{"id":1920,"date":"2008-10-10T21:15:46","date_gmt":"2008-10-10T21:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-10-14T21:04:46","modified_gmt":"2008-10-14T21:04:46","slug":"a_few_reasons_w","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1920","title":{"rendered":"A Few Reasons Why “The Ayers Argument” Isn’t An Election-Winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Buddies of mine (see, you can’t say “my friends” right now without it being taken in the wrong way…) Patterico<\/a>, Confederate Yankee<\/a> and others are going bonkers – just bonkers – over a pretty plausible set of emerging facts that tie Obama closer and closer to Ayers and Dohrn.<\/p>\n

My friends, it’s a pointless argument, a losing argument, and you should stop.<\/p>\n

Look below the fold and I’ll explain why.


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That’s me in February 1970 at a demonstration called “The Day After”. I helped coordinate a demonstration in Westwood with the members of the RYM II – the group left behind when Ayers and Dohrn split off from the SDS. I was in high school.<\/p>\n

We can talk another time about the path that led me from those politics to these politics (which I actually see as being fairly consistent…).<\/p>\n

But what’s important is that branding someone as a “crazy 60’s radical” isn’t itself a very powerful political message. Because lots of people were, and lots of people know them and know they were, and we’re all pretty harmless these days (in fact, we were pretty harmless back then, as well).<\/p>\n

That’s not to suggest that Ayers is harmless – he may or may not be (there’s a lot of evidence pointing both ways – on one hand, there’s his Chavez speech, on the other I consider “Hyde Park revolutionaries” to be kind of a narcissistic waste of time as a class, having been one myself). But as a branding exercise, it’s pointless, because it’s not going to have a whole lot of impact on people’s perceptions of Obama.<\/p>\n

It’s a losing argument for tactical reasons – people have heard about this and largely discounted it, and so raising it isn’t bringing any new perceptions of Obama to the marketplace. And it’s a losing argument for deeper reasons – I don’t believe people in the US vote for ideological reasons – we’re not Europe where deep ideology is central to many political campaigns and to party identity. We vote for people, their policies, and to an extent our votes are determined by events and our perception of people’s likely responses to events.<\/p>\n

The standard narrative (I know it’s been challenged, I’m not getting into that here) that every American knows is that in the Great Depression, FDR was elected and did a bunch of stuff that was perceived as Socialist but that saved the country. So help me understand, guys, how by painting Obama as more of a socialist – in a time when everyone is afraid of another Great Depression – buys anything in voter mindshare? It whips the base into a frenzy, but the key 30% in the middle? You’re pushing them the other way<\/b> – towards the Obama camp.<\/p>\n

And I think it’s a line of argument that ought to stop. I usually don’t criticize (I like to think of it as giving advice) the GOP, because I don’t feel involved with them. But in this case, I think I want to take a moment and say “hey guys, stop this”. The real reason is simple; because this isn’t presented as a challenge to any policy prescription Obama is making or has made, it’s a general bust of his identity.<\/p>\n

And that’s dangerous. <\/p>\n

It’s dangerous because it is such a powerful claim – one that doesn’t diminish Obama’s claims for himself (as the Swiftboat critics did of Kerry) but instead makes while whole political career illegitimate – makes him into a literal Manchurian Candidate. And in doing so, they risk breaking one of my critical rules for this electoral process.<\/p>\n

No matter who wins, he’ll be my President.<\/a><\/p>\n

If the people opposing Obama are true patriots, they know that’s the case. If Obama violates the Constitution in office, there are all kinds of remedies.<\/p>\n

And if you want to beat him in November, there are better charges to make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ayers hand is a losing one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1920\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}