Watching the Republican convention immediately after the Democratic convention highlighted one distinct difference for me.
While Democrats are afraid of offending their own shadow, and live in mortal fear of turning off any possible demographic, ethnic group or lifestyle, the Republicans seem to relish ridiculing and demonizing large swaths of the populace (trial lawyers, community organizers, public school teachers, unions, mainstream media, urban people, Eastern elites, Hollywood, New York, San Francisco, liberals, etc. etc.).
Paul Krugman refers to this in the New York Times as the 'Politics of Resentment'.
As the article points out, this is a strategy that the GOP has successfully employed since Nixon. You would think the Democrats would have learned to play that game by now! After all, the numbers are on their side if they want to play the populist game. However whenever a Democrat takes a populist tone and the right predictably bleats about "class warfare", the Democrats run for cover.
So what do you think? Has this strategy run its course or is Obama going to be yet another victim of the GOP's resentment playbook?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
The so-called liberal media plays the role of the lapdog to the Republicans to the hilt and that's why historically the Democrats have had problems in framing the debate on any particluar issue. They tend more to the right and I am not talking about FOX here. Right now Obama's plans on the economy and other stock issues are being sucked out through the window and this despite Palin's record or lack thereof and her "Jesus freak" family circus which is if we were to believe the media, has captured the imagination of the "American public."
Post a Comment