| Dear Team Obama,
If you hold on to the nomination, I'd like you to win it. And, your strategy isn't working.
There were problems from the first, because to be the agent for change you ran on being, you needed a lot of personal support, and you've never had enough of that. I was skeptical of your plan, to not run with a particular platform of what you specifically wanted to accomplish, but to run as someone who would bring everyone together, and together we'd all come up with a 'common' platform that left no group feeling isolated and disrespected. It sounded kind of sweet, but it's something that requires voters to trust the person of the president, not the platform of the president. Since of course the final decisions would still be the president's, it's never really truly a consensus. But, I was more than willing to let you try, provided you could actually win the nomination, fair and square with people knowing what you were going to do. |
| Instead you ran a negative campaign, thinly disguised as defending yourself from scurrilous 'attacks.' You likely assumed that you would be attacked and in defending yourself you'd be able to show the difference, that you're for unity and against scurrilous attacks. The problem was that your main rival Hillary Clinton didn't attack you. So, you 'had to' take the 'truth' to be an attack and 'attacked her back' for noting, for example, that you have little experience. Since you do have little experience, that was weird. You also made stuff up, and manufactured outrage, for example assuming she would go negative cause Bob Novak said so and then attacking her 'negativity.'
But this was a consequence of the main problem, which was that only some voters wanted your version of change, far more wanted to know what a president will do in office. You then had to come up with some plans, but since your whole point is to have plans open ended enough that the final version can't be written until everyone has their say and it's a 'unity' decision, you were stuck having to come up with plans that you didn't really plan to adopt. Then you showed up badly in debates because you hadn't really thought about those things, you were planning to think about specifics after you got elected, but you couldn't say that, it probably sounded strange even to you.
In the Texas debate you simply repeated the immigration reform bill that didn't pass, either because that compromise bill was just what you'd wanted, although most Democrats thought it was needlessly cruel and punitive, or because you hadn't thought about the bill you'd think would be best and that was a default answer.
Then some of your advisors admitted that what you'd claimed you'd do or be for in debates and town hall meetings wasn't yet written in cement, and then where were you? You may as well have never presented any plans to start with.
Your campaign has been busy selling you as a unique product, with all the trappings of uniqueness, the presidential seal, the stadiums filled with cheering throngs, but this one you didn't think through. Americans are put off by show-offs, and skeptical of personalities, and you were seen as arrogant, as someone who was marketing himself as a unique fellow who would get his consensus by hook or by crook.
One unfortunate decision was the idea that you talk about yourself with the royal 'we.' We're going to do this or that, left you open to some serious mockery when you said we're the one's we're waiting for. Had you referred to yourself as 'I'," then when you said 'we' one might have taken it to mean all of us, together, but no, it sounds like you're still talking about yourself with the royal 'we.' And maybe you are, who can tell?
Also, you don't update your strategy. Maybe you got this from Bush and Rove, don't ever change, but to reach a goal you have to look at the goal and judge if you're getting closer or further away. You've been losing momentum since February, it's time to rethink the strategy.
It's too late to change your philosophy and anyway if you became a solutions candidate (or even a weird old maverick) you would hardly be anyone's first choice, since you have no history of solutions.
So, here's my idea for you:
Run from your theory, not your personality. You want to present yourself as the only one that can bring unity and who will require compromise and consensus, but that's silly and so far you haven't shown any particular talent for it.
But your theory is 'consensus, respect and empathy,' so talk about that, not about yourself. You can give those details, how you'll allow access to everyone so they can give you their ideas, for example. How the ideas will be counted and sorted. There must be some specifics there, it's a big country with lots of people and diverse groups, how will they all get your ear?
You can demonstrate that is isn't about you as a unique person (no one's that unique) but about your governing philosophy by teaming up with Hillary and proving it. She won the other half of the votes, and that's an obvious place for unity, compromise and consensus to be demonstrated, or avoided.
The main message to your team is, stop puffing up Barack, he's looking weird, he's going to be a joke shared by all but you guys and not in the distant future either. And the only thing funnier to those who will be laughing at you, is you getting pissy about being laughed at, so prepare with some counter jokes that show you're not too proud to get the joke.
Look, it didn't work, you need to shift now, because if you keep the nomination you will be expected to win it. You can try to blame your loss on those who don't believe in hope, or on Hilary for not dropping out as soon as she realized there was a real hope candidate, or on girls for being pissed at Howard for foisting you upon us, but it'll be all your own fault. Still, you haven't lost yet, so, get busy.
Sincerely,
a concerned voter |
