I've been complaining for the last few days that the Republicans were succeeding with the "Democrats in Division" story, and specifically using it to divide the Clinton and Obama coalitions, and that the Obama campaign was failing at defense. I was getting angrier as I saw more slights against the Clintons pile up, and I noted some Obama supporters taking offense at various statements by Hillary or Bill Clinton. I was beginning to fear that the divisions in the party might become permanent, dooming Obama's chances, and I didn't understand why the Obama campaign wasn't proactively shutting down the news stories that were popping up.
But after Hillary and Bill Clinton's speeches, and watching the Gallup poll show a dramatic rise for Obama today based on yesterday's post-Hillary results, I've begun to wonder if Hollede was on to something with his The Real Head Fake diary.
Throughout the primary I observed the Obama campaign confound the Clinton campaign with its media management. I had no idea how they did it until some of my Obama supporting friends here told me to read Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. I should have learned that when Obama is doing something that makes no sense to me he is probably putting some of Alinsky's rules into practice.
Alinsky: I start from where the world is, as it is, not as I would like it to be.
Obama is deeply pragmatic and if anything has a better understanding of how to stage drama than Bill Clinton. He knows as well as the Clintons that the media is implacably hostile to them. That's just how it is. Since there is very little the three of them could do to change that, why not use it? Why not raise the drama of the convention, drop hints from both sides about this hurt feeling and that mis-statement, and use both the media and the Republicans to heighten the tension necessary to any drama?
Rule 11: If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
By the night of Hillary Clinton's speech supporters were deeply committed to their respective sides and the media was in a frenzy of Clinton hatred. We were all playing our roles, perfectly primed for a catharsis in Hillary Clinton's words. They had pushed the negative pretty hard and deep. Hillary Clinton's speech provided a dramatic resolution, confounding the media and the Republicans and giving both her supporters and Obama's supporters a catharsis.
But I think Obama is reaching for more than dramatic resolution. I think he has structured the convention to play out an Hegelian dialectic, the insight that takes Alinsky beyond Machiavelli, his inspiration in Rules for Radicals. Hegel describes the dialectic as a struggle between master and slave, father and son, thesis and antithesis. An Hegelian resolution is a synthesis that transcends master and slave. Hillary and Bill Clinton have presented the thesis and antitheses within the dialectic of the Democratic party, I think Obama plans to present the synthesis tonight.
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