fight fire by walking away from it.
I'm not the only one on DU who has defended many of the attacks on Sarah Pain as justified in an almost "ends justifies the means" rationale. I have, I think, been a bit more verbose than many posters. And I have repeatedly framed my defense by saying that all the logic in the world and all the attention to real issues like the economy, health care, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, energy and the environment, etc., mean nothing in terms of persuading moderates and fence-sitters and uncommited undecided independents to vote for Obama/Biden and not for McPain.
What I recognized during a break from DU this afternoon -- and what I suspect most here on DU will pointedly ignore -- is that the vest evidence in support of my theory is DUers ourselves. And yes, I'm including yours truly.
We have reacted with emotional relish to each and every new rumor or scandal or revealed untruth about McCain and his theocratic attach bitch. I use that term with reservation, having lost a good part of my Labor Day week-end to dealing with dog fights involving my own beloved little runt of an American Staffordshire Terrier. I won't call Sarah Pain a pit bull because I think too much of the dogs. But I digress, sort of.
My point is that we more than anyone on the other side ought to understand how easily we are reached through our emotions. A dozen threads or more on each and every hint of scandal. Our hopes raised by each pundit's pronouncement of "She's going down." We don't look at the DU warning before we post a duplicate of a duplicate of a duplicate. How many times was the photoshopped flag bikini pose posted? Ten? Twenty? More? It was done because it resonated with our emotions and we reacted not with our brains but with our guts, our hearts, our fantasies and fears.
By any logical measure, a continuation of the past eight years of maladministration would be disastrous for this country, for the 300+ millions who live here, and even for the rest of the world. But we on the rational left often forget that our counterparts on the right are NOT rational. When my daughter called me the other day and gushed about how inspired she was by Obama, how wonderful it felt to be able to vote enthusiastically FOR someone, I pointed out that she, too, was falling for the emotional response. It took her a while -- she is a former social worker and now a speech pathologist in a working-class public school system in New Jersey -- to recognize what I meant. The difference between her and your average McCain/Pain supporter is that she was able to back off from her emotional enthusiasm and put a rational explanation beneath it.
So when we take the moral high ground and proclaim that we are not or at least should not sling the mud with the Republicans, we are denying a very important reality: that the emotional response is ALL they have.
Do read Bob Altemeyer's "The Authoritarians." It's free online at
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/ For whatever reasons, the people who blindly and against their own best interests vote for and campaign for and believe in "leaders" like Bush and Cheney and McCain are almost incapable of reacting any other way. They cannot be swayed by rational discourse. They are AFRAID of rational discourse.
Jon Stewart's comparison of how the right wing pundits address "issues" is another perfect example. Karl Rove can blithely point out that Gov. Tim Kaine has far too little experience to be a vice-presidential candidate: mayor of the 120th largest city (Richmond, VA) in the country, only three years on the job, and so on. Rove can then turn around and say Pain is not only qualified for the Number Two spot but MORE qualified than Kaine. Rove can lie about the size of the city of which Pain was mayor (Wasilla is NOT the second largest city in Alaska), but because he is appealing ONLY to the emotions of the REpublican base, they will believe it. They will accept it and totally and completely ignore Rove's earlier criticism of Kaine. Ditto with O'Reilly on pregnant teen-agers and the blame that ought to fall on their "pin-head" parents. And so on.
What Stewart doesn't point out, of course, is WHY this works so well. Unfortunately, that kind of critical thinking is no longer taught. We don't even see much of it here on DU. Stewart actually appealed to OUR emotions rather than our logic, and then hoped we would understand. While most of us saw the inherent absurdity, we didn't examine why such an absurdity even exists, let alone why it often prevails over logic.
Several mornings a week I have coffee with a group of friends, among whom is a dear sweet delightful widow from upstate New York. She's not the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but she has a sweet and generous heart. She firmly believes Barack Obama is a Muslim because he has a "weird" name. I once tried to point out that he had no choice in that name -- it's not like he went from Cassius Clay to Muhammad Ali or from Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabar. But she isn't capable of reconciling a "different" name with a "real American." Never mind that her own name isn't the one she was born with. Never mind that she uses an androgynous diminutive of her first name. Never mind ANYTHING. She's afraid of anything differnt and so she will vote for McCain/Pain not because she believes anything they say or don't say but because they make her feel comfortable.
