The Electability Meme

With all the squabbling between the Clinton camp and Obama camp over who would fare better against John McCain in the general election, the only clear winner is John McCain himself.

I understand the political necessity of this current fight. The two candidates have fought on health-care, judgment v. experience, rhetoric v. action, etc. With a primary that is certain to drag on at least another month to Pennsylvania, you have to change up the narrative to keep the voters interested.

But for the sake of the party and for the sake of having a shot at hell in getting out of Iraq in 2009, can we please not make McCain out to be this all-powerful Republican nemesis who will destroy anyone but [insert candidate of choice] in the general election? The one thing we have learned from the politics of fear is that it gives outsized importance to the bogeyman.

The extra long primary is obviously going to benefit McCain. While the two candidates try out future right-wing ammunition against each other, McCain is free to take pot shots at them from the sidelines. The net result: when the general election actually begins, we will have an exhausted party and candidate against a Republican who has spent the last several months acquiring his talking points from half of the Democratic party's candidate of choice. To invoke perhaps the first sports analogy I've ever committed to text, it is like those division championships where one team wrapped up a best in seven in four games, and the other team slugged it out to game seven.

So, a few suggestions to the candidates:

1. Stop making McCain the bogeyman for the sake of hitting your opponent, because you just might succeed in actually making the county think he is electable.

2. McCain does not have the monopoly on cross-party pot shots during the primaries. How about once every day, both campaigns unite to hit back against the Republicans on, well, I don't know, anything. This shouldn't be too hard. Call me if you need suggestions.

3. This is where one and two combine. How about instead of arguing over who is more electable, how about competing over who can best frame the way in which the Republicans have flushed the country down the toilet? Who can best describe the utter disaster of the Iraq war in one sentence? Or the tanking of the economy? Or the widening gap between the rich and the poor? Or the best description of the way gas started at less than $2 when Bush entered into office and is now at $4 in some areas (actually, that is pretty self-explanatory)? How about Katrina, torture, warrantless wiretapping, the firing of U.S. attorneys and the outing of Valerie Plame for political purposes? What about rendition, black sites, Guantanamo Bay? The politicization of every organ of our government at the expense of the average American? No-bid contracts at home and abroad, corruption, lost emails? Let's hear the candidates make the case for why a Democrat is better suited to change course from this than John "100 more years" McCain. Really, it shouldn't be hard.

But no. Instead, we get who can win big states, red states, purple states, etc. Look, this is 2008, not 2004, not 2000. We've changed the narrative a lot already this election, let's change it again. Let's get rid of this blue state/red state notion, because like the ultra-nemesis McCain meme, repeating it over and over again gives it more power than it actually has. The fact is that the Bush presidency has hurt everyone, red-state or blue-state. Not even the millionaires are benefiting from the Bush presidency (see Bear Stearns). Let's put McCain on the defensive. Let him make the case for why we should continue Bush's failed policy. Starting with the premise that the Republican will win, and working from there has been a losing strategy for the last eight years. We have two candidates who are exciting, and either one should be able to trounce McCain. They just have to understand that the rules have changed.