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Post convention2012 strategy
March 19, 2012 - 6:11pm
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So a series of attack ads are about to be launched against the NDP probably starting next week.
How is the best way to handle this?
Should the NDP launch attack ads of their own, or should we just promote our own ideas with the voting public, and hopefully more Canadains than not will be supportive, and throw their votes to the NDP next election tentatively scheduled for 2015.
NDP plans swift ad campaign to counter expected attackshttp://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/03/19/pol-cp-ndp-anti-attack-...
Attack ads can suck. But they also work.
There will be lots of time between now and the next election to test the waters and see what works. I wouldn't rule out occasionally leaving the knife at home and bringing a gun to a gun fight.
It also depends on what people consider "attack ads". Sometimes I think people are a little too timid about what is considered an "attack". Highlighting policy or actions on the part of your opponent that you disagree with isn't an "attack", but too often people call it that.
attack ads won't work right now.
what the leader will need to do is define her/himself immediately as a strong opposition to the harper conservatives. no matter who wins, this should probably take the form of "harper wants to slime and silence his opponents by avoiding the issues, ndp leader x wants to talk about issues. like x. like y. harper's toxic politics have no place in canada, and ndp leader x will ensure that canadians stand strong against him."
or something along those lines. for some, it'll be easier than others, but we need to see that done right away, during the post-convention honeymoon leading up to the budget roll-out. the media is ramping up its ndp coverage this week, and one of the new leader's immediate tasks will be to prolong that into 2 ndp-dominated weeks leading into that budget discussion. suck up all the air, define the new leader immediate with ads, then define the new leader in question period and across the media with official opposition's budget priorities. the choice of finance critic will be huge too.
What we really need to do is define our leader before Conservatives define them for us.
Generic attacks we can expect on any NDP candidate: tax and spend, socialist, anti-business. Expect them to add separatist-appeasing.
Specific attacks:
I don't know what the antidote is. Whether it's to just tell the truth about how great the candidate is, or we need to succinct biography that can protect them from the obvious attacks.
Whatever it is, it's going to require a LOT of ad spending. We have to broadcast the message loud, and keep pressing it.
And as New Democrats, we need to be ready to promote the candidate in every corner possible, and defend them from smears.
Maybe we should have some that address the Harper Black Ops Robocall scandal, you know, "fucking with our Canadian democracy" ads, ready to launch if things get too nasty. Maybe they're already prepared. LOL
New Democrats are used to getting spat on, smeared, insulted, mocked... We have no illusions about how nice the political process is. I don't expect us to be blindsided like the Liberal Party. And if we do, then we haven't learned anything, and deserve to lose.
I don't expect that the resources are there to respond in kind (another sign that a large priority for the next leader and their team must be fundraising) but the best thing to do would be to connect all this negative campaigning to the robocall scandal. It's the Tories trying to drive down voter participation again.
Agreed Doug, unless something worse occurs, and never underestimate Haper to do just that.
Hey, I like Cullen and I find him to be extremely honest and candid. I'm trying to show that with Conservatives, they tend to attack you on your strengths, and turn them into weaknesses. If you're a nice guy, they'll say you're too nice. If you're a tough guy, they'll say you're too tough. If you're from Toronto, you're too Toronto. If you're from Quebec, you're too Quebec.
I think it is important to get out front in the ad war. We need to immediately unite behind the leader, whoever it is, create a series of ads (the budget will give us an excellent opportunity to do this) and counter any Con ads. As in hitchhiking and dating, first impressions are often decisive.
You only have to look at what has happened to Elizabeth Warren against Scott Brown for the Massachusetts (the most liberal US state) Senate seat. Brown is now leading Warren by 10 points after a series of carpet bombing ads by Superpacs and Warren agreeing to a mutual deal that if a Superpac supported either candidate the Superpac's candidate would pay half the advertising costs. Naturally Brown gladly paid half the costs (for a ridiculously small amount) of an ad when challenged to do after Warren lost a substantial lead and fell behind. We have seen what happened to Dukakis, Kerry, and even Obama's medicare bill (after ads claiming it included death panels it still has more people against it than in favor in polls) when they did not immediately respond to attacks. Of course the Cons would not do to the nice NDP what they did to ignatieff and Dion, nor do they take advice from Republicans.
