Political SOP of the day: Separate your opposition from their base

[KurtNYC]

Highly effective and widely practiced. The basic idea is that voters have hardened positions which make it difficult to convert them to your side. It is much easier to get Americans to be disgusted with their candidate or with the whole process and they stay home and close their wallet.

Whenever you see a RW talking head suddenly criticizing a moderate or progressive FROM THE LEFT you know this tactic is being employed. A classic version of this was cable news heads calling Al Gore "a phony" on environmental issues because he flies on airplanes. Obviously THEY are not stewards of the environment and they wouldn't hesitate to travel by air but they feign outrage that Al Gore does.

For Hillary Clinton they wanted to separate her mostly from female voters because the demographic data showed that women in general were more excited about her candidacy. For Obama they went after African Americans, using black talking heads to say that Obama was "trying to be white" (eg. "a phony"). In an extreme version of this (and one that is not about mass media), that asshole that shot John Lennon was a Beatles/Lennon fan who became convinced that Lennon was "a phony"; a theme that plays a central role in the book he obsessed on 'Catcher in the Rye.'

Pretty much whenever some talking head uses the term "phony" about a candidate they are trying to separate the candidate from their natural base. The debt debate was loaded with this stuff -- rumors hotly debated as fact.