"It’s the economy, stupid,” was a useful slogan for the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign. Of course, it wasn’t really true. The Clinton campaign was about much more than the economy. It was about “ending welfare as we know it,” for example, and putting government on the side of those who “work hard and play by the rules”—all of this part of a broader redefinition of the Democratic party away from the failed liberalism of Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis. And the collapse of the Bush administration in 1992 was also, as it happens, about much more than the economy, which was in fact coming back strong in the fall of that year.
Since then, we’ve seen an epic Republican collapse in 2006. That happened despite pretty good economic growth in the preceding two years. Its cause was some combination of the Bush attempt to institute private Social Security accounts, Hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers, Tom DeLay, Donald Rumsfeld, immigration, and God knows what else—but not particularly the economy. The repudiation of the Democrats in 2010, for that matter, was fundamentally about Obamacare, the size and scope of government, and particular Obama policies like the stimulus and cap and trade. It wasn’t primarily a referendum on “the economy, stupid.”
Nonetheless, the slogan has become a talisman, evoked by unimaginative political consultants and reached for by cautious candidates, in pursuit of an easy, safe, cookie-cutter campaign strategy. But it’s not safe. The belief that voters react in a simple-minded way to their current economic well-being leads campaigns and candidates to counterproductively dumb their message down. It’s also condescending, and voters often see it as such.
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1 comment:
Face it. The American electorate is STUPID. They elected George Bush (Jr), a spoiled boy born into priviledge AND pretty damn dumb. Then, they though a man who never even ran a hot dog stand would be a great leader of the most powerful nation in the history of the planet. They continually elect felons, sexual predators, and tax evaders. Over and over again and watch them mysteriously and magically accumulate millions while in a job that pays a bit over $120,000 a year. They vote for people who try to scare them with non-existant threats and send their kids to wars for which we just make up reasons to fight. They vote for people who imperially exempt themselves from the very laws they impose on the voters and laugh at our incompetent and uninformed behavior. And steal from us like its their full time job. Yup. They KNOW the American public is pretty much dumb as a rock, willing to go along with whatever they tell us is "for own our good" when what they mean is "for OUR own good". Facts speak for themselves. Think I'm wrong or that I'm insulting someone? Prove ehat I just said is wrong. Talk to me in ten months after obama gets another four more years.....
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