Tough Dems v. What We Get

Over the last week or so Digby has continued to raise the point that other bloggers, much less Dem power-types, still don't seem to get. If the Repubs score even when their messages are a minority view, how does that happen? Cheating and deception? Yes. Compliant, retarded media? Yes. Lazy, self-obsessed citizens? By God, yes. But it's more than that. They understand that communication isn't just the message, it's also the messenger.

When they roll out the "manly" Reagans, McCains, and Codpieces, the blonde Aryan sisterhood, they're using channels that are reinforcing, counterintuitive and thus attention-getting, and hard to counter. "I may not agree with him, but I like that he stands for something." "Sure, she's as bad as Stalin with her rhetoric, but she's so pretty and look at how she's smiling. She's just entertaining us." And against these image-conscious spokespeople, the Dems continue to send out the Reids and Kerrys and Pelosis (who gives Joan Rivers and Victoria Principal real competition for scary). As Digby argues over and over, the Dems have people like Hackett and Waxman (maybe Webb, maybe Clark) who can fling the crap back at them in the same reinforcing, counterintuitive way, but look what they did to Hackett in the name of another blow-dried Beltway-ite who might not even beat DeWine. And for the face of progressive blogs to be a mousy Berkeley type who even some of us feel is dangerously short-sighted, predictably narrow-minded, and ethically challenged is an error beyond magnitudes.

Lakoff is wrong, as much as I've admired his work for two decades. Dems aren't seen as the nurturant mother. They're seen as MisterRogers, only on the make and without as much testosterone. If/when the Repubs really overplay their corrupt, undemocratic hands, and nothing else is going on, the public may, may, find the rubber-spined, feel your pain, keep me in power regardless of results guys more palatable. Otherwise, "he stands for something" and "she's just kidding."

Does anyone know what Digby looks like?

POSTSCRIPT I: After I finished this post in draft, I stumbled across this Science Daily article verifying the immediate and long-lasting impact of snap judgments about people based on how they look. Note the "direct correlation between how competent a campaigning politician's face was and how great his margin of victory turned out to be." But, by all means, let's let our focus be our six-point position papers.

POSTSCRIPT II: And, of course, Digby himself adds another layer before I can even get this posted.