard, much talk of candidates building narratives. You'll hear dissection, autopsy, and painful amounts of over-analysis about who “scored” with good lines that most effectively needled in their side's pre-established talking point.

Its all horseshit, of course.

“Narrative,” “on-message”, and “talking points” are really creative and educated (-sounding) ways of saying who moved down their path the straightest and who deviated the most. Because that's all politics — in a two-party race/system, anyway, which is all I'm intimately familiar with as a citizen of this country — really is about. Whether you move your opponent off his path by accusing them of not paying taxes for ten years or of fucking their livestock, it doesn't really make much of a difference at the end of the day.

Everything else is phoney artifice and bullshit jargon thrown at voters, candidates, and media alike to blind them with science and convince them that David Axelrod or Ed Gillespie is really worth somewhere between $175,000 to $1.3 million per year they earn advising their candidates. Their job is to come up with a good story somewhere between six months to a year before the election, and then spend the rest of the cycle as glorified babysitters and occasional mouthpieces. A job — it's worth noting — that Ed Gillespie still manages to both fuck up and get paid a bonus for, somehow.

Those of us in my age group — the one that was politically aware but not yet politically active during Bill Clinton's first and second terms — are familiar with one of the greatest narratives of modern politics, because it's only four words long: The Man From Hope. But no matter how much attention you were paying in junior high, you couldn't fully grasp Clinton's incredible political ability until you heard him get the DNC to applaud George W., moments before turning it into an attack line against congressional Republicans.

Which brings us neatly back to my point, about the line and how one follows it or doesn't. From the jump, Obama and his team have called this a choice election, while Romney and his team have called it a referendum election. And — please, allow me to parse the bullshit for you since I'm pretty sure it's part of my job here — that should tell you all that you need to know.

Neither team feels strongly enough about its message or its candidate (read: product), to trust that voters will vote for them. This is why this is a base election (in more ways than one), because unless you're already in the bag for one of the two candidates, its extremely unlike either is going to offer you a very compelling reason to vote for them. So the best they can hope for is to convince you to vote against their opponent.

To that end, Romney's “straight line” was through convincing voters to — in the memorable words of a geriatric cowboy arguing with a chair while trolling his way to a nation's heart — fire the President for poor performance. And Obama's was to scare the living shit out of you by basically pointing to Republicans not named Romney (cough, Paul Ryan, cough) and reminding you all those white dudes share the same party.

It's really that simple, and every day Romney spent talking about his taxes, defending his 47% comments, or trying to dispense with the notion that his campaign was in disarray — and holy fucking shit that was just this week — he was off his path and losing this election. Now both the head of the RNC and his own VP have taken up the language of “choice election,” which is pretty much his two biggest public supporters hammering the last nails in — what I'm sure is — his very expensive and luxurious coffin.

But seriously, fuck that guy. Never liked him.

In fact, he's so bad at this, that he's knocked every Republican Senator off their path this past week.

Silver offers two potential hypothesis to explain the sudden decrease in the chance of Harry Reid losing his gavel come January: One is that Romney is so terrible he's hurting all of his party’s candidates in tough statewide elections.
The other is that their own extreme conservatism is hurting the entire GOP brand, as evidenced by moderate candidate Linda McMahon of CT (yes, that Linda McMahon, we live in a country where the best experience you can have prior to going into politics is, actually, pro-wrestling. Suck it up, buttercup!) and mostly-moderate Senator Scott Brown of MA are distancing themselves from the national party.

My modest suggestion is that both reasons factor in. Because, really, under the circumstance who can stay on the path, or if you prefer, build their narrative, stay on message, or stick to their talking points? Romney cannot stay on message, because his message changes from day to accommodate his audience while simultaneously accommodating his rapidly degenerating-into-insanity-base.

It isn't that Romney’s a bad politician, he's exactly the best the Republicans had to offer this election cycle. It's just — in part — that Barack Obama is actually a very good politician. If there's any lesson liberals and Democrats needed to take away from the Bush years, it was the danger of underestimating your opposition. Jokes about Karl Rove's weight may play well with the peanut gallery, but really, underestimating that man as a political strategist is just shy of insanity.

