Political Brand Hijacking and My Views on the Election

John McCain is blatantly trying to hijack Barrack Obama’s campaign branding efforts.

I’ve heard of brand hijacking before. For example, when Red Bull spent millions of dollars to brand themselves in the United States as an “energy drink”, only to have Monster, and even Cocoa Cola come in behind them with cheaper, bigger drinks, and steal their thunder. Now, that’s not to say Red Bull has lost their luster - they are considered the high end energy drink - the kind of thing you mix with good vodka in a bull and goose. But the damage was done.

Now John McCain and Sarah Palin are on their way to doing the exact same thing to Barrack Obama. Obama built a very successful campaign around the “Change” brand, and now McCain is running ads championing himself as THE agent of change. In essence, he is stealing Obama’s campaign ideas because his own ideas are not working, and would not work in this political climate.

So first he tries to steal Hillary voters with the Palin pick. Now he’s trying to steal Obama’s campaign slogan and thunder.

I think the ultimate reason for this is that he knows Americans are tired of the Republicans and their crap, so he has to steal the Democrats thunder to get anywhere in this election. And he has nothing else. His policies on tax reform and health care help the rich, and do nothing for the poor who need it. His technology policy of keeping market competition as the main factor is also not likely to help the country from bleeding tech jobs and innovation to other parts of the world.

For this voter, this is not going to work, but it’s going to push me into action. I’ve stayed away from politics on this blog, even though I’m very adamant about this election. But I think enough is enough. Call McCain out for what he is - a thief. If he can’t even find a single novel idea to run his campaign on, but instead resorts to stealing another person’s idea, what does that say about his ability to make good decisions for our country?

Maybe it’s true that the Republicans have drank their own kool aid. Maybe enough rich corporate executives - who live for their bottom line instead of their customers - have finally bought their way into a political party enough to actually drive it’s ideas completely.

For the sake of this country, I really hope the American people wake up and don’t stand for this. I can’t imagine having that mentality drive our country for another 4 years. We will be the laughing stock of the globe.

It would speak to our education system and how decades of bad decisions there have left us with this - a society not able to discern intelligent innovation from stolen ideas. A society not able to tell a lie from the truth - I’m taking aim directly at the numerous false claims made by the McCain campaign against Obama.

It would speak to our fickleness because we would have forgotten who originally brought us the message of change. Americans are so easily swayed from one minute to the next. McCain probably could have gotten even more swing voters by picking a running mate from a popular TV series.

It would speak to America’s character and the fact that you can lie to our face and if you put a great big “innocent” smile in front of the lie, we’ll buy it outright without thought. We should not be that America anymore.

My final thought is this - we put a president in office 8 years ago who had little more than an acquaintance with Washington and national politics. He was the governor of a bigger state than Alaska, and his daddy was President once. But he was in reality a miserable failure. That, obviously, did not make him a good leader at all. And yet, here we go again.

We’re looking at possibly putting a man into the White House who has a better chance than most in the past of not making it through his first term. And right underneath him - as the media likes to say “a heartbeat away” - from the highest power in our country, is another inexperienced state governor. Except this one is much further out of touch from the rest of the country than the previous, follows fundamentalist Christian values that most of the country does not, and lies blatantly through a smile. She may think that’s okay for her children and possibly even her state, but it is not okay for our country.

If American could just pop some Ginko Biloba and remember why we as a nation are in the situation we’re in, I think they may deem the McCain/Palin ticket a crime against the US.