We hear it every day: the debates are Romney’s Last Chance Saloon. His last opportunity to reverse the momentum of the race.
Well, it’s true. And debates can, as we all know, reverse the momentum in races. It’s happened many times.
Still, in terms of the horse race for POTUS, the upcoming debates mean nothing. Romney is a dead candidate walking. No debate result could possibly resurrect his appeal to the American people. Election morning, a sizable majority of Americans will want him gone.
But. I contend that, in spite of all this, these debates are crucial. Perhaps the most important presidential debates in decades. I say that for 3 reasons, discussed below.
And in the context of each of those reasons, I am deeply convicted that President Obama should, needs to, MUST focus his debates with Romney on the obstructionist GOP Congress.
1) Romney can’t win this election. But, he could steal it. I surely don’t need to explain this here. The GOP is desperately trying to rig the vote. Can they succeed?
Well, of course, as we all know, an election can’t be stolen unless it’s fairly tight. (At least, at this point in our democracy’s degeneration!) And what is the key to beating the stolen election strategies?
I suggest that it is a matter of eating into the GOP base. Vote suppression targets populations perceived as the opposition. It does not target its own base. So, votes stolen from the GOP base will not be suppressed.
And this is why Obama needs to crucify Romney in the debates. He needs to take away another 1%, 2%, 3% of the GOP base. By doing that, he offsets the suppression of our voters.
And in this context, I submit that the most important message in the debates is NOT that Romney is a jerk. Everyone knows that already, including the morons who would die to cast a ballot against Obama.
But let’s flip the question around. Why might a person not fond of Romney pull back from voting for Obama? Understand that, for it to be possible for such a person to do this, s/he has to be generally open to voting for him. So what might move, say, a low information voter who doesn’t hate Obama vote for a distasteful Romney?
To me, we come back to the elephant in the room, the weakness Obama has had all along, the reason the wingers were so sure they could take him out. After 4 years, we STILL live in a lousy economy. I understand about the progress and all. But there it is. Obama has been president for 4 years and the economy still sucks.
Now, to grab low information independents, Obama has to give them a way to understand the lagging economy, a way to see Obama as having been with them all along, but not quite succeeding … FOR REASONS THAT ARE NOT HIS FAULT!
And the best way to do that is with the piece of information that I don’t think is widely known even today: the obstructionist GOP Congress. Of course, it is the fault of the Democratic Party and of Obama himself that this is not widely known. For 4 years, the GOP has been allowed to obstruct and filibuster without paying a political price because our Party has not screamed bloody murder every time it happened.
Still, this will be a teachable moment. The nation will be watching, at least as much as it ever does these days. Obama has a chance to hammer home the mantra, over and over. Every time Romney cites the economy, Obama has to answer with specifics of what our bunch tried to do and how the GOP stopped it. Our low information indies need to be led to a basic sense of what’s been happening.
I know. There’s a danger of sounding like a victim. The attack has to be nuanced, often subtle. But it has to repeat the key theme: the GOP betrayed the country by obstructing THE PEOPLE’S BUSINESS for 4 years to defeat Obama.
Low information indies sour about the economy must be given a scapegoat. Romney can’t ultimately be that scapegoat because he had no office for the last 4 years. The indies need to conclude that the GOP is to blame. Somebody has to pay.
2) The opportunity we have right now is not just retaining the office of POTUS. The chance is to hold the Senate and regain the House. If we do that, we may FINALLY have the chance to actually get some things done. (The chance. I’d never bet my house on the Democratic Party actually moving aggressively when it had the chance.)
Apart from the worry about voter suppression, Obama can be fairly confident about retaining the Oval Office. He needs to translate that confidence into the congressional races. He needs to grow long coat tails and secure the Congress he needs to overcome his diffidence about fighting political battles.
And Romney gives him the rhetorical opening. Of course Obama needs to pin Romney down on his lying and prevarication. But here’s the wrinkle. He needs to consistently show that the REAL Romney values are those of the 47% tape, and that in this tape HE REPRESENTS GOP CORE VALUES …
AS SHOWN BY THE GOP CONGRESS’S REFUSAL TO ACT IN SUPPORT OF WORKERS AND THE U.S ECONOMY! Each time he pins Romney to a lie, he can and should connect THAT LIE to specific GOP Congressional inaction. One example among hundreds. If he pins Romney down to his refusal to talk about the troops, this point should IMMEDIATELY be connected to the GOP shooting down the vets’ employment bill a week or so back. That’s the formula:
Romney Lie – Romney’s core value – GOP core value --- GOP Congressional obstruction
Point by point. Over and over. Maddeningly specific.