And when you compile the long list of things that the Conservative Right is convinced that Obama is — a list that would have to include how he's a stunning incompetent, bumbling idiot, and empty suit, who ALSO somehow managed to trick 53% of the country to vote for him, while concealing his secret Muslim origins and Marxist ideology — it isn't hard to see how underestimating their opposition lead the GOP to the hole they're in now.




Related Posts
Tactical Animal: Regarding The Pain Of Being Right…Or More Reasons Mitt Romney Will Never Be Your President
Tactical Animal: Have You Got Yourself The Belly For It?
Tactical Animal: Sorry Folks, Election’s Over, Donkey Out Front Shoulda Told Ya
Tactical Animal: Politics In The Post-Truth Era
Tactical Animal: Now We’ve Got Ourselves A Race

Great article. This election "might" get a little messy before all is said and done. Could America really vote for Romney? (I'm still pissed about Gore losing, and I live in Canada)

Another spot-on article. This one in particular is worthy of wider distribution.

That is an interesting article you have written there, I am going to throw in my .02 on the subject.

Do I like either candidate? NOPE! One is a Marxist, the other a snake.

Really politics has turned into nothing more of a game of both ends working against the middle to control their lives. As it is, things really can not get better until quite literally the baby boomer generation starts to expire and die off so as that some new blood can try some new ideas.

Elections in this country have become the same old game of brewing up the same old stale political swill, and I think people are beginning to become more aware of this.

The problem is at the end of the day we are left with one of two choices and we wind up looking for what is going to be the lesser of two evils.

We are really faced with a choice of a man who has been a bad president, and another who more than likely won't be all that stellar should he win.

The sad fact of the matter is that our parents generation and the generation before them have sold us down a river of debt. And digging our way out of this mess in 15-30 years when it is our generation running things after our parents and grandparents have been put out to pasture.

It sucks because I think another Obama administration will be catastrophic for our nation, but I don't get the warm and fuzzies by the thought of a Romney Ryan administration either.

Quite frankly I look at anyone in our generation who is thinking the answer lies within, or who is a member of either of the big two political parties is a flipping idiot.

Real change is going to begin at the grass roots when our generation has had enough and we start to come together and form our own political parties. Right now I just don't see that happening.

Do you know what a Marxist is?

Someone who believes Harpo could actually talk?

Oh, those dreaded words. It's like whenever someone starts with that as their introduction, you are guaranteed that everything that follows is just going to be a pile of shit.

Marxistlolcakes!

Someone who follows the teachings of Karl Marks the German economic Philosopher who is the father of Communism.

Frank Marshal Davis was a big fan of his work, he was also dear leaders mentor.

Dear Leader was Kim Jung Il. He's fucking dead, and not sure what he has to do with Obama anyway.

Actually Dear Leader was Mao Tse Tung, I just use it as a pet name for ole slappy up there at 1600 Pennsylvania.

Makes sense. After all, they're totally comparable.

so...no.

Thinking is hard!!!

So, in two posts I've seen from MrBeast, he's compared liberals to Nazis and called Obama a Marxist. You know, in order to actually be an independent thinker, you actually have to have independent thought? You can't just spout all of the same horseshit the GOP is telling you to spout, and claim to be independent. That's not what independent means. Though, clearly, given the whole Marxist Nazis thing, the guy has problems with definitions.

Pretty on-target example of getting this thread off its straight line, though.

I, for one, am tired of my Marxist, Nazi, Liberal, anti-capitalist, Wall Street loving, communist, power-centralizing president.

I know! You have to admit, it takes magic to be all of those things. I'd say he's fairly talented.

You forgot Muslim.

Yes, our Muslim, Atheist, Jeremiah Wright loving president.

I think MrBeast is actually McBain, and he's under attack by Commie-Nazis.

"Ole Slappy?" And you expect us to believe you aren't just another right-wing nut job troll? Right. Either you're lying to us, or you're lying to yourself. Which is it?

Muslin, not Muslim. let's get our terms correct here.

Hail Satin

Oh, you guys.

What would I do without y'all?