Greenwald: Obama yesterday instructed his supporters on how to advocate for his re-election

[Karmadillo]

Details are stupid things.

http://www.salon.com/news/david_sirota/index.html?story=/news/david_sirota/2011/08/05/obama_fdr_debt_ceiling&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110

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President Obama yesterday instructed his supporters on how to advocate for his re-election, and told them that when they go forth to evangelize about his accomplishments -- as Steve Benen did yesterday with his celebration of Obama as "the most effective politician since Reagan, and depending on the day, perhaps even the most effective politician since LBJ" -- that they should "not to get too bogged down in detail" but instead should emphasize broad themes and values. As one example of how this avoid-the-details advocacy should work, Obama instructed: "If somebody asks about the war, whether it’s Iraq or Afghanistan — if it’s Iraq, you have a pretty simple answer, which is all our folks are going to be out of there by the end of the year." Except that appears to be completely untrue, as his administration appears on the verge of succeeding in its many months of efforts to pressure the Iraqi Government to allow U.S. troops to remain in that country well past the 2011 withdrawal deadline Obama repeatedly vowed to enforce (and that's beyond the oversight-free private army which the State Department has long planned to keep in Iraq).

more...

[Major Hogwash]

1. Concerning Iraq, the permanent bases we built there will not be abandoned for 2 decades

And anyone who thinks they will be, is seriously deluded.

[Javaman]

8. As I have said before

we are never leaving.

We have set up or Eastern American Empire in Iraq and Baghdad is it's capital.

No one builds an "embassy" larger than vatican city to just leave it for someone else to use.

So many Dems are willing to by that bridge of a story that we are leaving.

[Enrique]

2. we'll see if people at DU start taking this advice

look to see a lot less detail, a lot more "broad themes". What are those themes, by the way? Win the future?

[ProSense]

3. They're going

in for the kill, except that's Sirota, not Greenwald and anyone who doesn't think Obama thinks Obama is a doing a great job is being instructed by the WH?

Still, how stupid does one have to be to believe rallying supporters is sinister?

:rofl:

[Scurrilous]

4. Unrecc.

per instructions.

[Karmadillo]

12. +1

nt

[sabrina 1]

15. Rec, thinking for myself. I don't need instructions to tell

me how to communicate with other people.

[treestar]

18. lol

:rofl:

Politicians who are running should never tell their minions anything! :rofl:

They should not try to raise money or campaign! :rofl:

[Autumn]

5. Well I have always heard, the devil is in the details.

:shrug:

[RaleighNCDUer]

6. He's tired of lyinig to us, so he's having his minions lie for him. nt

[dtexdem]

7. Well that will be easier and easier, as his pool of supporters shrinks.

The only reason to vote for Obama is that the batshit-crazy Repuke will be worse -- and being either batshit crazy or a Repuke is bad enough, but the Repuke candidate will be both.

[Javaman]

9. Hobson's choice

A Hobson's choice is a free choice in which only one option is offered. As a person may refuse to take that option, the choice is therefore between taking the option or not; "take it or leave it". The phrase is said to originate with Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), a livery stable owner in Cambridge, England. To rotate the use of his horses, he offered customers the choice of either taking the horse in the stall nearest the door or taking none at all.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobsons_choice

[socialist_n_TN]

13. Sounds like the "choice" in the dictatorship of capital's

"elections". You can vote for corporate candidate A or corporate candidate B. Guess what? You elect a corporate candidate.

[Javaman]

16. Pretty much...

You can vote for whomever you want as long as it's Obama. LOL

If a traditional Democrat ran against what poses as a Democrat today, people would see instantly how far to the right Obama as moved.

[Tatiana]

10. Those talking points went out a while ago. I received a phone call last month asking for $$$$.

The (genuine, IMO) caller gave me a bunch of vague promises that the President has supposedly kept and when I mentioned the war, she said that all troops would be out by the end of the year.

I asked her "then what are the bases for?" She couldn't answer, but then transitioned to another talking point.

I really felt sorry for that lady. I thanked her for her service, but firmly stated that Obama had more than enough support from Wall Street and the financial sector to fund his re-election campaign. I am saving my meager bucks for true progressives (like some in Wisconsin). I asked to be removed from the list, but I've received two other calls since then.

***Sigh*** They are just not getting it. As Rude Pundit put it so eloquently, "It's not me. It's you."

He gets my vote and that's all.

[Salviati]

11. What's the opposite of coat tails?

Cause that's how I'm going to help him get elected. I'll put forth effort and cash for hard fighting local and national candidates, and hopefully Obama can ride in on their hat brims...

[blindpig]

14. Extremely thin tissue.

Tales for slow children.

[Sapphocrat]

17. It worked last time. Detail-free evangelism, that is.

From an article in the Sacramento Bee (no longer online) I blogged in June, 2008, about (official) volunteer training for the Obama campaign:

Obama basic training
Volunteers told to share personal conversion stories with voters – not policy views.
... “He looked at me, and the look in his eyes was worth 1,000 words,” said Mack, now a regional field organizer. ... Then Mack brought home the point of her story for the crowd of 100 or so eager volunteers, sipping coffee and watching a PowerPoint presentation in the Obama campaign office on a recent Saturday.

“Did that make more impact on you than if I had talked about his health care plan or his stance on the environment?” she asked.

