Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock
Friday, July 9, 2004. Here’s how Johns Kerry and Edwards can win big in November. This is also how they can lose, as it’s the same trick.
Kerry and Edwards in a public forum do a cheer/yell like the one that cost Howard Dean his chance. In my fantasy’s ideal, this would be at the Democratic National Convention, and all of the top Democrats would be on state, including Howard Dean. Otherwise, it could be any old photo-op campaign-trail speech.
Yes, I’m serious.
The scream did not cost Dean, the spin on it did. Democrats need to take control of at least half of the popular spin from the Republicans, conservatives and ain’t-broke-don’t-fix-its to win in the fall.
Seeing the Dean tape without comment, which I did hours after it happened, clearly showed the Vermont governor rallying his supporters back into optimism, as opposed to what a primary front-runner losing steam normally would say, a variant of "we lost the battle but not the war." Dean had joy and charisma. It was about enthusiasm. It was positive, not negative, which is what we all presumably support.
The first impact of a Kerry-led "yeee-hoo" is to show the Democrats are not afraid of making the first move. Thus far, the Dems are reactive to the GOP. They almost always lose this way (Clinton too was a reactor who brilliantly turned that into the appearance of originality). Gore lost by reacting to Republican strength. Gore tied Bush, for all intents and purposes, but Gore lost the election psychically by staying on the defensive in the closing weeks.
So a Kerry "yeee-hoo" says in a flip way, "sez who?" to the GOP and from there his campaign stays substantive. It’s like Clinton playing his sax on Arsenio Hall’s show — once. Once was all that was needed; Bill always stayed on message, to the point of boredom.
The other impact is that the Kerry shout-out serves to knock down the vitality of "spin" a notch. It would bypass the popular media for the few days that it would be the top talk-show topic and thus emasculate the power of commentators enough to surmount it. Then Kerry-Edwards move on serious campaigning and take the media with them, debating issues not fervor.
The mass media would dwell on the shout, but unlike Dean’s scream, which most people saw surrounded by opinion days later because it was not big news as an isolated event at that moment, a Kerry-Edwards yodel would be seen by millions. Yeah, relatively few watch the conventions, but all spin takes a few days to coalesce into commonly perceived fact or commonly accepted opinion.
There will be spin immediately but in that first 24 to 48 hours it will not have affixed into running Limbaugh-baiting of listeners or Leno-Letterman joke fodder. A Kerry scream will be straight news on CNN and Fox in that two-day window long enough for enough people to judge for themselves that it was an old-fashioned pep rally cheer.
As the last example, who remembers that Kerry rode a motorcycle onto Leno’s show set? It was startling and no big deal. Edwards had a stunt too, announcing his candidacy on Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Both stunts could have become isolated into significance but weren’t because Kerry and Edwards kept control and moved the focus onward.
Too bad the Democrats overall are unafraid of trying something new, even something that is as inconsequential as it is risky. Like Yeee-hoo in front of live cameras. -30-
