We should note, while the editors of FDC aren’t necessarily wordsmiths, several of our loyal readers are. This is a comment that was posted a few days ago and we thought it deserved a little front page action.

We hope you enjoy PhoenixSunsPhan’s post from election night:

Famous DC gurus – I’m watching the market tank, have no long calls that will be executed this morning, won my lucrative bet with a naive politico on who would be the next president and am waiting to sell short when my stock analysis software tells me to.
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In the meantime, I have absolutely nothing to do – my gf is at work – except write about the subject presented in this post. I want to talk about why R’s are losing their jobs and why Obama won. It’ll all make sense, I promise. I’ll also give you permission to email, fax, print and make paper airplanes out of my post. Here it is:
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Monday Morning QB: “Obama and why R’s need to call “Dr. Phil”
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MYTHS are narratives that enable a politician to connect with common people about their plight and aspirations. The Republican political geniuses of Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt should have opened their eyes from the “I have a lot of experience in communications so I must be an expert” trance to see the world as it really was. Modern society keeps getting fractured into smaller units, with communities becoming less cohesive. Wallace and Schmidt should have known that because of society’s fractured sense of community, also known as the problem of modernity in academic circles, people feel an inner conflict due to this fracture. People want to feel included in something, since most Americans are nameless SSNs floating in a sea of the anonymous American masses (ask yourself, do you know at least three of your neighbors? What about one? When did you talk to them? Right, I didn’t think so).
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Barack Obama created a MYTH of identification. He (along with Plouffe and Axelrod) created a narrative that catered to the identities and plight of a large group of diverse people. Axelrod and Plouffe pulled on Obama’s puppet string and used vagueness to their advantage. This meant LESS talk on details and boring statistics, and more on VISION, character and values. It doesn’t matter if you agree with his vision my GOP comrades – it’s the fact that there was a narrative that incorporated this vagueness that matters. Vague words like “hope” and “change” – along with inspiring speeches, though “empty” in the opposition’s eyes tugged at the emotional state of people. The key is to appeal to the HEART not to the brain. (When was the last time you won an argument with your gf or wife using logic? JK. It doesn’t work, though.) Humans are emotional creatures, though we want to believe we are fully rational, we are not. We’d be computers then spouting out binary code.
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Plouffe and Axelrod crafted a strategy that messaged speeches and general rhetoric that made people dissatisfied with the current status of things (Bush, economy, Iraq, whatever…) and proposed their “solution” to people’s “unhappiness” with themselves and their lives. In ad-psych, this is called an “identity shift” where an actor ingratiates their message as a new “identity” for people to substitute for their problems. “Change” and “hope” are vague enough to fit any demographics dissatisfaction and become the solution. In order to achieve this “Change” and get “Hope” they needed to listen to the unfolding narrative of Obama for the answers. This is brilliant ad work. Let me rephrase – GENIUS advertising work.
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Obama then reinforces the idea with easy slogans that have emotional appeal (pickup up a book on neuro-linguistic programming and writing, you’ll be surprised.) Since people care about themselves more than others, people identify with slogans that subconsciously appeal to THEM and THEIR situation. “Change” and “hope” are vague yet effective enough to have that EMOTIONAL resonance that makes people think that they will have their own CHANGE in their lives if Obama (the solution) becomes president. (People rarely admit to others that we humans actually care about ourselves more than others – heck it’s an evolutionary mechanism of survival (if you believe in biology and other “intellectual” stuff.)
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The more Republicans attacked the big Obama narrative myth of “change” – the more it worked FOR Obama, since attacking such a “great” and “grand” myth makes the attackers look petty. Instead of hiring former software execs and pudgy staffers to “brand” one of the most powerful political parties on the face of the planet that represents millions upon millions of people you need to hire a real firm. “Country first” was a slogan that had no emotional resonance with the individual. In fact, “Change” was such a good slogan that the GOP tried to jujitsu the Dems and take the Change slogan and qualify it with a line from a former anti-depressant drug (seriously… who didn’t Google search that?) This is similar to a company stealing the Nike Swoosh symbol from Nike calling themselves “Nikke” and adding a second tail to the swoosh. Your generic shoes will be sold at K-Mart for ten bucks, not Foot Locker for $150. Your brand is devalued that way.
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McCain should have made a full frontal assault on Bush’s policies or modify. He should have thought more about human nature and their need to group around ideas and beliefs (remember Reagan… yeah, he did a lot of what Obama did.) He needed to create a narrative for himself, rather than having himself defined by others or not maintaining consistency in his political narrative.
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YO, WHERE’S DR. PHIL?
Instead of bickering over leadership positions or who did what, Republicans are advised to plan their “re-branding” now (the first “branding” didn’t work). They need to think like a Madison Avenue advertising firm – which is what Obama, Axelrod and Plouffe did. They need a cohesive strategy utilizing all the psychological advertising techniques that worked for Obama and major corporations. Hell, even I was inspired by his sight and I don’t even know why (maybe it was that radiant sun across his face, or the “powered by Hope” at the bottom of his site.) I remember when I was working an election and a prominent staffer said: “We don’t do blogs,” and I thought to myself: “time to polish the resume.” That’s not how you stay competitive in today’s political environment and that’s how you get staffers from losing their jobs. That’s how you make jobs.
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And the market lost another 30 points… might be time to put in a long call.
-PhoenixSunsPhan