#Julia, and Leftism's New Media Problem

The Obama 2012 campaign released the epic government-fueled travails of “Julia” today, a slideshow supposedly relating how an Obama presidency can benefit the life of the average American woman. “Benefit”, as in pay for each of her progressive-approved hipster doofus life-choices (“Age 22: She starts her career as a web designer”).

Right off the bat, “#Julia” trended to the top of Twitter as the second-most popular current hashtag in the United States; to the horror of David Axelrod and the increasingly dated tacticians of the Obama campaign, virtually every mention of #Julia was a conservative mocking the slideshow. Our Vodkapundit nailed it with:

#Julia is a #composite of all the ways @BarackObama would like to buy the women’s vote.

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) May 3, 2012

Also, David Burge (Iowahawk):

Perhaps the creepiest, skin-crawling propaganda ever produced for an American political campaign barackobama.com/life-of-julia

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) May 3, 2012

The most distressing problem this latest new media “organizing” tactic presents for the Obama campaign is the same problem that new media — ahem, PJ Media — presents for leftism in general. On my count, the last five hashtags introduced by Obama’s campaign have been instant public relations disasters; another smear tactic backfired into the legendary #ObamaEatsDogs. They keep trying, however, and that’s because propaganda, sloganeering, and various issues for rallying the rabble are the only weapon in the progressive toolbag. Alinsky’s toolbag. Lying, and cliches — hey, everyone go buy Jonah Goldberg’s new book, by the way — are the means of pitching doomed-to-fail ideology as successful. And the lying works wonderfully when the effort needed to combat and debunk the lies is great: when we couldn’t get a word in if we couldn’t get Walter Cronkite to say it, “Julia” was a winner of an idea.

Now, conservatives get their retaliation halfway around the world while Julia is still getting her shoes on. For an administration raised on Alinsky, the growing evidence that Alinsky is outdated should not sit well.