The Importance of Doing Something

So over at mydd.com, Jerome Armstrong has post up about how McCain's offshore oil drilling gambit appears to be helping McCain make headway with Florida and Ohio voters in that according to Rasmussen more voters support McCain when they find out he is for offshore oil drilling and Obama is opposed. Now, this is appears to be a tricky problem for Obama. On closer inspection however, the political problem isn't that difficult. Just like his gas tax gambit, McCain is banking on the "well at least we are trying to do something to alleviate your pain at the pump" type of support. Much like Roosevelt's actions in the Depression, as described by Jonathan Alter, just doing something, anything, to help Americans is a good way to get support. To address this, Obama, and the Democratic party, need to get all populist on McCain. This requires making the argument that McCain is willing to risk great environmental damage for what will amount to a give away to Oil companies who are making record profits. This argument is going to require leadership to walk Americans through the fallacious reasoning of the Republican Party and the McCain campaign. There are several key talking points here that need to be hammered again and again.

-Any gains from offshore drilling won't occur for at least 10 years.
-McCain is relying on Big Oil Companies, with their record profits, to pass any savings on to consumers.
-This is another typical Bush Republican give away to oil companies with no protections in place for the Consumer, and after 8 years of these policies, America deserves better.
-America deserves a future of renewable energy that will strengthen the national economy, not plans to extend the life of tired old technologies at the expense of the people as a whole.

Obviously those aren't as refined as they could be, but I am just throwing things out. Properly structured this is a political fight the Democrats can win, but simply attacking McCain as I described isn't enough.

As I mentioned above, McCain is going for the "well at least he is trying to help us" support. Attacking McCain as I described tries to change that thought process to "He isn't trying to help us, he is trying to help the oil companies." There is still an opening, if not a necessity, for Obama to also come out with some proposal that makes sense as a way to help Americans. I am not sure exactly what the best proposal would be, but it must do two things: 1) continue the incentives brought about by high fuel prices to develop transportation technologies that are not reliant on the burning of fossil fuels at the current rate of consumption and 2) alleviate the pain to the individual consumer/voter of the transition away from those technologies. Put differently, Obama should articulate a way for the United States to move away from fossil fuels, and the prosperity that will bring with it, while at the same time helping those feeling the fossil fuel pinch.

Dang, I rewrote that last sentence and it still sounds too wordy. That idea needs to be simplified down more for talking points/sound bite purposes.