Considering their enormous and deep understanding of marketing during the campaign, it’s hard to understand why the Obama administration is so bad at marketing itself as a governing force. Obama’s advisors need to take some lessons from George W. Bush. He was a terrible president, but he was extremely skilled at marketing himself and his accomplishments—and all my years observing politics, I’ve never before seen a team that was as good at staying on message. Better even than Reagan, if you ask me.

With just over a month left before the election, it’s time for the Democrats to go deep and hard on their marketing: to create a message that will resonate with the American people and cut the floor out from under the Republicans.

If I were running the national Democratic Senate and House campaign committees, I’d do it like this:
You voted for “Yes We Can”—But the Republicans Gave You “No We Won’t”

Two years ago, you, the American people, voted for change. You said it was long past time to focus the economy on Main Street…to get out of the illegal and unwinnable Iraq war…to begin once again to stop behaving like a “rogue state” and take our place among nations as the most powerful and inspirational democracy in the world…to once and for all rein in runaway corporate power and massive environmental devastation.

We’ve done a lot in the short time we’ve had to reverse the disastrous policies of the Bush administration. Here’s a list of 91 different things the Obama administration has accomplished.

But most of those 91 accomplishments didn’t require approval by Congress. The Republicans have decided, as a bloc, to vote against almost anything we propose—even if they proposed it first. If it comes from the Democrats, they vote no, end of story. How much more progress would we have made without their tantrumy-two-year-old behavior? How much better shape would the economy and our carbon footprint be in—if, for instance, the green Jobs package hadn’t been so watered down?

You didn’t vote for “No We Won’t” in 2008. You voted for “Yes We Can! Vote Democratic and get the change you wanted all along.

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