Part of the problem, (Congressional expert Norm) Ornstein says, is that Democrats don't have a vast propaganda machine.

"When an issue emerges--how to pound away at it? You don't need to[conspire]...Republicans just kind of know how to do that," Ornsteinsays. "It becomes an echo chamber that once its out there for a bit,bleeds over to the rest of the press. If it doesn't, then thoseentities [Rush Limbaugh, etc.] pound away at the Times, the Post and the Sunday talk shows for ignoring a big story."

That echo chamber goes hand in glove with a separate advantageRepublicans have: a willingness that Democrats lack to tell hugewhoppers about their opponents.

"Republicans are wiling to take rhetoric that goes way beyondreality--continuing to talk about the health care plan as a governmenttakeover. It doesn't matter much if you can take the fact and say it'snot true." Once it's out there, it's out for good.

Fivethirtyeight.com's Nate Silver doesn't think things have to be that drastic. He says all the Dems need to do is start paying attention to a coupleof things, like, the fact that MOST Americans don't live in Washington,D.C, and live and breathe politics:

We've repeatedly highlighted Kaiser's health care polling,which revealed that only about half of the public knows about many ofthe key provisions that are in the Democrats' bill, such as coveragefor people with pre-existing conditions. Meanwhile, a Pew pollthis week found that only 26 percent of Americans know that it takes 60votes to overcome a Senate filibuster -- and only 32 percent know thatSenate GOPers voted unanimously against the Democrats' health careplan. And a Rasmussen pollof likely voters found that only 21 percent of them believe that theDemocrats have cut taxes for "95% of working families", a fact which isprobably true.

Idon't particularly blame the public for this. The number of politics"fans" probably numbers somewhere on the order of 10 or 20 million outof a country of 250 million adults. Most people have lives and havebetter things to do than to follow politics all the time. They payquite a bit of attention during Presidential elections and, I wouldargue, make reasonably sophisticated decisions. But outside of that,most people aren't watching MSNBC or Fox News every evening or loggingonto the Washington Post or FiveThirtyEight. They're developingimpressions based on limited information, often gleaned from partisannews sources and politicians who have an incentive to tell themanything but the truth.

He faults the Dems for allowing three long months to lapse whilethey--and their cable-TV supporters--fought bitterly amongst themselvesabout the public option, which hijacked the entire health care reformdebate and enabled the Republicans to sneak in and basically thieve theissue right out from under them, which has now imperiled the entirething, because what happened was that the vast majority of people don'tpay enough attention and were not aware that the term "government-runhealth care" was ITSELF a lie, and that the Dems didn't even explainTHAT, they didn't even highlight the term OPTION properly.  They letthe whole thing degenerate into a fight over details that could havebeen worked out later, frankly.  The public option was not the entirebill, but by making it seem as if it was, they lost the message war.

He stresses the importance of repetition.

He stresses the importance of repetition.

He stresses the importance of repetition: 

And all Democrats need to realize, meanwhile, thatsometimes the message isn't going to sink in until the sixth or seventhtime that you repeat it. Before Tuesday's State of the Union, forinstance, the White House had almost literally never mentioned that thestimulus contained a huge tax cut -- they shouldn't expect the publicto believe it any more than Warner Brothers should expect a ton ofpeople to go out and see their new movie if they only begin advertisingit 48 hours beforehand.

Rather, the Democrats need to figure out what their November messages are now and begin planting seeds for them now.You want to run on Republican obstructionism? Well then, don't neglectthe golden opportunities that the Republicans are providing you with today, such as when they voted unanimously in the Senate against re-imposing pay-go rules or unanimously in the House against a very centrist financial regulation package. How many people know that House Republicans voted 174-0against a jobs bill? It's probably not even 20 percent or 30 percent --more like 2 or 3 percent, at best. The DNC, DCCC, DSCC, and sympatheticgroups like unions should be blasting out advertisements whenever theRepublicans cast a vote like this.

He also mentions what I think should have beendone all along, which is more crowing needs to be done aboutsuccesses.  We all hated the strutting and arrogance and boasting ofthe Bush administration every damn time they crossed a T or dotted an iproperly, or just did their damn jobs without tripping over their owndumbass feet, but I'd like to see a lot more bragging from this WhiteHouse, and I think we're starting to.  Silver says:

But if it were me, I would err a little bit less on the side of caution in highlighting numbers like, for instance, the 5.7 percent GDP growth that the country experienced in the 4Q. It's not that I expect these messages to be winners now;rather, it's that you want to plant the seed with the public for thefall. Otherwise, it may feel like too little too late when theemployment numbers turn positive too, and the public may believe thatthe recovery occurred in spite of, not because of, the stimulus.

What he's saying is, it's all about framingfuture messages, not so much worrying about how it looks now, buttaking risks that things will improve enough in the future that you canride the wave of how they look now.  And if they look worse in thefuture...well, like Scarlett O'Hara, we'll worry about that tomorrow.