Would she switch her vote, or stay home and not vote at all, if she's shown evidence that Pain enjoys hunting and killing and encourages everyone to do it? Would she switch her vote if she were given evidence that Pain is a lying sack of shit about trooper-gate and airplane-on-ebay-gate and bristol-gate and bridge-to-nowhere-gate? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
But would she switch her vote if I sat down with her and explained how the mortgage crisis that caused so many of McCain's friends to lose their INVESTMENTS is far more crucial to the working- and middle-class families who are losing their HOMES? No. It wouldn't make the slightest bit of difference to her. She's a widow with a secure pension from her husband, social security, medicare and supplemental insurance, no mortgage, no worries. She's more afraid of terrorist attacks in Gold Canyon, Arizona, than she is of global warming, a failing national infrastructure, ineffective public schools (she went to Catholic schools and never attended a public school), or economic meltdown. She believes in saints and angels and UFOs. Logic is NEVER going to reach her. Emotion might.
We're up against a machine that understands this. Do you think Rick Davis or Karl Rove or Grover Norquist or Bill Kristol really believes the superficial bullshit the REpublican party is spewing? Do you think they really believe lower taxes on the rich means more money for the working classes? Of course not! They know lower taxes on the rich means more money for the rich! And since they're the rich, they're all in favor of it! This SHOULD be a no-brainer. Unfortunately, for a lot of folks on the left, it's not.
Some will no doubt come back with responses that Gore really won 2000 and Kerry really won 2004, but the reality is that neither of them was inaugurated and served as President. Falling back on the comforting belief that "our" candidate "really" won over Bush/Cheney is just plain stupid. It allows us to believe, erroneously, that logic and rational thinking and speaking will prevail. Unfortunately, ALONE they won't and don't. Not in this day and age.
If Obama/Biden want to stay above the muck and mire, fine. But we must be the foot soldiers in the trenches. We are the ones who can't be hauled before the tribunal of the national punditocracy. We can blithely spread rumors and debunk lies and deparse the parsed half-truths. We can ask the questions about Baby Trig's parentage and whether Sarah was cavorting between the bear skins with her husband's business partner. We can speculate with primal glee about whether or not Bristol is pregnant or Sarah is a racist or Track is a dumb jock or Todd is a bullying dominionist husband. We can criticize their clothes and their eyewear and their tattoos and their shoes. THAT'S OUR JOB. We're the firefighters, trying to stop an overwhelming conflagration.
We can fight fire with fire: haul out every rumor and speculation and dissect it to the nth degree. (Mixed metaphor? I dunno; science and math weren't my strong points!) If anyone doubts the effectiveness, remember that -- no matter what Sarah says her plans may have been, she did not go public with (her version of) the truth about Bristol's pregnancy until the blogs and the discussion boards and then the semi-mainstream media began to pick up the story. Is it an embarrassment to her yet? We don't know. But we do know it wouldn't have been ANYTHING if we down here on the ground hadn't kept digging and burning, digging and burning.
We can fight fire with water: clean the dirt of their own mud-slinging. Point out the racist connotations of "community organizers." Post the "stock photo" pics that were used to "include" African Americans in the great Republican tent. Expose the utter stupidity -- but not the untruthfulness, because it IS true -- of Rick Davis' claim that the election will be about personalities rather than issues. For many of the rightwing base, it won't matter; they can't be swayed no way, no how, and they'll still vote for McCain.
But by fighting with the most effective weapons, we have a chance with some of the moderates, the "swing voters," the undecideds and uncommitteds. LEAVE THE BASE ALONE; it's a waste of time. Give McCain/Pain their 30% or even 40%. We don't need every single vote. We just need the ones that count, and then we need to count them.
But if we set ourselves somehow above the fray, consider ourselves morally above the mud, then we have forgotten how to fight and do not deserve to win.
Obama and Biden, Clinton and Clinton, Napolitano and Sibelius and all the rest of the speechifiers will carry the official message. But they won't be able to compaign in the one-on-one intimate encounters that will swing one vote at a time. That's what we have to do. And we should not be afraid to use any and all weapons at our disposal.
We know -- I know and you know -- that the other side wouldn't hesitate a second.
Tansy Gold (who did not proofread this and hopes SOMEONE will pick out her errors so she can correct them.)
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