What David Plouffe Has to Say

Plouffe is out with an Op-Ed in the Post about how Democrats can still win in November. Seems like a pretty good plan to me. This passage in particular caught my eye:

Make sure voters understand what the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did for the economy. Rarely does a congressional vote or issue lend itself to this kind of powerful localization. If GOP challengers want to run ads criticizing the recovery act as wasteful, Democratic candidates should lift up the police officers, teachers and construction workers in their state or district, those who are protecting our communities, teaching our children and repairing our roads thanks to the Democrats' leadership. Highlight the small-business owners who have kept their doors open through projects funded by the act.

While it's easy to paint ARRA as ineffective on the macro-level (the unemployment rate is still at 10%, right?) I think it's going to be a lot harder for Republicans to stigmatize individual democratic congressman on their vote for ARRA come November. If Democrats are smart they will only briefly focus on hard-to-picture abstractions ("the stimulus pulled our economy back from the brink") and instead localize the results of ARRA. Every time they mention it should be simultaneously linked in voter's minds with faces of people from their communities whose jobs were saved. I think this will be very effective.

One final thought: a lot of the things that Plouffe mentions aren't that hard to figure out. Doing them is really a question of putting in the time and energy. For example, the way to run a strong p.r. campaign behind ARRA is fairly obvious, but if you think about the logistics it's actually pretty complex. You'd need deep roots into local communities to find out specifically how they were helped, and you'd need to local communities to organize and get constituents who were helped to come forward and lend their voices to your campaign. All of this is simple as a solution. Putting it into practice, however, requires a great deal more patience and energy. If Democrats don't believe in what they are doing come November, it doesn't matter how obvious the solution is. There won't be the drive to get the necessary work done.