Reply #26: my dear Mr. Magistrate [View All]

allow me to share a very different point of view than the one you offered.

yes, that is what marketing professional and political campaigns do. perhaps that is how political campaigns are won. or perhaps not.

i see the country on the brink of devastation. i see an empire collapsing. i see a country ripped apart by the many issues that divide us. perhaps you do as well. this is a time we need truth telling; not marketing. this is a time where we need real leaders to step forward and tell us the truth about the bad news and give us their vision about how we might proceed. instead, because bad news is unpleasant, we have marketing departments and the products they sell who only tell us what we want to hear. we cannot afford any more lost time. the situation is urgent and critical.

poll tested and focus group candidates are followers, not leaders.

imagine someone telling Lincoln that talking about abolishing slavery could cost him votes in the South. too controversial. better not go there. is that what we're stuck with today?

i understand that candidates must strike a balance between political viability and truth telling. many of us see Hillary as not striking that balance at all. we see all marketing all the time or at least almost all the time.

the saddest part of all this for me is that the essence of the point you made in your post just MIGHT not be true at all. it might just be that a candidate who tells us the truth MIGHT be seen as the leader we so badly need. and the Party that tells us the truth MIGHT just be able to secure for itself a generation or more of majority status. real leaders listen to what the marketing department has to say; they are not controlled by the marketing department.

i think there is a real hunger in America to hear the truth. the masses have very little respect for politics and candidates and parties. there is no Democratic landslide here. after all the devastation the right-wing republican machine has brought, Democrats made only tiny little gains in November. good news? of course. the point is it should have been a Democratic landslide. i think the voters see no core in most Democratic candidates. they think that there is no "there, there". sadly, the essence of your post perhaps gives the reason for it. maybe if our candidates and our party had the courage to speak the truth instead of humming the advertising jingles, the landslide we all seek would be possible.