It doesn't matter how ridiculous the charge is as long as long as it sounds remotely plausible to those who pay little attention to politics. For example, the ads against Warren by Karl Rove claim she is totally beholden to financial lobbyists and show her meeting some lobbyist in her office (part of her previous job as a regulator involved meeting anyone, including lobbyists, interested in the issues she dealt with). Instead she was the most outspoken critic of the financial sector and mortgage fraud: so much so that Republicans blocked her nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for 2 years until she withdrew.
If we are not ready to respond immediately to attacks and define ourselves through our own ads and pr we will suffer the same fate.
Scott Brown's Triumphant Makeover http://www.salon.com/2012/03/08/scott_browns_mainstream_move/singleton/
jerrym, you're correct.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ndp-plans-ad-salvo-to-promo...
The day after the convention, our leader is going to want to take a vacation.
I hope they're smart enough to realize that it's the worst time to be dancing in the end zone. The Conservatives will get to work on day one.
The Globe and Mail are such idiots. Why would they run an ad with Paul Dewar accusing Mulcair of being lukewarm towards the NDP? Harper has far more to gain by saying we're married to the Regina Manifesto than by saying that the party is changing.
The ad campaign being talked about is all positive stuff about the new leader. Thankfully I wont see them since I watch zero TV.
But I'm glad they are coming. And hopefully the brain trust is going to explictly fundraise in their wake, so we can keep this up. Ads like that tend to pull in new donors and do less of going to the same well again.
I have to say this...
Its all good, but it aint strategy.
I think the NDP's new leader should immediately make an ad and air it.
I think the ad should be a rise above ad-- something inspirational with the new leader speaking about what we offer and will continue to offer-- about a positive alternative that can make Canada proud.
The new leader could also reach out to the Liberals and Green and make an ad from all three about what the Conservatives are doing to politics and this country-- like an open letter even asking them to stop their scorched earth view of politics that is damaging the country.
The NDP can offer to go in with the other parties on a group ad that is negative but when we are paying for an ad by ourselves it should just stay positive.
A little inspiration is a good thing. But it's important to know who the candidate is. Not because I care, but because Conservatives will try to make people care. They should talk about their accomplishments -- going back to before elected politics -- and tie that to what they hope to achieve for the country.
I like that Mulcair already has a game plan starting Sunday, March 25th. We have no time to lose.
NDP’s best defence is to go on offencehttp://www.thespec.com/opinion/columns/article/690555--tim-harper-ndp-s-...
As KenS makes clear above we need to differentiate between strategy and tactics.
After the convention, we need to immediately counter any Con attacks by dismissing any of their wild charges through the reality of the facts, but also by continually attacking the attack. i mean that we must repeatedly point out the history of the Conservatives with regard to such attacks by noting their history: their attacks in the 1990s on Chretien for his disfigured face; Harper's charge during the 2004 election that Paul Martin was in favour of child pornography for not reforming child pornography laws (which will also link Harper to Vic Toews highly unpopular charge that anyone who does not support the Cons online surveillance bill supports child pornography); the vicious attacks on Dion including the bird defecating on him; the attacks on Ignatieff about his commitment to Canada (which will probably be reused on Mulcair if he is chosen leader because of his dual citizenship); and the charge at the end of the 2011 campaign that Layton had sexual relations with a prostitute at a massage parlour when the Cons realized too late that the NDP could become the Official Opposition.
By pointing out the ongoing pattern of their nasty attacks we can not dismiss their current attack but also raise the question "What else did you expect from these guys every time they attack?" By including the Liberals in the history of these attacks we display our fair-mindedness, as well as indicate the nature of their attacks - whoever they see as their main opponents will be subject to these attacks. Repeating these counter charges against the Cons whenever they attack us will help people start to dismiss their attacks as soon as they occur. We can even take it as an honour that they are attacking us since they clearly see us as their main opponent.
