Obama is bad!
What does Obama Stand for?
Good Question.
Soon the issues will disappear as color commentary takes over, like in Sports events. What is Michelle Bachmann wearing? And then the endless spectre of candidate geography. Rick Perry is now in New Hampshire. John Huntsman is on a motorcycle. Sarah's bus broke down. Ron Paul, who's he.
How fascinating.
The Washington Post has yet another big yawn-breaking nooze bulletin: "Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty announced Sunday morning that he is stepping out of the race for the GOP presidential nomination."
The game is on. The boys are back. The election industry is cranking up its own army of professional consultants, advertising mavens, spin doctors, media buyers, disinformation specialists and field operatives. The cycle is cycling again, hooray.
There are two rules in the political game book:
l. Don't Say What You Mean.
2. Don't Mean What You Say.
Election fever is something the networks know how to market and massage. They have had a lot of practice at it. Their graphics people are already at work. The sets are being built. The cliche's are being sharpened.
And the political experts are out in force collecting data as in this study arguing that when campaigns are rocking, fewer people are taking their own lives. (I would have thought it was the other way around)
Read this dreck:
"Using an original data set, this article explores the impact of U.S. presidential elections as collective rituals on monthly suicide rates. Controlling for a host of rival explanations, including year and month fixed effects, the business cycle, and other collective events (the Olympics), I find that certain months of the presidential election cycle are associated with lower suicide rates. I conclude that U.S. presidential politics, typically seen as an arena of conflict, can be a source of social solidarity, and therefore, society- or network-centered theories of social cohesion need to be augmented to include institutional mechanisms of social integration."
Meanwhile, the forces behind the candidates, the funders and astro turf organizations are mostly out of the news, still hidden in a shadow political landscape, like a shadow banking system.
Everyone knows its there, but no one talks about it. The focus is always on issues, never interests.
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