Linda Stender for Congress
I produced this 30-sec. Internet video to promote Linda Stender's campaign in the New Jersey 7th.
She has a real chance to defeat incumbent Republican Mike Ferguson:
First, came Politics NJ's "Battle for New Jersey 2006" on April 21, which ranks the 7th as Likely Republican - the only NJ congressional race not listed as "Safe."Please click the "Share" button and send this around to your friends.Then came the Cook Political Report on April 21. Charlie Cook was nice enough to put the 7th on its Competitive House Race Chart - the only NJ race included on the list.
The latest good news came April 27, when CQ Politics.com upgraded the 7th from "Safe Republican" to "Republican Favored." The 7th is the only NJ race not listed as Safe.
They're starting to catch on to something we already know - that momentum is building, I am going to win this year, and the road to taking back the House goes through the 7th District.
I did this video on my own because I wanted to illustrate a simple formula that I've been preaching about for weeks:
- Bush = Bad
- Republican Incumbent = Bush
Therefore...
- Republican Incumbent = Bad.
- Had Enough?
- Vote for Change, Vote Democratic, Vote for Stender
All I ask? Just let me know if you use it.
P.S. I did one of these for Nancy Skinner's campaign (MI-09) and for Jerry McNerney's campaign (CA-11) as well.
Nice formula. The RNC seems to be using a similar formula to get donations:
1. Pelosi = Bad
2. Democratics = Pelosi
3. Republicans not = Democrats.
4. Giving money to the RNC will help elect Republicans.
5. Give us money.
Yours,
Wince
Formula is for infants.
"Republicans = bad" is rare steak.
Pelosi = Bad
If that's the best they got (which it ain't) it's pretty lame.
The polling indicates as much: those who strongly approve of Bush are outnumbered 2:1 by those who strongly disapprove of Bush.
Fear of Bush is stronger than fear of Pelosi.
That's why Rove refers to other fear-inducing imagery like "embryo farming" (instead of calling it by its rightful name, "stem-cell research").
"That's why Rove refers to other fear-inducing imagery like "embryo farming" (instead of calling it by its rightful name, "stem-cell research")."
"Tax-and-spend liberal," "Death Tax," "Cut-and-run," Republicans are masters only of deceptive rhetorical framing of the most simplistic and easily dismissed variety. The brilliant part is simply recognizing that it still works on their target audiences. Of course, that also shows a deeply cynical and condescending view of those audiences.
It's time for Democrats to wise up. It's time for them to stop taking the bait. It's time for them to play the game on their home court, instead of always on the road, on the other guy's home court.
Of course, I agree with you. This is the perfect opportunity for Democrats to set the terms of the debate and to honestly trash the opposition until people start to connect what Democrats are saying to what they see before their eyes, rather than being confused by the Republican spin, enabled by the corporate press.
But I’m also of a mind that Democrats are simply disadvantaged on this playing field. The GOP has fully adopted business-style marketing, whether of party, party message or candidate. The thing is, business-style marketing succeeds when it is done with total top-down discipline and cold calculation about what visual/narrative builds the brand. For example, if you watch most ads for men’s products – shaving cream to pickup trucks – you’ll eventually see some sexual inference, e.g., buy this razor and you’ll get laid.
In politics (essentially the marketing of public policy approaches) that’s a recipe for telling people what turns them on, almost entirely disconnected from what policies are actually being sold. Or, conversely, negatively branding the competing product, regardless of the relative value equation.
If you don’t believe in government, or worse, if one of your goals is to make people more cynical about it, that sort of mendacity is easy. It’s a twofer really: winning political power for the purpose of physically undermining government (i.e. bankrupting it), while making people support it less because of greater cynicism.
The Democrats’ disadvantage is that they care about government, they care about good public policy and they care about the truth. Those things are difficult to reconcile with a killer marketing strategy. Especially if there’s no public media to point out to people that with the other company’s product they’re really getting screwed, rather than laid.
Great comments.
The bad news is that this isn't going to happen overnight. The good news is that we (Democrats) don't necessarily have to emulate the top-down approach. That was never the Democrats strong suit anyway. In recent years, the strong suit has been the bottom-up, netroots approach demonstrated by Howard Dean, Markos, et. al.
Example: The Republicans raise money via the multi-level marketing technique, using Pioneers, Rangers etc. to gather lots of smaller contributions into huge "bundles." This is top-down fundraising at its most advanced.
Democrats raised nearly identical amounts of cash via the Internet through the efforts of bloggers like Kos and Co.
And, no, we haven't had a lot of victories using this approach. Not yet. As I said, it will take time, but I believe that we've already begun to see some things happening -- and in far less time than it took the Goldwater/Reagan wing to seize the Republican party.
As for message discipline and corporate marketing, well, I'm a believer in the power of this kind of thing. But it isn't just sex that sells.
Fear sells, too.
That's what I had in mind when I produced the 30-second Internet video to promote Linda Stender in NJ (and McNerney in CA and Skinner in MI). These videos have already had hundreds of views via a simple technology like YouTube.com.
Shoot -- if I can do THAT, surely there are minds greater than mine that can do the same, or better.
If only we have the time.
And don't sell yourself short.
Thanks. Spread the word.