Musing whilst listening to the news on the radio and reading it in the newspapers, I happened on a phrase that I would like to see Democratic candidates and their associates begin using immediately and use as often as possible:
The reason why this President and his Republican Congress are so unpopular is because of all their failures.
The purpose being not only to tie the Republican Congressmen in with Our Only President, and to remind people of their failures, but to remind interviewers as well as the audience of the startling unpopularity of the Republicans in both branches.
As an example, Ned Lamont is asked if he can be effective if he rejects the bipartisanism that is Mr. Lieberman’s calling card. Response: “I’m all in favor of being bipartisan, when it means working with good people to get good things done. But not when it means working with dishonest people to make bigger failures. Look, the reason why this President and his Republican Congress are so unpopular is because of all their failures. Senator Lieberman wants to work with them to make bigger failures. I don’t.”
Another example: Bill Casey is asked if he really feels comfortable as a pro-life Democrat, and if the party is deeply divided. Response: “Political Parties are always divided, on a variety of issues. Disagreeing on a particular issue doesn’t hurt a Party. The reason why this President and his Republican Congress are so unpopular is because of all their failures, not because they disagree on stem cell research.”
A third: Dr. Dean is asked whether the Democrats are still perceived as weak on national security. Response: “National security sounds awfully vague. You know, the reason why this President and his Republican Congress are so unpopular is because of all their failures. Failures on specific things: They failed to secure Baghdad, they failed to pacify Afghanistan, they failed to find Bin-Laden. Hell, they failed to rebuild our own Gulf. People know all of that. National Security—do even you know what you mean by that?”
Generic one: Local Democratic House Challenger is asked about a particularly nasty campaign ad, paid for by the Republican national party. Response: “This is the sort of thing I would imagine a scared challenger running against an incumbent. When an incumbent runs it, well, my opponent, this President and his Republican Congress are so unpopular, because of all their failures, that they have to do something.
Might work. Worth a shot, I would think.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
With apologies to Samuel Jackson and lefty bloggers everywhere:
“Who let these motherfucking Republicans run this motherfucking country? They’re so goddamned unpopular because of all their goddamned failures!”
I feel better now.
Bush was elected despite a thorough record of failures: lousy student, AWOL from Texas Air National Guard, alcohol and drug addiction, ran an oil company into the ground, etc. I’m not sure American voters care about failures in general. But your message feels on target in tying unpopularity to failures, perhaps because we are getting fed up with failures, perhaps because we are starting to realize some of the cost of those failures, but I think most because it’s important to reinforce the idea of Republican unpopularity in order to comfort people who have been scared to vote Democratic.
Michael, don’t forget “traded Sammy Sosa” in that list of failures.
V, I heartily agree with this post. M, I enjoyed your re-wording.
Brilliant. I may have to run a political campaign myself, just to use this idea as the platform.
peace
Matt
Well, my point is that although people can like failures, what people really dislike is unpopularity. My phrase is attempting to tie the unpopularity in to actual events, to make the listener seem smarter (you dislike them because you’re smart), and, I suppose, to make me feel better about the logical fallacy (you should dislike them because other people dislike them), but the important part is to get unpopular into the news as much as possible.
Oh, and viewed as a business, Our Only President’s tenure with the ballclub has to be viewed as a success, particularly in the Free Money For Owners real estate plan he spearheaded. Or went along with. Or stood next to.
Thanks,
-V.
Perhaps people voted for Bush because they felt the country should be run like the Texas Rangers? Windmill Rumsfeld is our first base coach, telling every hitter they can stretch it to two. Condi is our foreign scout, looking for new prospects since Chalabi didn’t work out so well. Team America has a great winning percentage, since we keep unilaterally changing the schedule and declaring forfeits when the other team fails to show. Meanwhile Congress watches from their luxury boxes on the upper deck, and the courts very occasionally call a balk but nothing else.
(We can solve illegal immigration by raising the ticket prices at the border, farm subsidies keep the roasted peanuts costing just peanuts, and repealing the estate tax is the only way we’ll stop Clemens from going to the French. This may need some work.)
The reason the Republicans are so unpopular is because of all the games they lost.
It is odd that the drumbeat of lousy poll numbers for Bush and his Republican Congressmice hasn’t translated into a clearer “They’re unpopular” media message. You’re clearly right — people prefer to vote for a winner, so your message that Republicans are unpopular should be a winning one for Democrats. Plus, it’s satisfying for those of us who feel like we’ve spent too much time in a minority.
thumbs up. it’s a good second choice. too bad “murdering, thieving, simpering traitors” is already taken.
I like V’s formulation, which gets “unpopular” out there and links it to “failure,” but if “This President and his Republican Congress are so unpopular” is the key phrase to bring to everyone’s attention, then I would suggest that a lot of other phrases could be used to fill in the blank “The reason this President and his Republican Congress are so unpopular is because _______.”
“Because they are murdering, thieving,simpering traitors” would work.
“Because they did nothing while a great American city was destroyed.”
“Because they have tried to steal American’s wealth for themselves and the Big Corporations.”
Given their appalling badness, one can work this phrase in to almost any political context.
Since we’re deciding the direction of the Democratic Party’s campaign strategy here on V’s blog, I have to say KISS. I like V’s “…because they’re failures.” It’s easy to prove ways in which they’ve failed. They can argue with these statements
by saying “prove it.” But if they say “prove it” to the more general charge of being failures, well, we can point at facts (Iraq unstable and looking to ally with Iran(!)), or statistics (more than a year after Katrina, x% of the city remains unrestored), etc.
Even more, I think the accumulation of failures is important. Once you get the general phrase out in the public discussion, a particular candidate can say, for instance, that one of those failures was the pathetically botched attempt to destroy Social Security, and another can say that one of those failures was the siphoning of our national treasury into the pockets of cronies, and another can say that one of the failures was endangering Israel, and another can say that one of the failures was despoiling our rivers and forests, and they will all fit nicely into the frame. But what counts is the frame. Without the frame, the individual complaints are just arguments. Within the frame they are coffin nails.
Thanks,
-V.
Edward Oleander, a comment on Making Light, coined a nice term for those unpopular, failing Republicans: the Republican’ts. I love it.
Not that I expect it to matter, but I’m generally against the style of rhetoric that “Republican’t” exemplifies. That goes for “Repug”, “Rethug”, inaccurate use of “neo-con” to include Conservatives We Dislike other than those who converted from leftist activist roots, and all the rest. (Lest anyone think I forgot, I acknowledge that in my lifetime it has been true that They Started It. Still.)
is the reason the republicans are so unpopular because of their failure to protect us from spinach tampering?
(“are you a mexi-CAN, or a mexi-CAN’T?”
–johnny depp, once upon a time in mexico)
it goes without saying that childproof spinach would be incredibly popular.