What Silver is saying about how most Americansreally don't pay enough attention to realize lies when they are hearingthem was brought crashingly home to me by another piece righthere at TPM, that, while it was based on a Republican poll taken forthe National Review--so you have to take it with a grain of salt--theresults basically say that even though most Americans know very littleabout the Tea Party movement, they like what they THINK the movement isabout.

It's kinda like thinkin' Sarah Palin would be a good president because she's "one of us."

It doesn't take a great deal of thought.  Andlet's face it--so many Americans don't put a whole lot of thought intocurrent events unless it's right up close to a big national election. This is how they get bamboozled and hornswoggled by the bait-and-switchartists of the world.

But something happened on the way to the State of the Union.

Just when I thought we were going down for the count, my Republican husband was right again.

(Psst--please don't tell him I said that.  He's just so insufferable when he hears it.)

In a previous post, AGGIE POLITICS, I wrote about how my husband, amoderate Republican but strong Obama supporter, told me that no matterhow bleak things may look at the moment for Dems, we should not give upon our President, because he's always pretty much been the smartest manin the room, and we should not count him out yet, and that, never fear,when it comes to Republicans, they always go too far.

He also said, "This Massachusetts loss may be the best thing thathappened to your party and Obama, because it will be a wake-up call. You can re-organize, re-group, come out with a new plan.  It mightactually be a good thing."

I thought about this a few days later, during the president's speech.

When I heard the State of the Union address, I heard a very, VERYsmart reach-out to Independent voters.  I heard a COMPLETE re-framingof the Democratic message.

I've seen a few op-ed writers who seem to have caught on to that butnone of them have come right out and said it, so I will, because Ispotted it immediately.  In fact, I shouted and fist-pumped when Iheard the paragraphs in question, simply because of the CHOICE OF WORDS.

See, I'm a writer by trade.  I make my living, such as it is, bylanguage.  And choice of words is CRUCIAL in just about everything inthis world.  It's crucial in diplomacy.  It's crucial in politics. It's crucial in, say, job-hunting or resume-writing.  It's crucial in,oh, say, marriage proposals.

Language matters.

And no one knows this better than this president, as he has proven time and time again.

Now, this past year, the language of governing has been robbed bythe Republicans.  They stole it pretty much during the campaign andthey continued the rhetoric throughout the Inauguration and all throughthe entire first year of Obama's presidency.  And he was just plainworking too damn hard to care, I think.

But the losses in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts--combinedwith the threat of the loss of health care reform--gave him what myhusband had predicted would be a "wake-up call."

The White House had seen the same poll numbersthe rest of us saw--that we were losing Independents to theRepublicans.  And it wasn't "populist anger" that is the ongoingconservative-driven meme in the media.

It was the message.

So they reframed it.

Consider this passage:

From the day I took office, I've been told that addressing ourlarger challenges is too ambitious; such an effort would be toocontentious. I've been told that our political system is toogridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for a while.

For those who make these claims, I have one simple question: Howlong should we wait? How long should America put its future on hold?

You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even asthe problems have grown worse. Meanwhile, China is not waiting torevamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting. Thesenations -- they're not standing still. These nations aren't playing forsecond place. They're putting more emphasis on math and science.They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're making seriousinvestments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I donot accept second place for the United States of America.

As hard as it may be, as uncomfortable and contentious as thedebates may become, it's time to get serious about fixing the problemsthat are hampering our growth.

COMPETITION.

This is Mom and apple pie to Americanseverywhere, and is just the kind of thing that appeals to Independentsand (closeted) moderate Republicans.  It's very Kennedyesque.

Here's another fist-pumper moment:

I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelmingscientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing -- even ifyou doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency andclean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because thenation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation thatleads the global economy. And America must be that nation

In that way, he framed it not as a question over the science, orover the environment, but over JOBS and over America as a LEADER in theworld--again, We're Number One rah-rah!

This is a re-framing of a message that moves the Dems away from AlGore and more toward whoever your favorite sports team is.  We want tobe winners.  And we want our economy to thrive.  If, in so doing, wecan also save the planet, hey, it's all good, right?

I'm not going to isolate every incidence, although there were many,because my blogposts are notoriously long anyway, but I encourage youto read the full transcripts--this is the copy I was working off of,from the New York Times. I prefer it over the Whitehouse.gov version because this is the one heactually presented, with applause and laughter typed in, and videoincluded.

Along with the subtle reframing of the White House message is also amore aggressive push-back against right-wing rhetoric.  I had noticedthat they'd been given such a free rein for so long that evencongresspeople and senators had taken to spouting the latest FAUX-newstalking-points as graven facts before the TV cameras without so much asa peep of protest, but those days are over.

