To Save Dems, Obama Needs More Coherent Message

The Republicans are coasting through this election season on a platform of just a few words: “Spending, taxes, jobs, economy, deficit, debt,” as one party leader has it. As we near Nov. 2, the Democrats still don’t have anything like that coherent message, writes EJ Dionne in the Washington Post. “Over the coming week and a half, the president and his party need a few good words of their own.”

“That's the least they owe” the tough Democrats “who were willing to risk their political lives to keep their promises—and his,” Dionne writes. Republicans have yet to explain how they’ll keep their deficit-cutting promises, but their message is working anyway. Some Democratic consultants are calling for a “race-by-race focus,” but in fact “this already is a nationalized election.” It’s time for “a simple, coherent national argument.” (Karl Rove made a similar point today about Obama.)