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There's been a lot of hand-wringing--here on OpenLeft and elsewhere, including the MSM--over McCain's celebrity ads, his new caricature of Obama, and whether his more aggressive, attention-grabbing message (over the last 10 days or so) has been hurting Obama by feeding into voter concerns with him.
People, including myself, have been reminded of August 2004.
I think there are a couple of substantive differences, though, and I think the Obama camp is aware of them:
First, the celebrity ads (and the immaturity that underlies them) are McCain ads, not third party ones. Bush had just enough distance in Aug. 2004 that he could plausibly deny affiliation with the SBVT. McCain, of course, cannot. Perhaps more important, unlike Bush, McCain's brand is about rejecting politics as usual and partisan bickering and a lot of the crap we see on CNN everyday. How do these ads do anything but fall into that gutter and hurt his brand? I think--MAYBE--Obama's people deliberately let McCain go negative and nasty first, because they think it is much more a double-edged sword for him than it is for them.
That's not to say the tightening of some state polls and the national polls (sort-of) isn't concerning. The Obama camp seems to have decided the June-August time was a period of occasional, concise, targeted moments of positive media coverage--the trip, the VP choice, the convention--rather than an aggressive, multi-faceted onslaught. A lot of people are upset--and worried--about their (at least until the last couple of days) lack of aggression, their inability to control the narrative.
I dunno. I feel like we're still missing something. It's as if they're lying in wait, guns primed, just biding their time. Maybe I'm wrong and they're just incompetent or weak(in reality, it's probably somewhere in between). But I find it hard to believe they aren't aware of all the concern popping up over the last couple weeks and the narrative McCain has produced. Despite Obama's response ads (and a couple of decent, if less-than-perfect, counter punches), I still feel like they're WAITING. Mike Lux calls it Beltway caution, and maybe it is. But what else could it be?
A grand strategy? I have no clue. I wish I knew, but we won't until after labor day. Until then, while we can raise red flags and warn them to get more aggressive, to control the message, we can't get Axelrod and Gibbs' attention any more than that letter in The Nation can get Obama's.
It's frustrating, ain't it?
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