June 04, 2004
Talking Down
With jobs and the economy up, the Kerry campaign is trying to talk it back down...
The latest job numbers point to the final piece of the econmic recovery puzzle falling into place. Treating the economy like a suicide jumper, John Kerry and his 2004 campaign are put in the unenviable task of trying to talk the ecomony back down.
In the late primary season, Kerry became very fond of continually parroting job loss numbers - 2.9 million jobs lost under the administration, though the number was speciously high. When the first really big gain came in March, with greatly increased revisions for previous months, that number stopped appearing with any frequency - mainly because the campaign had the good political sense to not provide footage with Kerry in a cut/paste jobless number countdown perfect for a Bush commercial.
But this economy is a freight train building momentum. The conventional political wisdom of six months ago is now turned on its head - Iraq is a strength for Bush, but it's always the economy that decides elections, and that's bad for Bush. Which shows us the real value of typical conventional political wisdom.
As the economy starts to become a strong issue for Bush, The Kerry campaign is busily tasked to goalpost moving. Unforunately, as a challenger, Kerry natively must paint the worst case scenario in order to justify electing him. This is going to hurt his candidacy over the long run, as he and his team are forced to talk down the economy, claiming wage depression, inequitable income distribution
During bad economic times, you don't have to remind people how bad it is - they know - you have to provide them hope, and a vision of what to do to make things right. When you have to talk people into thinking it's bad...
Posted by MEC2 at June 4, 2004 08:29 PM