Dude, we KNOW the difference between a nerd and a corporatist



[Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog]

Rick Snyder has begun his campaign to remain governor of Michigan with a new website, a new video, and repeated statements that he hasn’t announced his candidacy.

A website and Twitter and Facebook accounts used by the campaign were recently re-activated or newly opened. “Stay tuned…” said a tweet from Snyder’s campaign Twitter account Friday. Snyder has been actively fund-raising, too, though under Michigan campaign finance law, he won’t have to report those activities until early next year. […] Snyder even urged attendees [of the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference] to sign his nominating petitions, due in April. But pressed by reporters after his speech, he insisted he had not made an announcement. “Stay tuned,” he said.

His website features a new 5-minute video, created by Fred Davis, the same guy did his “One Tough Nerd” commercial that opened his campaign during the Super Bowl in 2010. Davis is also the “brains” behind the now-infamous “China Girl” ad for Pete Hoekstra. That racist, xenophobic monstrosity lost Davis his job and Hoekstra the race. This new video (which takes shots at “career politicians” and includes an image of Snyder’s state treasurer Andy Dillon) is full nerd, an obvious effort at re-rebranding from the corporatist reality of who he is. The word “nerd” is used dozens of times and it even ends with an eyeroll-inducing “it’s a nerdy job but someone’s gotta do it”.

Here’s the thing: nothing about Rick Snyder except possibly his voice says “nerd”. I was a nerd in school. I was top of my class and took AP Chemistry and did the whole nerd thing so I know a nerd when I see one. Rick Snyder may have been a nerd at one time but now he is Pure Corporate Michigan. Thus the re-rebranding. Because Michiganders are rapidly coming to the realization that, despite Snyder’s rhetoric, the only real winners in the “comeback” he touts in his video are corporations.

The effort to make him seem anything but a rich corporatist is so blatant that it’s laughable. For example, toward the end of the video, an attractive blonde says (emotionally), “He didn’t have any money growin’ up and I know what that’s like.” No mention of the fact that he lives in a high-priced gated community in Ann Arbor and sends his kids to a private school that costs tens of thousands of dollars per year.

One thing that is noticeably absent from the video is any mention about public education. Given how much education funding has been slashed during Snyder’s time in office and the catastrophic bankruptcies of so many of our schools, it’s no wonder.

At one point in the video, the narrator brags, “Unemployment in Michigan is now the lowest it’s been in years. And, with our workers protected by our new status as a freedom to work state, great jobs will continue to boom.”

So, a couple of things here. First: BZZZZZZZ! Wrong. Unemployment is certainly NOT the lowest it’s been in years. It has, in fact, gone up for three months in a row. Improvements in our economy are mainly due to the investments made by Democrats Jennifer Granholm and Barack Obama and Rick Snyder’s efforts had little to do with any economic recovery in our state.

If you’re looking for improvements in our unemployment rate, I guess you’ll have to “stay tuned”.

Second, the phrase “freedom to work” is another bit of rebranding from their first anti-union effort which they called “right to work”. In reality, of course, it’s the “right to work for less” or “right to freeload”. No matter what you call it, despite the fact that Snyder and his Republican pals in the legislature made Michigan, the birthplace of the modern labor movement, an anti-union, anti-worker state, jobs are NOT booming. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Again, if you’re waiting for union-crushing to create a wild influx of jobs in Michigan, you’ll just have to “stay tuned”.

One of the people in Snyder’s video, a stereotypically Regular Joe kinda guy in a Michigan International Speedway ball cap, says, “I think secretly even some of the union guys are votin’ for him”. This is so highly unlikely as to be laughable. Any union member that votes for Rick Snyder should have their head examined.

I’m sure we’re going to see a lot of re-rebranding, a lot of revisionist history, and a lot of Snyder taking credit for the accomplishments of others over the next 14 months. Fortunately, Michiganders are not going to be fooled by this and equally fortunate, they have a great alternative in Mark Schauer.

The game is now on. Even if Rick Snyder wants us to “stay tuned”.