Reply #7: People can be made electable. [View All]

[Plaid Adder]

I mean for crying out loud they did it with Dubya...almost.

This is the way the right does it: you get the candidate and the agenda together first and then you create support for it. Now, it is true that they have better access to the media and so it's easier for them to do this, but there's no reason we can't do it too in our own smaller way.

To take Kucinich as an example, since you brought him up: his position on choice has already undergone a makeover, and so could his hairstyle, suits, manner of speaking, and various other superficial things that seem to convince people he's unelectable. He's from Ohio, which geographically and electoral collegewise puts him in a better position than Dean, who is from Vermont, a small state in the northeast which we all know everyone else in the country hates anyway. His opposition to the war has been consistent and there's no way to attack him about flipflopping or hypocrisy.

Should he get the nomination, certain compromises could be worked out. We might hear less abotu the Department of Peace, for example, an idea which is alas a little too far forward for most of our brethren and will therefore sound flaky to them, and more about how his trade and labor policies will restore the dying manufacturing sector and bring decent blue-collar jobs back to America. This is just basic political grooming and if you did it right you would come out with a guy who's still Kucinich, but looks a lot more appetizing. After all, as Rove has taught us, the American electorate is pretty easy to fool if you pay enough attention to surface issues.

I'm not trying to endorse Kucinich. I'm just saying that we should not just assume that any of these candidates are unelectable. Even Sharpton could be electable *if* we could energize the enormous segment of the African-American population in this country that has fled the polls in disgust. We gotta think outside the box on this issue as on the others. Cause otherwise we're not going to get out of this box, and as we are discovering, this box is a nasty, stuffy, uncomfortable place to be, plus it's on fire.

C ya,

The Plaid Adder