The Sky Isn't Falling

While surfing the indispensable TomPaine.com, I came across Rory O'Conner's blog and a post complaining about the Democrats' convention marketing technique, that which focussed on the nominee's ability to make war and not peace that I don't totally agree with.

And what I expect to hear from Democrats is a plan to wage peace, not war without end. At least, that’s what I expect to hear from the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” as Howard Dean once admirably phrased it. Now even Dean seems to wish he had enlisted and fought in Vietnam, instead of dodging the battles to go skiing… Now it’s all upside down and standing in its head, and the Baby Boomers want to play boom-boom and transmogrify themselves into the “Greatest Generation, Part Deux.”

Dude, Where’s My Party?

How did it come to pass that thirty years on we’re still on Vietnam– only this time “our guy” is the one who volunteered to go over and kill Cong, and ‘their guy” is the one who did his best to duck out?

Marketing. Money. Mad Ave.

But the Democrats are trying to sell us a pig in a poke by trying to come off as something they’re not, something even they don’t believe in – and it will inevitably show. People aren’t stupid, the camera doesn’t lie (even when the politicians do) and sooner rather than later enough undecided ’swing voters in the battleground (here we go again!) states’ will figure out that the message is phony and the detergent isn’t new or improved in any way. So why switch brands? By focusing on war, the Democrats (Republicrats?) will play right into the hands of their opponents, because when Americans think war, they think Republican.

I will concede this to Mr O'Conner: traditional left-Democratic war policies were most definitely absent from the convention. However, that was for a reason, primarily being campaign strategy. The convention was a marketing event scripted by the Democratic party, one that focussed on what was perceived to be Kerry's biggest weakness: his supposed laxness on security issues. After being brow-beaten by Clark, Cleland, and the Swarmy Swiftboat Squadron, middle-of-the-road Americans may not write Kerry's stance on national defense issues off so quickly. Was this done at the expense of traditional Democratic (brace for the buzz word) "values"? Most definitely, but that's what comes with a presidential election. Mr O'Conner seems to be in line with Nader's misbegoten vision, that being that Kerry is in a fight for the voters on the left, when it's the voters in the middle that he must truly win over. Simply because the convention decided to squash a perceived weakness does not mean it changes Kerry's Democratic heritage. Middle-ground voters have lived under Bush's "War on Terror," they have seen the damage it has caused, and they are ready for a change. So, Roy, calm down. It's a new era, Kerry is not preaching for constant war, and he is not pulling the wool over undecided eyes -- he's simply ready to deal with real crises with real strategies and real alliances, something that Bush has been unable to do since he took office.