Today, for example, Robert Gibbs AND Attorney General Eric Holder each presented point-by-point pushback memos againstcomments made by Republican Senator Susan Collins and House minorityleader Mitch McConnell about the White House response to the ChristmasDay bombing attempt.  They aggressively pointed out that the policiesthey followed were put in place by and followed by the Bushadministration--facts well-known by the Republican talking-heads.

It's still responding to lies, but I did see this on the eveningnetwork news, which means that even so-called "Joe (and Josephine)Sixpack" is getting the message that his handy Republican spokesperson spokeslied or at the very least, spokesforgot.

The reframing of message is deeper and clearer than most have picked up on, although E.J. Dionne, who interviewed Joe Biden today, got it loud and clear:

Biden, more self-aware than people give him credit for, realized whathe had just done. "I've sort of gotten off the Recovery Act," he saidwith a rueful smile.

Yet by the end of the interview, I realized he had bumped into thehidden political issue of the 2010 elections. Beneath the predictableback-and-forth between Obama and his Republican adversaries overgovernment spending lies a substantively important difference over howthe United States can maintain its global leadership.

For Republicans, American power is rooted largely in military mightand showing a tough and resolute face to the world. They would rely ontax cuts as the one and only spur to economic growth.

Obama, Biden and the Democrats, on the other hand, believe thatAmerican power depends ultimately on the American economy, and thatgovernment has an essential role to play in fostering the nextgeneration of growth.

Notice that when Obama spoke about keeping America in first place,he said not a word about the military. He referred instead to theefforts of our competitors in the public sphere of the economy, and of our past complacency.

"Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as theproblems have grown worse," Obama said. "Meanwhile, China is notwaiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is notwaiting. These nations aren't standing still. These nations aren'tplaying for second place. They're putting more emphasis on math andscience. They're rebuilding their infrastructure. They're makingserious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs."

Suddenly, Obama's approach is not about old-fashioned Democraticspending. It's about patriotism, competing successfully, investing tomaintain American economic leadership. John F. Kennedy provided aslogan for such an effort 50 years ago: "Let's get America movingagain."

(emphasis mine)

The purpose of the interview had been for Biden to point outinstances of the success of the stimulus program, but this turn oftopic turned out to show him to be crazy like, well, a FOX.

Biden's insistence on "pushing back" against unfounded criticisms ofthe program was clearly part of Obama's post-Scott Brown offensive, andit's bracing that the administration has finally seen the wisdom of aNapoleon axiom that is a favorite of Karl Rove's: "The whole art of warconsists in a well-reasoned and extremely circumspect defensive,followed by rapid and audacious attack."

Transforming a listless national argument about the stimulus andhealth care into a larger debate over how to maintain Americanpreeminence is both audacious and useful. Off-message, Biden found theright message.

Perhaps the Dems have been "tangled up in Blue" ever since, well,the days of what I call the Clinton Crucifixion, when the sheer galland power of the opposition's noise and nastiness overwhelmed them. They've been like that plastic clown punching-bag ever since, bouncingback with every blow.

But this president is different.  It's not that he's smarter thanPresident Clinton.  I'm not going to compare the two men, because theyhave different strengths as well as weaknesses.

But one difference that does seem to count right now is Obama'squickness in learning from, and adapting to, the opposition--outfoxingthem--if you will.

He has not given in to them.  He is still fighting for health carereform, clean energy legislation, education reform, and other things hebelieves in and campaigned on.

But what he has done is reframed the message in such a way thatmakes it much more appealing to the middle-earth voters, so to speak,those who were being frightened off by the scare tactics of the farright.

It's the same message.  Different words.

And he's presenting those words differently, in a fiestier fashion. What the surly commentators on FOX called "arrogant," most Americanstook as a fighting spirit, and by a margin of 83%, they liked it.

As Democrats, it is important that we not get so "tangled up in Blue" thatwe forget that, as Americans, most of us, as the song lyrics say, "feelthe same" about most things.  This is the beauty and the brilliance ofBarack Obama. 

He's not pretending this to get votes.  He isUNDERSTANDING this.

We want to take care of our families, find decent work we canhalfway enjoy, and have some sort of retirement with dignity.  When weget sick, we don't want to die because we couldn't afford medicalcare.  And, we care about our planet and our environment and don't wantit choked with pollution and grime.  We want a place for our childrento play safely.

We pretty much all feel this way.

The Blues feel as if the Reds tried it their way, for the most part,since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.  They had a pretty good run ofit, and from 1994 until 2006, they pretty much ran the country into theground.

Now it's the Blue's turn.

But we can't forget all those people out there who aren't payingthat much attention--at least not until they get screamed at orfrightened into it.  We have to take care not to fight so much amongstourselves that we forget all about them and they turn away from us. 

They're not "an illusion" to us now.  We have to concern ourselves with "what they're doing with their lives."

We have to talk to them.  Reach out to them.

Show them a better way.