More DNC Commercials

And a few scare commercials:

Commercial 2

Visual: pix of Armey and Beck

VO:Former Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey has said that Glenn Beck is the instructional arm of their political movement, yet his message is so offensive that these companies have withdrawn advertising from his show:

[scrolling list]

VO: The Republicans don't care about representing you. Vote [Democrat]

Commercial 3

Visual [scrolling list]

VO: Most or all Republicans voted against these measures that have helped the economy

Visual [scrolling list]

VO: Republicans blocked these bills that would have helped Americans

Visual [scrolling list]

VO: Republicans have supported these measures that favor the wealthiest 2% of Americans. The Republicans don't care about the majority of Americans. Vote [Democrat]

Commercial 4

Visual: GW Bush

VO: How do the Republicans really feel about Americans?

Montage of video clips of Republican candidates insulting different groups intercut with still photos of those groups as smiling Americans.

Visual: John of Orange

VO: What would the Republicans do if they controlled Congress?

Montage of video clips of Republican candidates saying they would undo SS, Medicare, HCR, etc., not do any proactive legislation, but instead spend all their time bringing charge after charge against everyone in the admin.

Republicans don't care about the majority of Americans. Vote [Democrat]

DNC Commercials

Democratic commercials are playing in my head, so this is a brain dump of one of them. Please feel free to use any or all ideas here to support Democratic candidates. This is one way to promote "it could have been worse:"

1

Visual: 1930s breadlines

VO: The stock market crash of 1929 left the country devastated. During the Great Depression that consumed the next decade, there was 20% unemployment.

2

Visual: juxtaposition of George Bush and a chart showing stock market from 1925 to 2008 with lines for first and second standard deviations below average. This chart will show 1929 and 2008 both below the second standard deviation and no other year remotely close.

VO: In 2008, George W. Bush left the country in a state of economic devastation not seen since the crash of 1929. We all feared another Great Depression.

3

Visual: Obama juxtaposed with chart comparing economy with ARRA and projected arc without ARRA

VO: President Obama's economic recovery act prevented another Great Depression by creating jobs and putting money directly into the economy just when it was most needed.

4

Visual: from the recent celebration of profit in the auto industry

VO: Thanks to our federal government, Detroit is stronger than ever and paying us back with interest. Thousands of jobs were saved.

5

Visual: teacher in classroom juxtaposed with firefighter

VO: Thanks to Democrats in Congress, thousands of state jobs were saved, protecting our safety and our children's education

6

Visual: montage of ribbon cutting ceremonies featuring Congressional Dems

VO: From California to Maine, from Alaska to Florida, we're all better off because of Democratic economic policies to put money into the economy. We can't recover overnight, but....

Visual: dissolve to gear shift knob shifted forward

VO...we know we're going the right direction

7

Video of Obama doing the "D to move forward, R to Reverse" speech, quick shift to candidate pic.
Text over: Keep us moving forward. Vote for [candidate]

To the White House re Shirley Sherrod

1. Print this out, cut it out, tape it to your bathroom mirror, and read it to yourself every morning:

Fool me once, shame on you

Fool me twice, shame on me

2. It took the collective hive mind a few hours to sort out that the Sherrod video was edited to create a false impression. You could have waited. Better yet, you could have initiated the process. When you insist that your small team of experts do everything alone, you cut yourself off from resources like the hive mind that want to help you get to the truth. Even if you are smarter than anybody on the planet, you're not smarter than everybody.

3. The next time Brietbart attacks, it's not likely to have his name on it, but he will take credit eventually because the guy has an ego the size of Montana. Use that knowledge. Use his history against the right wing media. Be prepared for the next time because there will be a next time.

When Bad Information Happens to Good People

Sunday night on C-Span between the first and second health care votes, the House opened phone lines so people could weigh in on the bill.

The yeses and noes were pretty much what you'd expect. Yeses had personal stories to relate of relatives or friends whose lives would be materially changed by reform. Noes cited Fox talking points.

Mixed into this group, one undecided caller stood out.

He spoke softly, hesitantly. Perhaps he hadn't expected to be on live TV. He admitted he wasn't very knowledgeable about the details of the bill. He thought it was a good idea and important to extend health care to all Americans. He only wondered if it really had to cost ten trillion dollars to do it.

Ten trillion dollars.

I wanted to hug this caller. His highest priority was to do right by his fellow Americans, even though he had somehow gotten the idea it would cost nearly the entire national debt to do it. Perhaps he had no idea what the numbers meant except that it was a lot. Either way, he understood it as a sacrifice, and one he was willing to make.

The caller said he was from Bakersfield, California, the repressive buckle in the central valley farm Bible Belt whose state congressional representative, Roy Ashburn, the conservative, "family values" homophobe, was recently outed as gay when he was arrested for DUI leaving a gay bar with a young male passenger. A few years ago, Bakersfield coughed up a teen-girl band called Prussian Blue who openly sang white supremacy songs.

It is easy for someone in an environment of hate, whether it's racial, religious, gangs or something else, to simply absorb and parrot the hate. This caller heard the misinformation, but he didn't absorb the negativity that came with it. He is a flower that broke through the concrete sidewalk. People like this deserve to get the right information.

There are many more of these good-hearted Americans than the hatemongering horde that attract cameras. These other Americans are shy, hesitant. They are not highly educated. They don't think they have anything important to say. They don't want to "waste time" asking "silly questions."

They want to do the right thing. But they are susceptible to bad information. They don't have the time or the means to sort the facts from the faux when each sounds plausible. This, of course, is what misinformationists count on. Misinformationists don't have to convert people to win; they just have to confuse people.

I have noticed that a lot of liberal discourse tends to be at a college level. It is technical, precise, and eloquent, but it can also be intimidating. We need this policy-level discussion, but we need to do a better job of reaching the Americans who want to know the truth but don't want to wade through Paul Krugman, Ezra Klein, or even Keith Olbermann.

Stanford honors graduate Gretchen Carlson, for all her playacting at ignorance, creates a safe environment for asking and answering "dumb questions."

We need to write bullet-point articles for Reader's Digest, Parade, People, US, Cosmopolitan, and USA Today. For financial reform, we also need articles in Money. We need to appear on the morning network news shows.

Over and over until misinformation is beaten back.

These articles should focus on how proposals help people right now. Obama's speech for the signing of the health care bill did a good job of ticking off the benefits in plain language. Instead of saving this for the signing, we need to lead with it.

Instead of going through the whole sad history of deregulation or try to explain what derivatives are, explain that "too big to fail" will no longer exist. Explain that there will be a new agency whose sole job will be to prevent investment products and schemes that prey on individual investors.

We need to make it easier for good people to get the good information they need to do the right thing.