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It's shameful
Following on dirtgirl's post about the latest poll numbers, I have to say that the situation is really inexcusable.
The inability of the Democrats to enunciate any kind of clear and convincing message is almost scandalous. One of the candidates told me, essentially, "it's early, nobody's interested, and anyway the media won't report what my message is." That's bull. You have to make yourself heard - and if not now, when? After Bloomberg starts unleashing his millions?
People are anxious about the future of New York City. This is a city where people pay obscene proportions of their income in rent; where useful neighborhood businesses are disappearing and being replaced by luxury boutiques and big-box stores; where parents worry because they have to beat the system just to get their kids a quality education; where fares are going up while the transit system is starting to fall apart; where an underlying dread of terrorism mingles with a constant anxiety over whether you can keep up - keep up with the prices, keep up with the development, keep up with the job market, keep up with the constant stream of demands just to live in this town. And in the middle of all this, we have a billionaire mayor whose only really apparent concern is giving his friends a shiny new stadium on the West Side of Manhattan.
People say that Bloomberg is inoffensive. It amazes me that there is so little effort put into painting a basic, overarching picture of how this man fails to understand what New York City needs now. New York City needs security, and it needs hope. We know that things aren't as bad as they were, say, in 1978 or 1991, but we need a leader who can convincingly say "I know how hard it can be to get by in this town. I know that New Yorkers want a leader whose first priority is to keep this city liveable, so that they are safe from crime and terrorism, so that they can feel confident about sending their kids to the schools, so that they can find a decent, affordable place to live. To Bloomberg, New York is about money. To me, New York is about New Yorkers."
Of course there are probably better ways to phrase it. But the basic point is this: this is a moment in NYC history when it is going to matter very much what kind of values guide the city's leadership. And to beat Bloomberg, some candidate is going to have to make a clear and simple case: My values are what this town needs now.
But I'm not optimistic that anyone gets that.
Okay
So how do I include paragraph breaks? That's a pretty solid block o' text, there.
perfect example: Gif Miller's missed opportunity
Raider, I had the same problem with the paragraph breaks. I tried a bunch of things but <p><br> on a line by itself seems to do the trick.
As to your point about the candidates inability to articulate a message, I witnessed this first-hand this week. On Monday the City Council held a hearing with the agency heads involved in the mayor's new emergency response protocol. To everyone's surprise Gifford Miller crashed and ran the hearing. I have to hand it to him, he was pretty good.
But what did he do with it? Nothing! he held a short presser in the rotunda after it ended, but that's it. In the presser he essentially said "I'm confused by this." He didn't slam the mayor, articulate what he would have done, or anything at all for the press to work with. So they all used clips from Ray Kelly and Peter Hayden in their stories. (he did get one article out of it). But the opportunity wasn't gone, it was at least a two-day story, so he could have put out a press release Tuesday proposing that in a Miller administration he'd appoint a Deputy Mayor for Public Safety to resolve disputes, or strengthen the Office of Emergency Management like it was under Rudy, or SOMETHING to set him apart from the mayor and the rest of the field.
But he punted. Now he's turned his attention back to the stadium while the media is still paying attention to the emergency issue. It's just an example and probably not an election winner in itself, but I swear it's like these guys don't want to get any coverage sometimes.
Exactly
Maybe the reason nobody is reporting your "message" is because, rather than having one, you use your public statements to dither and prevaricate. I mean, it's fine for him to say "as Council Speaker I have a responsibility to look at this more before I comment further," but we should know what kind of person he is, so that we know what kind of decisions he'll make once he has looked at it. But all we get is Giff the trailing edge.
It's especially frustrating with Miller because I'm pretty sure that he is a genuine progressive at heart. But he's not stepping up. I almost wonder if it's stagefright, campaigning at this level.