Tapping Barack Obama's Phone
By Jonathan Leigh Solomon
Created Jun 30 2008 - 10:28am
I'm thinking of tapping Barack Obama's phone. Yeah, why not? I want to
find
out why he's been sharing milkshakes with Antonin Scalia.
While I'm waiting for him to come on the line, let me run this by you:
Remember Mark Penn? Former chief strategist for Hillary Clinton. He of the
Pinochet Lite clients. In his book, "Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind
Tomorrow's Big Changes" he explains the logic of going after swing voters,
as Obama has been doing with such great zeal over the past week or so.
And,
the logic is quite logical.
Actually, it's simple math: (You may already know this, but for me it was
like the first time I saw Paris.) It takes only one swing voter to equal
two
voters from your base. That's because - obvious, once you think about it -
the swing voter not only votes for you, he doesn't vote for the other guy.
For that reason, tending to the base - getting the base out to vote or
increasing their number - is not as im****tant as appealing to the swing
voter. In fact, it's less im****tant by half.
But wait just a minute, I hear myself saying while cupping the receiver
tightly against my palm - Penn's book was published in September of '07!
Since then - let alone since 1996 when Penn's guidance kept Bill Clinton
in
the White House - Obama's message and mojo, and the extended
Barack-Clinton
primary fight, brought a jump in Democratic Party voter rolls to a number
in
the neighborhood of four million. Nice neighborhood. So, isn't there
enough
of a newly acquired base to make the old ways of running a campaign
obsolete? Obama's "new kind of politics" is entirely doable, not just in
how
one governs once in office, but in how one wins office. Turn out the newly
humongous base, while adding a bit to that base, and you win. The drunk
guy
in front of the 7-Eleven said so just this week during one of our
lengthier
discussions.
Only one problem - there's more numbers. I'll let the 7-Eleven guy sleep
off
his delusions, but the rest of us should have this other math in mind
while
we are deciding just how much to excoriate Obama for his tack to the
right.
Fact is, for all the talk of "changing the face of politics for a
generation
to come" and "ushering in a new Democratic majority," the two-for-one
logic
still holds, at least when it comes to presidential campaigns.
According to polling by Pew Research Center, as of June of '04, 7% of the
electorate still had not decided if they were voting for George Bush or
John
Kerry, and a total of 21% said that they might switch their vote by
election
day. Is today so different? Right now, June of four years later, according
to the average of leading polls, 12% of voters are undecided and you can
assume that at least a small additional percentage is soft sup****t. 12% of
a
voter turnout that will easily exceed the 122,000,000 who voted in 2004,
tops the increase in the number of new Democratic voters by about ten
million. Ten friggin' million. If you lose those swing voters, your base -
even up by four million, even if Obama's voter drives adds another million
-
gets stomped.
There's more - how this breaks down state by state, swing states, popular
vote, electoral vote. But, suffice to say, when Obama eschewed the
pundit's
red-blue-purple state preoccupation during his '04 Democratic Convention
speech, he was choosing poetry over polls. Mark Penn may have spent the
last
year or so proving he's an idiot, but the Obama brain trust has proven
themselves to be brilliant at winning elections and they've obviously
decided that even if some of their newly humongous base stays home, it's a
necessary evil. So, considering the math of presidential campaigning, is
being disillusioned a necessary evil, too?
Wait... Obama is coming on the line! I think. Oh, nope. Damn - that's him
alright, but he's tapping my phone.
_______
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues.
I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an op****tunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are
at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
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