Then watch Romney squirm trying to answer. It wins the debate; more importantly, it sets up the ideological frame for understanding the economy.
3) This election has become a teachable moment, is a generational opportunity to fracture the 30 year GOP myth of that tax cuts for and government enslaved by the wealthy is good for the country. If Obama doesn’t take full advantage of this moment, we will all regret it. It may not come again for decades.
Now, on the surface, 2008 would have seemed to offer that teachable moment. It felt that way to us. But while the country was ready to react away from Bush Co., it was NOT ready to fundamentally question the core principles of more than 3 decades of right wing propaganda. The crisis was too fresh and, really, not yet real to people. I think smarter people than I could elaborate ways in which society today is closer to learning key truths about itself today than it was in 2008.
Consider this example. In 2008, the GOP understood, below the surface, that somebody had to pay the price for Bush Co.’s screw ups. They were happy, really, to let Democrats take the White House and, apparently, the Congress, and then deal with the mess that immediately became theirs.
Today, however, is different. If the GOP loses in 2012 after believing for 4 years that they had just been setting the liberal chumps up for a crushing defeat … well, this time, it will be a deeply bitter, choking pill to swallow. Many a wing nut is going to have to deal with the GOP’s failure to deliver on its promise of renewed power. And many a wing nut is going to have to realize that PAUL RYAN trotted out his plan and took it to market whereupon he got booed off the stage at the AARP. This time, it’s different.
Or, at least, this time it CAN BE different IF Obama uses the debates to attack not just Mitt, not just the GOP Congress, but the core values of the plutocrats. Of course, I am talking about that 47% tape which, in itself, makes this a teachable moment.
Obama has a chance to teach the nation that Romney’s tape indicts not only Romney, but an entire privileged class that feels entitled to rule. Of course, you and I know that the winger movement has ALWAYS been run by the people in that private dining room, and that every last one of them despises the 47% as much or more than Romney does. But most of the nation BELIEVED the lie that class warfare only begins when the working class stands up for itself. But Romney’s tape confronts everyday Americans who had NOT figured that out before with an inescapable fact: these creeps believe that they own the world and that everyone else is inconvenient and insignificant factory fodder.
That is the damage being done by Romney’s tape. It, along with the war on women and the folly of having Ryan take on Medicare, is transforming the electoral map. Look at what has happened to Romney’s edge with senior citizens. Those unbelievable numbers of falling support are coming from the GOP base.
But there’s a connection missing, and Obama needs to make it. What are the implications of this plutocratic disdain FOR GOVERNMENT, for the institutions wingers have been taught for decades to see as the problem? If the lesson of the 47% is left to SIMPLY sink Romney as an individual and inept pol, we will have lost the moment.
And this is where, again, the key is to nail the GOP Congress not JUST for being nasty and cooperative, but for having obstructed SPECIFIC GOVERNMENT INITIATIVES THAT WOULD HAVE WORKED, THAT STILL CAN WORK! Again, Obama needs to nail Romney not just to his lies but also to the GOP Congress. Not only should Obama help take that Congress down; he should ALSO discredit obstructionism per se AND lay the foundation for passing practical legislation that will HELP PEOPLE.
This is a teachable moment, folks. Obama needs to see that. He need to cut Romney off at the knees by nailing him to his lies, his values, and the GOP Congress as an extension of a deeply un-American value system. And if he accomplishes that demolition, he can go on to the pay-off:
Vision-Casting
Assuming he has nailed Romney and indicted the GOP Congress (debates 1 & 2?), President Obama would have an opportunity to cast a vision at a moment when people are ready to listen. President Clinton’s speech demonstrated how hungry people are to be told the truth, even when it involves specific policies. For decades, Democrats have been despised for being policy wonks under the assumption that no one cares to listen to that stuff. I think this is a different moment, a teachable moment, and President Obama has a chance to cast a vision:
OK, here are some specific things we can do to make a difference in your life. Ways to encourage U S manufacturing. Strategies for dealing with China. The benefits of national health care in encouraging employers to hire Americans. The Dream Act. On and on. I’d like to see Obama invite America to dream with him … and to see with him the building blocks of policy that leads to a better place.
You may call me crazy, but I think America is ready for that. Mitt Romney has offered a blank slate of a plan to stimulate 12 million jobs. The country has refused to listen to a plan that isn’t a plan. I think the people are dying for a leader who will offer them an explicit plan that promises to work. I think this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get through to the people with that.
But to make it work, Obama needs to defeat the GOP Congress that refuses to help. And if he can help the American people see THAT vision … he will have shattered the lying myth of plutocratic wealth that we have languished under for over 30 years.