Steven Heller, writing in his Daily Heller blog, has an interesting piece on posters to promote the Tea Party movement, as well as on anti-Obama designs (many of which are from The People's Cube Web site), which include Pelosi, Reid, and Obama as "The Three Stooges"; the "Tree of Liberty" symbol and the message "don't give me DEBT"; and Obama as "El Presidente of the Banana Republic of the United States."

Just as propaganda of the left can smear the opposition and distort positions, so, too, can propaganda of the right. As Heller states:

The transposition of Obama as a Soviet/Red...and the smearing of the Democratic party as Marxist...shows a decided lack of imagination and historical knowledge. First, socialism as a practice (i.e. Sweden) and Soviet Communism (remember the breakup of the Soviet Union) are quite different political beasts. Representing the Obama administration with the hammer and sickle is as stupid as smearing it with a swastika...Just as George W. Bush was not a Nazi for starting the Iraqi War, President Barack Obama is not a "commie-fascist" for advocating a government-subsidized health care plan.

Check out the poster designs on The People's Cube, and comment on the designs and messages.

On Sunday, the voters of Japan overwhelmingly sent a message: we want change! The more conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been in power for almost the entire post-World-War-II period, was sent packing, and the reformist Democratic Party of Japan (JDP) will take over. The JDP was created only in 1998, by defectors from the LDP and some of the opposition parties.

Dissatisfaction with the ruling party was rampant this year, with the Japanese economy continuing to show weakness. According to Tomoko Hosaka, writing in the Associated Press, unemployment is a record 5.7 percent and wages have fallen.

The Democratic Party's platform calls for less aid to corporations and more to families, including cash being given to farmers, a boost in the minimum wage, and tax cuts, writes Hosaka. For decades, parties of the left have appealed to farmers and workers, as evidenced by a 1928 poster shown at the right side of this blog entry.

The enormity of the JDP's victory was shocking. According to the Associated Press, the number of seats in the lower house of parliament won by the party increased from 112 to 308. The opposite effect occurred for the LDP, which went from holding 300 seats to a mere 119.

JDP leader Yukio Hatoyama will become the country's next prime minister, and he is less pro-American than his predecessor, Taro Aso, with the former politician calling for closer links with Asian nations and less close ones with the United States.

For more on Japan's political campaigns—and its posters—see the book, Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History.

Elections for the lower house of the Indian Parliament, the Lok Sabha, concluded on May 16.

The voters gave the ruling moderate-left Congress Party, led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a great victory over the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The Congress Party coalition won 262 seats in the 534-seat parliamentary body; the BJP-led coalition only won 157. (Click here for the results.)

According to Rama Lakshmi, writing in The Washington Post: "For the first time since 1996, India will have a coalition government that is not fragile and unwieldy and that has a relatively strong center. The outgoing coalition government...was sustained by a handful of communist parties that eventually withdrew support over a controversial civilian nuclear agreement concluded last year between India and the United States."

$3 billion was spent on the campaign—about $600 million more than was spent during last year's presidential campaign in the United States, reported The New York Times. Of course, much was expended on TV spots and newspaper ads, but text messages were also sent to many of the 400 million cell-phone users, and priests were even hired to perform rituals in support of candidates and parties. One medium that was used less than in the past was posters, since India's election commission issued a ban on their display in public, if permission has not been granted to put them up, according to The Times. Web sites were also evident—with the BJP emulating Barack Obama's online example.

Previously, posters were rated as the fifth most important medium in campaigns by Indian campaign managers, behind rallies and daily newspapers, public television, and radio, but ahead of private television, direct mail, and magazines. For more on Indian politics and posters, see a previous blog entry and the book, Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History.