DCCC Pledges Money for D2 but not D1

The DCCC has named 16 candidates it will financially support this year. John Cranley is one of them, but Victoria Wulsin is not, at least not yet. Several more recipients will be named later, however.

It is generally agreed that the Cranley-Chabot contest will be very competitive, and Cranley has as good a chance as anyone to unseat the supposedly fiscally conservative Chabot. If the race stays neck-and-neck up until October, you can bet on the usual GOP game plan: a sudden infusion of RNC money for negative ads painting Cranley as a socialist tax-raising closet homosexual who hates America.

I seriously doubt that Wulsin will get national support (DCCC or DFA) for her race, but that’s the way it works in a rigged campaign finance system. How can Wulsin improve her chances?

She should start by ignoring the advice of Dems who advise her to “run on the issues.” There is no point in even discussing whether Wulsin should campaign on the issues. She should not. That is not how campaigns are won today, and to think otherwise is an indication of failure to accept the awful reality of the situation: campaigns are not about who is the better candidate. Campaigns are about marketing a personality that is congruent with Americans’ abnormal psychology.

To be succinct about it, Americans are weak, pathetic people and have a psychological need for their public figures to compensate for this. Treat American voters like little children who need to feel good about themselves, and you’ve got a viable campaign strategy.

Voters don’t want someone who is “tough”; they want someone who makes them feel good about being pathetic. If you want to make a roomful of idiots feel good about themselves, you don’t bring in a genius. You bring in another idiot who puts down geniuses. THAT’S the person they’ll vote for.

The GOP knows that Americans can’t differentiate between true grit and an empathy defect. Americans think Bush is tough because he tolerates violence with a shrug and a smirk. They think John Kerry is weak because he doesn’t. Remember Jean Schmidt’s shameful Murtha insult? Republicans fell in love with her after that because they can’t tell the difference between having a fire in your belly and just being an obnoxious asshole. To them, it’s the same thing.

So my free advice to the Wulsin team is this: understand the psychology of the voters, and prepare an anti-Schmidt strategy that is based on that understanding. Don’t be the genius in a roomful of idiots.