It Don't Mean A Thing If You Can't Get That Swing
Minuteman
The NY Times continues to host "talk therapy" with the many puzzled staffers of the Kerry campaign. Is anyone making any attempt to shush these people?
... "Mary Beth is making the trains run on time," one senior official said, echoing several others who insisted on anonymity because the campaign bars aides from discussing its internal workings. "Lockhart is in charge of the message."
Oh, I guess they are trying to shush these people. Next question - does anyone over there take Kerry and his directives seriously? Where is the loyalty and commitment? WHY CAN'T THEY SHUT UP?
Here is a head-scratcher:
The reshuffled leadership team is tackling the campaign's most glaring, longstanding problem, the lack of a consistent message, and broadening its target audience well beyond the sliver of the electorate who are still undecided.
What? If the Kerry people are seeing polls indicating that they can try to encroach on Bush supporters, I want to review their position od drug legalization. This can only mean they have dropped a "reach to the center" approach, and have been reduced to rallying the base. A bit later in the story, they tell us exactly that, but depict it as a winning strategy, rather than a "lose respectably" approach:
Bloodied by the August assault on Mr. Kerry's character, the campaign is now operating from a different assumption about the electorate, one senior aide said, pointing to research by the veteran Clinton pollster Stanley Greenberg that suggests a strictly positive message is less important than energizing voters.
"It means that you can be sharper, you don't have to go after that swing vote, you don't define your message for one segment,'' the aide said. "If you energize the electorate, point up sharp contrasts and offer better direction, then you're energizing a bigger group of voters including your base."
Lots of insidery, "who's hot, who's not" gossip for anyone who cares. Shrum's impact has been diminished, Sasso is up, Stephanie is down (she'll always be hot). Yawn.
Comedy classics:
Officials in the campaign and at the party now widely lament that they went months without a simple and concise message "frame" through which to filter all their attacks on Mr. Bush.
Aides said that the campaign's top communications officials repeatedly appealed to the campaign's top consultants, including Mr. Shrum, his partner Tad Devine, and the pollster Mark Mellman, for just such a frame, but that they were rebuffed out of fear of alienating swing voters with a negative message.
Yes, something powerful to offset "Kerry is a flip-flopper" would be helpful. It would also helps if the frame were true, or at least plausible. The base would surely respond to "Man in a chimp suit", but that might be a bit too negative. "Son of privilege", coming from John Kerry, again seems like a reason to question their position on drugs.
More:
Lockhart's approach is very different," said one official who attends strategy sessions. "He realizes the only thing the American people hate more than a bully is somebody who won't fight back."
Hmm, when you need the word "hate" to explain your message, you're losing.
Every day the reporters mistake campaign gossip for news - covering this team must be like covering a junior high girls slumber party, with folks gossiping all night. And the cumulative effect is killing Kerry, because the overarching theme of all these "inside the Kerry campaign" stories is the same - Kerry cannnot organize his staff or focus his message. Why this will change after November remains an unexplored mystery.
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