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The Road We've Traveled - Obama's first campaign 'Documentary' video

Here is Obama's first stab at positioning himself for the 2012 election. It's a 17 minute documentary about how Obama has done everything right and the world should be thankful he was in charge.




Clearly this is propaganda at it's worst and it's best simultaneously (depending on how gullible the viewer is).

Highlighting your strengths is an obvious strategy during re-election.

The problem with this video though is that it doesn't tackle any of the major issues that are on voters' minds, which include:


  • When, if ever, are the jobs coming back?
  • When, if ever, are we going to get out of all these wars?
  • Why did no bankers, SEC officials or rating agency personnel go to jail or were even investigated in 2008?
  • Why did the people who caused all the problems get all the bail outs?
  • How are you going to control the debt which is now over 15 trillion? Who is going to pay it, our grand kids?
  • Your goal was to end partisanship and Washington is more partisan than ever, how come?
As I've said many times before, the difference between PR and propaganda is that PR understands the audience and attempts to have a conversation with them, addressing their areas of interest. Propaganda attempts to get the audience to forget about their areas of interest and rather simply buy-in to a manufactured, one-sided narrative. 

The reason it's a flawed strategy is that in the US there are six 'blocks' of voters:

  • Republicans that vote
  • Republicans that don't vote 
  • Democrats that vote
  • Democrats that don't vote
  • Independents that vote
  • Independents that don't vote
Obviously Obama isn't going to get Republican votes. He's clearly going to get the 'Democrats who vote' vote. But to win he has to pull in the Democrats who don't vote - ie. he has to motivate them to get out and vote. 

He also has to get the independents to come out for him also. 

The above video, while those who love Obama will like it, aren't the folks he needs to be speaking to. 

The 'lazy' Democrats and the independents are the ones he has to motivate to believe in him enough to cast their vote for him. 

These folks though are the ones who are disenfranchised by the current political system and country as a whole. If you want to engage them you have to speak to their concerns / interests, which this documentary doesn't do. 

As such, it does nothing to offset the intense attack ads Obama will face from the right.

The only rationale for the documentary I can think of is that Obama feels that he has a problem with his own base - the Democrats who vote - and has to first energize them before focusing on the lazy Dems and the independents.

Not a good sign if you have to spend time getting your die-hard followers to believe in you.


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