Eleanor Clift has a good piece at Newsweek on what she calls "the fringe right" and their "the mob tactics disrupting Democratic town meetings around the country." She does a pretty good job of describing the ground game and explains the problem facing Democrats...Democrats need to get out there and organize and build a case for the broad overhaul of the health system that Obama is trying to put in place. If Democrats let this moment slip away when they have significant majorities in Congress, they will pay a price in next year's congressional elections. A loss of 20 to 30 seats in the House wouldn't risk the Democratic majority, but it would make life a lot less pleasant for the Obama administration.
It strikes me that the Republicans aren't playing offense here -- as much as it seems that way -- but an agressive defense. Right now, the only thing we're hearing from them is what's wrong with health care reform plans and the reason for that is because they don't want to defend an extremely unpopular status quo -- which is exactly what they're doing. If you asked one of the wingnuts what they wanted, as opposed to what they didn't want, I'm pretty damned sure you'd be met with a blank stare. Judging from what I've seen of the town halls, the question has never occurred to them. They don't talk about alternatives, because they haven't been trained to think about them. Alternatives aren't a defensive play.
Democrats need to bypass the town halls and get the message out in other ways. Supporters of health care reform likewise need to get around the defensive line and get their messages to elected officials. The mobs are basically for the media, since it's unlikely that their craziest claims (say, that Obama wants to kill babies with Downs Syndrome) will gain much ground among the sane. That stuff is just to get talking heads talking. Democrats need to reach out to individuals with direct mail, phone calls, and email lists, while supporters need to talk to people they know, blog about it, tweet about it, etc. and make their cases to their representatives and senators in writing.
The teabaggers think they're on the offense, but they're as wrong about that as they are about everything else. The ball is actually in the left's hands and it's time to start running with it.
1 comments:
It’s funny we hear Republicans say that they do not want “faceless bureaucrats” making medical decisions but they have no problem with “private sector” “faceless bureaucrats” daily declining medical coverage and financially ruining good hard working people. And who says that the “private sector” is always right, do we forget failures like Long-Term Capital, WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Tyco, AIG and Lehman Brothers. Of course the federal government will destroy heathcare by getting involved, Oh but wait, Medicare and Medicaid and our military men and women and the Senate and Congress get the best heathcare in the world, and oh, that’s right, its run by our federal government. I can understand why some may think that the federal government will fail, if you look at the past eight years as a current history, with failures like the financial meltdown and Katrina but the facts is they can and if we support them they will succeed.
How does shouting down to stop the conversation of the healthcare debate at town hall meetings, endears them to anyone. Especially when the organizations that are telling them where to go and what to do and say are Republicans political operatives, not real grassroots. How does shouting someone down or chasing them out like a lynch mob advanced the debate, it does not. So I think the American people will see through all of this and know, like the teabagger, the birthers, these lynch mobs types are just the same, people who have to resort to these tactics because they have no leadership to articulate what they real want. It’s easy to pickup a bus load of people who hate, and that’s all I been seeing, they hate and can’t debate. Too bad.
Post a Comment