Before I left on my mini-Fourth of July vacation down the shore, wherein I got sunburnt but thankfully missed the CC/PDD dust-up of which I know little and care about even less; I posted a story about Carney’s first TV ad buy the Salisbury media market, touting his leadership in the Bluewater Wind deal.
Markell is set to respond with a radio and TV ads that describe Markell as the “change we need,” in contrast to John Carney’s slogan “The experience we need. A leader we trust.” I have commented before how I always viewed Markell and Carney as proxies for Obama and Clinton, respectively. And now their campaigns are unfolding exactly in that mold. Carney will campaign on his accomplishments (should that be plural?) and experience as evidence that he is the man to bring about change. And Markell will simply run on change.
Carney notes in his Wind ad that “Change is hard. You can’t just talk about it.” And doesn’t that just sound exactly like Clinton’s “35 years of experience bringing about change” and “It takes a President to bring change.” I think we have learned from this past primary, and from other prior elections, that you cannot mix the memes of “change” and “experience.” For voters, they are mutually exclusive. When they are pissed off at the government, or an Administration, they are not going to listen to a member of that government or administration say he has the experience to bring the change they seek.
Clinton learned that lesson. The elder Bush learned that lesson in 1992. And McCain, also seeking to campaign on the mutuant “Experience to Bring Change” message, will soon learn as well.
As an aside, who do you think Matt Denn wants to run with? Officially, he is neutral, but while most of the official Democratic establishment avoided the opening of Markell’s Wilmington Riverfront campaign office last week, Matt Denn stopped by. Perhaps he thinks, in a change election, it will be easier to run with the real change candidate than one pretending to be a change candidate.