Joe Romm at Stink Progress:
Must-Read Drew Westen Op-Ed Spells Out Obama’s Catastrophic Failure of Messaging
The White House is just lousy at messaging across the board, as I and others have noted many times.
I am hoping my book on messaging and communications will find a publisher this year. It explains what Obama and other progressives have done wrong — and details what the winning strategies and tactics are.
According to the Think Progress website:
Joe Romm is a Fellow at American Progress and is the editor of Climate Progress, which New York Times columnist Tom Friedman called “the indispensable blog” and Time magazine named one of the 25 “Best Blogs of 2010.″ In 2009, Rolling Stone put Romm #88 on its list of 100 “people who are reinventing America.” Time named him a “Hero of the Environment″ and “The Web’s most influential climate-change blogger.” Romm was acting assistant secretary of energy for energy efficiency and renewable energy in 1997, where he oversaw $1 billion in R&D, demonstration, and deployment of low-carbon technology. He is a Senior Fellow at American Progress and holds a Ph.D. in physics from MIT.
How can somebody with such impressive credentials be so fucking stupid?
Obama is NOT a progressive and his problem is NOT a “failure of messaging.”
“Obama just needs to communicate better!”
There are no words that could transform Obama into a successful progressive president. His policies suck. So does he. A turd by any other name would still stink.
Ironically, one of the main reasons we were supposed to support Obama was his alleged mastery of speechification. Like his political skills and judgment, his ability to communicate with and inspire the masses was greatly overrated.
Messaging is important, but it is not as important as the message itself. Liberals and progressives have done a crappy job over the last few decades of selling their ideas and candidates to the voters. Despite their best efforts the stupid voters were falling for right-wing framing and memes, and kept voting against their interests (as the progressives saw it.)
So a few years ago some progressives got caught up in “winning strategies and tactics” utilizing better messaging. I think that may have been where the progressive movement went off track – when the messaging became more important than the message.
If all their strategery and tactics had resulted in the passage of something momentous like single payer/Medicare for all, then they might have been justified in their efforts.
But they wasted it all on Obama.
Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. – Psalm 146:3
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