Dear David Plouffe, David Axelrod, Jim Messina, et al,
I get ten pleas for money every day, but asking for money is not enough! Your grassroots are parched and burned out just trying to survive. We need HELP from YOU in working to re-elect President Obama!
HOPE IS NOT AS STRONG AN EMOTION AS FEAR SO MUST BE COMBINED WITH EVIDENCE TO BE NOURISHED AND EFFECTIVE.
A PICTURE IS WORTH 1,000 WORDS AND WE ARE SICK OF WORDS.
Here are some suggestions from a grass roots campaigner for Obama who doesn't want to lose! HELP US restore hope, counter Republican spin and get Barack Obama re-elected. He has done both wonders and blunders so let’s maximize the former and minimize the latter and strive to circumvent campaign rhetoric. Give us concrete facts in concrete form, please?
1. Please – just one picture of the first family in mailers and e-mails. Enclose instead two-sided informative postcards of graphs, pie charts, pictorial representations of FACTS like those that accompanied the enhanced on-line streaming of the jobs speech so that we can study and absorb and discuss them with our families, our friends, and carry them as we campaign for Obama. Obama’s record of change and accomplishment is amazing - especially in light of the opposition and gridlock - help us share it in accessible, useable formats. Words and speeches go by fast and fade, pictures linger - especially if they're conveniently available in print.
2. Make huge posters of those charts and graphs. Have the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs chart behind every stage Obama speaks on from now till Election Day with others spread around the site for people to see, study, and discuss with campaign volunteers or aides. This enhances both education of the electorate and transparency. Before and after the speech have on-camera interviews with people about each chart. Encourage people to ask questions about the charts and graphs during the speech. Cameramen will pan to the displays to relieve the sameness of watching Obama speaking. Maybe they’d do relevant split screening as he speaks of issues represented in the graphics.
Bush vs. Obama: Unemployment (August 2011 Jobs Data) Change in Total Private Employment (in thousands): U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
4. Spend money on commercial bill boards across the nation, many showing the jobs chart and others with a “Who’s been hiring here?” graphic showing how each local company or government project - has been putting people to work. Update it monthly to demonstrate transparency. Keep it running after the election, whoever wins in 2012, to help us hold government and corporations accountable.
5. Maintain the moral and civic high ground that is natural and comfortable for Obama. Ignore the flying bull. In 2008, Obama failed at mud-slinging but often spoke to our hearts - our deep longing for civility and integrity in politics and government. America’s cup is more than half full, but the right is schooled in how to get us to focus on the empty part, the unsolved problems. The sensationalist, drama-oriented media feeds on their fear-mongering and supports it by their attention. The re-empassioned Obama needs a shirt-sleeve action image and visual aids, let him TEACH us and in that way respectfully lead us. That will help restore our faith in this brilliant pragmatist who seeks common sense solutions and compromise in a nation that others seek to depress, divide, and conquer.
6. Could we liven up those short, stilted weekly addresses by the President sitting in a chair speaking unhappy truths, while looking uncomfortable and concerned. Obama is a cool cat and a teacher. Let's have some 15-30 minute teach-ins. Let him start formally if the news is bad or tragic, but then let him get up, move to sit on the edge of a desk, and give us an animated work session teaching from display graphs and charts. Put some students from different colleges and high schools in the room with him to provide warmth and energize him, and let them ask questions about the displays and his explanations. That would highlight his value of, and our need for, education, and provide warmth and transparency. Let us be inspired by the breadth of his understanding of complex issues, and learn why he does what he does. If he loves his high stress job, turn the bully pulpit into a classroom where he shows us his exciting, incredibly difficult work and treats us like colleagues. Republicans will accuse him of campaigning but so what? It's an election year!7. Respect the aging population. We mature voters cannot handle the fast flash of the younger generation. Fast flash animated info for them perhaps, but have the “boring” main points represented in static side bars or slow moving banners for those who can’t read small print or keep up with rapid fire presentations. Help us keep up. WE VOTE!
8. Run on the record, not promises. Even though Obama has kept more of his promises than most, we don’t really trust promises any more and we're sick of point-counterpoint squabbling. Forget it! Clarify the job he has done – over and over and over.
9. Bottom Line: Please stop treating us like emotional sheep to be herded and fleeced, and support our intelligence with respectful, attractive information. THAT will nourish hope.
I hope you will start supporting American intelligence and helping us grass root worker bees by reaching out in these wholesome ways to effectively inform an angry, beleaguered electorate that does not eat, sleep and live insider-politics and is being fed Republican lies, fear and confusion every day!
Respectfully and hopefully yours.
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