The tragic pathos of Frank Luntz
What Luntz simply seems unable to comprehend is that the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama did not sow discord into an otherwise peaceable and contented electorate. Instead, then-Senator Obama took advantage of the increasing frustrations with how the fundamentals of the American economy were working for regular people and capitalized on the financial sector’s irresponsible behavior to drive the point home. As David Atkins writes:
It doesn’t occur to Luntz for a second that the economy is genuinely terrible, that inequality is genuinely out of control, that the banks genuinely screwed everyone, that people genuinely haven’t had wage increases in 40 years even as cost of living spirals upward. It doesn’t occur to him that these are real problems that no language can explain away, and that people are genuinely angry and need help. Most voters may not be able to put the pieces together into a coherent whole, but they know that they’re suffering, that the system isn’t working anymore, and that fat cat elites (who they are varies depending on your political leanings, but the anger is heartfelt all the same) are profiting from all of it. No one sold them a bunch of cute phrases to convince them of that. It’s too damn obvious on its face. Those with no conscience whatsoever are still using racist and sexist code to sell the idea that the advantage-takers are welfare queens and nefarious liberal enablers, but that also only goes so far as the voters inclined to believe that age out of the electorate.
In other words, the very policies that Luntz has spent his life selling have made the electorate completely unresponsive to his sales technique because things have gotten so bad the electorate seems ready for something different. Meanwhile, Luntz believes that Occupy Wall Street got started not because people were given too little, but because they were given too much.
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According to the writer above, Obama was elected because the electorate was ready for something different. If that was true, how did Obama get reelected?
It is simple: buying votes and government workfare will win elections. For a time.
As for Frank Luntz, I believe he will rebound and my prayers are with him.
David DeGerolamo
