Just make it look good!
Sandmonkey writes:
On beautiful Monday mornings like this one, as I wake up in my bed, happy, well rested, thinking about what I will do today, a single simple thought comes into my mind, filling me with sense of impending doom and horror that grips me and ruins my day: We are going to have elections. Again. Very soon.
Kill me now.
I know how he feels — and professionally I cover elections! Read the rest for a critique of the secular parties' lack of a real product to sell in the upcoming elections. I have no time to expand now, but my thought for a while is that they need to be aggressive — not just in electioneering, but in the vision thing. People respect those who stand for something, and many secularists are so scared of Islamists they hesitate to wear their secularism on their sleeves. I say: go on the offensive, be clear about what you stand for (and that it's not anti-religion), and attack relentlessly your political enemies on their weaknesses, notably their religious hypocrisy. Elections are ultimately about resources: how much money and how many people you have to recruit to your side. But also having a big idea helps — not with the wider electorate perhaps, but to energize your base. This is why Islamists perform well: they have an energized base. In Egypt, secularists seem to have only a demoralized base.