Defining our new leader immediately after the convention is important as otherwise they Cons will do it to us. However, we need to take the above approach as well because no matter how much money we raise, the Cons can also go back to their wealthy base for more money in return for legislative favours as can be seen in the hundreds of millions already spent in the US election just in the primaries. If we do not counter the pattern of the attacks, the Cons can simply continually mount knew attack ads until we run out of money to counter the attacks (as happened with the Liberals) and/or have little money left for the 2015 election. We can even link the Cons to the wild attacks that are typical of the Republican Party (mentioning that the Con attacks are similar to those of Lee "Attack Dog" Atwater and Karl Rove, the eminence gris behind Bush Jr. and the current attacks on Elizabeth Warren, the most outspoken critic of the Wall Street scandal), with whom they have many links as I described in a previous post.
We also need to counter the media's tendency to fan the flames of any attack (the more outrageous the better for ideological and TV ratings) by asking why in interviews they are not questioning the shameful history of the attack pattern and asking if they are supporters of the Con party (something the right-wingers did in the 1970s and 1980s to those who questioned them which put even these reporters on the defensive). We should deal with the issue quickly and immediately return to the issues, where our policies appeal to many people.
We also need to reclaim the word "entitlement" which is now used to describe programs such as welfare, medicare, and old age security, that help the poor and the middle class. We need to point the truly "entitled" in our society are the wealthy, who through their campaign contributions, their funding of third party ads between elections, lobbyists, right-wing think tanks, personal contacts with government officials, mainstream media lapdogs, and a host of other avenues, have rigged a system of laws, regulations, access to overseas tax havens, and low corporate and personal tax rates for the wealthy that makes them the truly "entitled" of society. In other words, every time they bring up entitlements we throw it back in their face.
Unlikely with the budget coming so soon after. The new leader is probably heading directly into strategy meetings. I'm sure Mulcair has at least two sets of budget speeches already written just in case: One as leader, and one as someone else's cabinet minister!
They've talked to the candidates and gotten their okay to go ahead right after the convention. That shows me that the party is thinking about how to get ahead of the Conservative attack machine, AND that the candidates are on board and know what has to be done.
jerrym lays out an interesting strategy.
Jerry, do you think those videos are on youtube? could you provide links to them?
I would gladly cut the footage together to make that ad myself.
Not only did I not produce "those videos on you tube", I honestly do not even know what you are referring to.
I would call the strategy jui-jitsu that I described above, using your opponents strength against him, which is what the Cons and Republicans are quite good at (they attacked Kerry as a phoney war hero; Dion as an environmentalist whose policies were too expensive to follow; Ignatieff as an out-of-touch intellectual who has barely lived in Canada; Layton as a smiling, friendly politician who visits prostitutes on the sly). We need to attack their strength, the attack machine by: immediately countering it with facts; saying what did you expect given their record on this; and predicting they will do it again (making it more difficult for the next attack to succeed - something the American Democrats never get around to doing - leaving them open to the next attack). Every time the Cons attack, we should also bring up their history of attacks, including their disastrous failures (Chretien facial disfigurement attack, Layton prostitute attack, child pornography attacks - both Harper against Martin in 2004 and Toews against all Canadians this year thereby linking Harper to the highly unpopular Toews attacks) to further inoculate us against future attacks.
With regards to entitlements, we need to point out to interviewers using these words in relation to old age pensions, welfare etc. that the word (and many other words used by the right in political discourse) are loaded, suggesting the middle class and poor are receiving more than they deserve, when the truly entitled of our society are the corporations and wealthy who have designed the rules of society to benefit mainly themselves and are not happy with that. They want to receive even more entitlements by removing the few benefits available to those less well off than themselves.
When I said "every time they bring up entitlements we throw it back in their face", I now think I worded it wrong. This sounds angry, which I do not think is the most effective way of delivering the message. I reasoned step-by-step counter-arguement I think would be best for this code word and other such code words. Always appearing reasonable and even smiling while delivering the hard message always plays best - remember Jack (and Marshall McLuhan - TV is a cool medium).
Hey Jerry, I think you misunderstood me. I want to edit together the old conservative attack ads to show that this is an established pattern. You've inspired me to do a little youtube video, where we show 10 seconds of conservative attack ads, with a tagline that shows this is their whole M.O. The key is I don't know how to find the footage from these old ads so I can edit them together.
Cabinet picks will help change NDP's image New faces to fill key critics portfolios
http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Cabinet+picks+will+help+change+image/6363512/story.html