Daddy, Would You Read Me a Bedtime Ten-Point Plan?

I really don't want this blog to seem like a blasting place for Susan G at Kos, because she does a nice service of summarizing the diaries there. It's very tempting to blast because even the NY Times had a story today on yet another discovery of how Diebold machines can be hacked (but haven't yet, of course, because "they wouldn't do that") that's so simple that computer types won't even talk about it for print. This, after all the bitch-slapping of posters who point out that all the voter mobilization in the world in 2006 won't overcome a guy in a room with a modem who is very unlikely to be stopped by people becoming poll-watchers, as Susan G and her horde recommend. (The best summary is here.)

But, still, she has a new post today that, while not condescending and ignorant, demonstrates well a major problem with Dems and the blogosphere's responses to public opinion. Reacting to a witless WaPo poll (I know, redundant) showing that 63% of Americans, before any public dialogue takes place (as Greenwald rightly rants), don't have a problem with the mass government data mining of personal info oh-so-helpfully provided by our burn-in-Hell phone companies, she lists ten things to tell people to change their minds.

Now, each of the ten is okay in its own way, but think about it. Ten detailed arguments? All sterile and academic, even if well presented? This, in a nutshell, is why Repubs kick Dem ass. The public needs to be mobilized, to be energized, to be pissed off, and so you give them a ten-point plan?

Says it all.

How about trying this instead? Say, "What if you were a terrorist and you knew that the enemy was collecting data on who calls whom so they can decide what phones to tap? Like most competent crooks or terrorists, you adapt. How? Maybe you could, like, start calling people randomly, as many as your small-motor control will allow, as well as your terror colleagues. Doesn't matter if the call-ees reply 'don't live here' and slam the phone down, they're on the list. Let them try their dumbass "I don't have anything to hide" then. They're on the list. Their phones will be tapped, interviews at work maybe?" In other words, point out how even a wrong number could get them in trouble. (Not to mention how broadly and thinly you spread investigators' resources.)

Don't like that story? Then ask them how sure they are that their friend at work, or Kiwanis brother, or daughter's boyfriend, who has called their house more than once and also, maybe, called someone who called someone named Abdul. Put it to them in terms they can get. Hell, invoke "24" scenarios. People understand stories, they understand screw-ups, they understand government abuse in the right context. Then, once you've gotten their attention and shown them how they or someone they love could be affected, then give them the Ten-Point Plan.

Now, Susan G admits she hastily put the list together once she heard the WaPo story, but the haste isn't what's wrong with it. It's a very good list. It's just that, when faced with a need for a convincing response, just like John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, Joe Biden, et al., Dems immediately default to talking points, not the meaningful, comprehensible stories that people relate to and that Repubs have been marshalling for years. Until they develop better instincts on this, they will keep playing the same catch-up and reaction they've done for years. In other words, they will never get past only finding success whenever the Repubs screw up so bad there's no other alternative, even on one of the most important threats to our life as a free democratic nation.

NOTE: A bit of a back-off on my recent criticism of the estimable Digby for his failure to "get" the potential for major disaster in the 2006 elections because of the easy "hackability" of the electronic voting machines. He noted the story on the machines today and ended with skepticism about the 2000 election, including a picture of Katherine Harris as justification. It's only a "bit," though, because where was the picture of Kenneth Blackwell, OH Secretary of State and current Repub nominee for Governor this year, the successful perpetrator of all the questions we legitimately have about who actually won OH in 2004? Every key state with a Blackwell or Harris in charge will need a lot more than pollwatchers, in my view, and I only hope that the optimists about how safe the elections are, like Digby, will be right.