Democrats poised for inaction, no doubt

"Scooter" Libby was told by Cheney that Bush "specifically had authorized" him to "disclose certain information" from the classified National Intelligence Estimate to Judith Miller (source). Will the Democrats finally develop a backbone and go after the administration? Don't hold your breath.

Tags

More like this

I'll be the first to agree that elected Democrats are often guilty of hand wringing rather than action but really with the GOP in control of all three branches of government and the 'liberal media' acting like lapdogs for the administration what exactly do you propose Democrats do?

.
Left Wrung Out to Dry
_______________________________________

I'll posit that the Democrats/left don't know how to be effective. Here's a bit I wrote a day or two after the Libby indictment, whenever that was, and didn't look at it again until right now --

Anti-war forces [Dems] hope the upcoming Scooter Libby trial will be a trial about the way the administration led us into the Iraq War. Hoping isn't enough.

This could be effectively accomplished with a psychomarketing campaign. Focus on the White House Iraq Group, which Secretary Powell's chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson called a "cabal", on Andy Card's admission that commercial marketing techniques were used, and other similar revelations/information. Create a cohesive strategy to brand the trial in advance as "The Trial of the Iraq War".

Use investigative journalism information gathering techniques; vet the material assiduously; use scientific methods to analyze what works best for what audiences; put together the strongest, most defensible storyline; think through rightwing counter tactics for each item; pre-devise and pre-produce counter counter-tactics; then run a several-month-long pre-trial psychomarketing campaign using that storyline. This will "shape the battlefield" to focus the public's attention on the trial elements most negative to the Administration and most positive to its opponents.

This is the way the far right would do it!

You can watch what happens during the run-up to the trial. Judge for yourself whether this opportunity is carefully exploited, or the left trots out it's usual ad-hoc protest-and-press-conference approach, which is much, much less effective.

One need not be a genius to figure this out. The left has got a real problem viewing reality this way. It borders on criminal neglect [I exaggerate for dramatic effect].

I've already written detailed deconstructions of similar clueless failures in approach on the Kerry campaign's inept defensive preparations for his "swiftboating", the right's hanging "Hollywood values" on the left without opposition, the Democrat's "death tax" debacle, the myopia of the campaign to restore Hetch Hetchy valley, and a pro-gay-marriage group's fiasco of a project in last fall's election. I've got incomplete drafts of many more examples. This goes beyond "low-hanging fruit". The ground is littered with this crap!

This type of failure is why the right-wing controls all three branches of government. Anybody have an explanation for such idiotic, pig-headed behavior?

By SkookumPlanet (not verified) on 06 Apr 2006 #permalink

The American people, as a whole, need to show some backbone as well by actually bothering to vote. I registered as soon as was old enough and, even though elections often don't go the way I'd like, I keep voting and I don't take the right to do so for granted.

By Sean Storrs (not verified) on 06 Apr 2006 #permalink