Like everyone I know, I'm worried. I'm reading everything streaming into my email from Sarah Palin's bogus banned booklist to John McCain's flip flops to 10 Tips for the Obama Campaign.. 3 Things you can do personally to affect the outcome . Arianna Huffington on Sarah Palin as the "Trojan Moose".
Everything I read is intelligent and thoughtful. These people are experts, their credentials are impeccable, their arguments are persuasive, their logic is on target. While I'm inhaling blogs like a 3-pack a day smoker, sadly I'm not the one who needs to read them. And these well-thought out, intelligent pieces just reinforce the image of Democrats as the liberal elite (and how did Republicans ever come to be considered "just folks"?) . The waitress in Ohio working two jobs just to survive is probably not reading The Huffington Post or the New York Times or watching Meet the Press.
One of the first pieces of advice I got when I started working in television was to remember the audience-- and to aim my writing at an 8th grade level--and I wasn't working in small-town America. The key was, keep it simple.
So that's why I am suggesting a simple strategy for the Democrats, a secret to overthrow Republican rule in this country. And I don't say that lightly. Because I think Republicans rule, not govern.
My secret strategic weapon is something simple, found in every home in America, including the battleground states of Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania.. The secret is duct tape.
It's often been said that there are a thousand ways to use duct tape---and maybe this could be the ultimate example: Democrats use duct tape to win the campaign and take back the White House.
Republicans are really handy with duct tape, and know how to use it. Do they ever. They taped Willie Horton to Dukakis. They stuck the Swift Boat story to Kerry. And this time they're sticking it to Obama--- claiming he's so elitist he wouldn't even know HOW to use duct tape.
So Obama needs to get himself out to the hardware store and buy a roll or two.
Then he needs to use it---to tape George W. Bush right onto John McCain--where he belongs. And tight enough, so he can't fall off. And then Obama needs to stick the same message (Bush=McCain) onto his daily agenda or notepad and keep it there.
It's pretty simple. Easy enough for everyone in America to understand.
As for the truism that is so inviolable in politics, that anti-war or anti-Bush sentiment doesn't matter because people vote with their pocketbooks... Duct tape also works really well to hold together a wallet. And the message can work with numbers instead of words--numbers that don't require anything above third grade arithmetic. The Democrats can just take a Sharpie and make a sign--which reads: "350 million dollars a day: Do you want that money here---or in Iraq?"
For traditionalists, at the bottom you can add the words: "Kick Me." And then when he's not looking, stick the sign right on John McCain's back--with duct tape, of course.