The Tease of Things I Don't Need

Political Points
(As quickly as I can)

Seeing as how the mere phrase "of President Bush's second term" gives me angina, and the partisan cacophany of applause that accompanies any State of the Union address makes listening to them for actual substance worse than listening to a person with a desperate stutter read an article from a golfing magazine in front of golf fanatics who've been swilling hi balls in the clubhouse all afternoon -- I will not be listening to el Presidente' yammer on tonight. The transcripts will be up soon afterwards and the hashing and rehashing will be relentless tomorrow. This is all bombast and window dressing anyway, with the real battles on the issues raised yet to come. Honestly, I may very well avoid it until the weekend.

The gutting of Social Security and the spilling of its entrails onto the wheel of fortune is one item sure to be presented tonight as a timely rescue mission. The sham election in Iraq (also noted here and here and here), fresh on the heels of reports that the high turnout was due at least in part to the word going out that if one didn't vote, don't expect any food, will be polished into a sparkling gem of democracy and freedom for the tv audience. All of which proves that one can polish a turd if it's first sparayed with lacquer, then hit up with gold paint.

If he starts to blather about their successes in healthcare reform, remember that this is just more of the smokescreen, and that the ownership society means not only that we will continue to be owned, but that the social safety net is being disconnected from its support structure and handed to us. The best analogy I can think of is the literal one of being handed a safety net and being told to catch one's self in it if one needs to leap from a burning building. Unless you're the protagonist in a Warner Brothers' cartoon this strategy generally doesn't produce good results. This is also analagous to what we're being handed with the plan to "save" Social Security. The beauty of it all is that if they can sell it to the american public then they can put the blame on each of us when it fails. "Oh, you made some bad investment choices, there, buck-o! You failed." By that time the only public safety net left will likely be the faith-based organizations, so you'll probably pull through it all after a fashion in the end providing you learn to say the right prayers in front of the right audience.

However, if you can stomach listening to it, you could do worse than to print out some State of the Union Buzzword Bingo Cards and play along at home. It being a Wednesday night I can't turn it into a drinking game, which is the only way I would be able to get through it. (Thanks to Elayne Riggs for reminding me about those cards, though.)

To show that I can be somewhat bipartisan in my angst, one of the lessons from 2004 that the Democratic National Committee most definitely has not learned is how to handle emailings to its constituents. Every time they send a note out on some political issue, it's high on hyperbole, low on information, and is primarily intended to pick my pocket. The usual variations are "show the Bush administration/GOP..." or "Help stop the Bush...", and to make it worse the push for money isn't something stuck on the the end... and not only is it in the main body of the message... it's in there three times in the same email! Each time it's accompanied by a link to their donation engine. By all serious accounts, people, this is not how the GOP built up their grass roots support during their off years. They did it by targeting groups with information & misinformation that got those people energized. Give your members timely information about ongoing and upcoming Congressional and governmental issues. Doing the textual equivalent of putting Bush's smirking face on the end of a stick and waggling it in our faces, then telling us to throw money at it so you can somehow make it go away isn't working.

The best news to come out of the DNC lately is that it appears that what was once considered by pundits to be a long shot is coming closer to being a done deal: Howard Dean as DNC chairman. That gives me some hope. Hopefully Dean hasn't undergone some vile mutation while I was distracted.

To be fair (once more) the Democratic Party is providing some information, as with this single sheet concerning some of Bush's misleading of the nation... though it looks for all the world as if this is being done by the same people who used to do the Daily Mislead. It's a good alliance, but the DNC itself continues to fall down on the job. They need to concentrate on the messages they're reaching out with and lead, not just vaguely warn.

And I still sometimes wonder why it's so hard to sleep at night?