On the verge of a hectic few weeks leading to Super Tuesday, the crucial Feb. 5 multistate primary including California’s, Mack wanted to drill home one of the campaign’s key strategies: telling potential voters personal stories of political conversion. She urged volunteers to hone their own stories of how they came to Obama – something they could compress into 30 seconds on the phone.

. . .

She told the volunteers that potential voters would no doubt confront them with policy questions. Mack’s direction: Don’t go there. Refer them to Obama’s Web site, which includes enough material to sate any wonk. ...

There's more (such as the instruction to push values and feelings above silly little things like issues and policies), but I think the above about says it all.

We saw these tactics everywhere, especially online; e.g., skeptic asks specific question about policy, Obama supporter doesn't "go there," instead refers skeptic to Obama campaign site.

And then there was "The BAM" (original mydd.com link dead; http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2230648563&topic=3906">here is one of many others that sent it viral):

... As the guy drew back his hand back I asked him, "You shook his hand didn't you?" Happily the guy said "Yes." I then said, "give me some of that" and the guy shook my hand with the same hand he had just clasped with Barack's. A woman friend of mine who was standing next to me saw me shake hands with the guy. I turned to her and said "He just shook hands with Barack," to which she responded..."Hey, give it up." We then shook hands. She then turned to the person next to her and shook hands. This went on for at least five or six people.

I did not know the tall guy in front of me; he is white, I am black. But at the moment we shook hands, I felt some solidarity with this stranger, consummated by a handshake and signifying some unspoken agreement presumably about Barack Obama and Barack's core message of UNITY!

I call this hand-shake scenario The "BAM" because, descriptively, it takes a bit of Obama's name and it's the sound of a collision (in a positive sense).

THE BAM, pass it on at the next Barack Rally!

If you can't be there in person ... pass on the BAM to another person (Canadian and/or American) via the internet. The energy will pass on to that person.

YES we CAN!

Perhaps if more voters had channeled less energy into faith and more into reason, we wouldn't be where we are today.

Perhaps, next time, more voters will actually listen to us "fringe" leftists when we have grave misgivings early on, instead of waiting three of four years for reality to kick in, and then beating themselves up for getting swept away by the "come to Obama" delirium, and taking the rest of us with them. (You're supposed to come to Jesus, aren't you? But then, the similarities are undeniable; "The BAM" is little different from touching the hem of his garment.)

Perhaps... but I doubt it.

[Karmadillo]

19. This is kinda scary.

nt

[amborin]

20. very

[Sapphocrat]

21. That's the word I used when I blogged "The BAM"...

Scary (actually "scare," as in "scare{s} us a lot").

I have more retrospective pieces, but I'm not sure how close to the line I can go, if you know what I mean -- and the bleeding-heart in me hesitates to beat the former True Believers over the head so badly (they're doing a fairly good job of it themselves).

Still, I haven't forgotten any of it. I've bitten my tongue so hard to keep from being banned over the past 3-4 years, I'm surprised it's still intact, and I haven't bled out.

But maybe DU is finally ripe for a history lesson. Just maybe not from me, because I don't trust myself to do it with kindness; I've just about worn out the letters on my keyboard that spell the words "I told you so."

I'll leave it at this: In early 2008, a few days after Super Tuesday, I wrote on DU: "...should Obama lose the GE, I'll actually feel very sorry for his supporters, who, having invested so much emotional energy into the man and pinning such sky-high 'hope' on his salvation of Planet Earth, have a much longer way to fall than I do."

The only part of that I would change now: "...should Obama lose the GE" to "...should Obama win the GE."

Just think: If Obama had lost in '08, he could have gone down in history as "What Might Have Been" -- instead of "What Was Squandered (And What the Fuck Were We Thinking?)"

And I do feel sorry for the true believers who have been whacked, hard, with the reality stick since then.

I just wish they'd have fucking listened, instead of calling all of us doubters PUMAs, racists, one-issue voters, and worse.

We really did see the warning signs, but they wouldn't listen.

Here's something to read, the latest cover story from one of the few magazines my wife and I subscribe to in print (in order to lend our support), The Progressive -- ignore that the article is directed toward African-Americans, and just consider how many times you've heard these lines from all Obama supporters:

...whenever I point out Obama’s flaws, this is what I get:

‎“We ought not to air our dirty laundry in public.”

“We need to show a united front.”

“Obama can’t do everything. He isn’t Superman.”

“Obama is cleaning up the mess Bush left.”

“He got health care passed.”

“The Republicans won’t give him a break.”

“The attack by the ‘birthers’ is an attack on black legitimacy, so we must defend him.”

“He’s not the president of black America; he’s the President of the United States of America.”

“His family sure looks good. He and Michelle are good role models for our kids.”

“It’s our fault the Obama Presidency hasn’t kept its commitments. We need to ‘make him do it.’ ”

“Shut up and sit down and support the President, or there will be nothing he can do anyway.”

Scary, indeed.

Scarier yet: Do we need the illusion of a Superman so badly, we'll sell our souls to feed our fantasy?

[NMMNG]

22. Another apologist manual

Who needs facts when you have Mr. Dreamy?

[readmoreoften]

23. Rec. I want to hear the talking points they doing to spit at us all year.