There is one aspect of the "change" theme that needs to be addressed, I think. The fact is, the American people re-elected George W. Bush and Republican majorities or near-majorities in Congress in 2004, even after the handwriting was on the wall about Iraq and many other failures of the Republicans were already public knowledge. When you tell the country that they have been on the wrong path for the past 8 years, you are also telling the majority of American voters that they, personally, made the wrong choice.
This puts Democrats in the position of saying "you were wrong", which at some level is a criticism, while the Republicans will try to build up the much more complimentary "you were right all along" argument.
Now, the fact is, American voters were wrong to elect Bush and the Republican gang, in my opinion. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a slap in the face for people to realize that voting for "change" actually means voting against what they themselves supported in the recent past.
As I see it, there are three possible approaches to this problem, as reflected in the poll below.
- The easiest approach is simply to sweep it under the rug and hope that not too many people notice.
- The second approach is to avoid telling voters that they were wrong, but to insist that they were misled by Bush
- The third approach is to try to convince voters that they were wrong and that they should admit it and vote for Obama
Obviously, there are pitfalls with each one of these approaches. Even if people do not become consciously aware of the fact that "change" means "we were wrong", I think that at the gut level, they will be very attacted to a candidate that affirms what people voted for in the past. This will cause somewhat of a tilt in the Republican direction.
It appears to be relatively easy for Bush voters to buy the "misled" argument--for example, plenty of long-time Republican voters use this approach to reconcile their votes for Bush and his gang. But the problem is, this doesn't necessarily translate into votes for Democrats. In fact, probably a major reason that McCain won the primaries was exactly this sentiment: Republicans want to reject Bush so they supported the so-called maverick, but they don't want to face the wrongness of their past votes, so for them, it is a large plus that McCain has handed in his maverick spurs and is now embracing the recent Republican past.
Convincing voters that they were wrong is also very difficult and fraught with danger, because obviously you could piss them off and make them stubborn.
Anyway, I had this thought and wanted to put it out there.
Cheers,
Greg Shenaut