We can't win on the high road (4.00 / 1)

Hopefully this last week will serve as a wake-up call to the Obama campaign. They cannot win this election by taking the high road. They need to attack. They need to define John McCain.

The ad tying McCain to oil companies is a good start, but they need to ramp it up, and fast. Nothing should be off limits. Hit McCain on his consistent support for Bush. Hit him on his foreign policy confusion. Hit him on the way he left his first wife (Seriously - if older white women are a swing voting bloc, how many of them do you think will be able to stomach voting for McCain once that story is out there?). Get on offense and stay there.

And if Obama can't keep that kind of sustained attack on McCain up through the election, he needs to pick a running mate who can.

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by: NR @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:22:59 PM CDT

This is where defunding the 527's hurt (4.00 / 1)

Hit him on the way he left his first wife (Seriously - if older white women are a swing voting bloc, how many of them do you think will be able to stomach voting for McCain once that story is out there?). Get on offense and stay there.

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:30:17 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

The Obama campaign is attacking (4.00 / 3)

Look at the new energy ad.  And as I said before, I think David Gergen's comments will percolate into the media and help the coverage a bit.  

Don't get so caught by the distractions and the day-to-day.  This campaign is different from the ones that went before.  I believe that Obama has to be careful about his attacks so as not to appear to be the big, scary black guy beating up on the little old man.  I think he's playing it right, and wouldn't be surprised if his VP weren't more of an attacker.  And I think the Obama camp has shown a very subtle appreciation of how and over what they can set McCain off.

The electorate is in a very different place this time.  In 2004 Bush was still positive on the popularity meter and the GOP brand was riding high.  People knew Rove was a dirty fighter, but not how dirty.  People began to wise up almost immediately in 2005 when Bush went after Social Security and then Schiavo and then Katrina hit.  Bush began his death spiral.  Moreover, most people are much worse off economically now.  We are in a recession, but it is a consumer-led recession because of the fall in housing prices and the rise in gas and food prices.  That makes people much more receptive on economic issues, where Dems are way ahead, and makes the juvenile McCain attacks less "sticky" and more damaging to him in the long run.

So yes, Obama is behind where "generic (white) Dem" would be.  But he has lots of money, people aren't going to be as easily distracted, McCain is going to perform horribly in the debates, and Obama is likely to win over enough people in enough states to win, even if he doesn't do it quite the way you want.

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

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by: Mimikatz @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 15:25:28 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Chris ... (4.00 / 1)

you are right ... but I have to believe that Obama knows what he is doing ... he is trying to consolidate his power with in the party ... how he does that by defunding Progressive organizations is beyond me

Democratic bloggers and television analysts need to accept that if they want to fight this battle they need to scrap the entire ineffective strategy they're using and start from scratch.

What Democratic television analysts(I don't mean Olbermann and Maddow) are the crew at 538 talking about?  Most of the supposed Democrats on TV are awful.  I've watched Tweety and and Wolf Blitzer and it is just painful.  Just look at John Kerry knee capping Wes Clark yesterday.  I know it is not like Democrats to do, but we need a more coherent strategy for the talking head TV shows.  Given the constraints of TV, we do need to develop talking points and stick to them.  I know it sucks but we have no alternative for now.

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:29:04 PM CDT

I asked that question at a Netroots Nation panel (4.00 / 1)

  Essentially, I just wanted to know why the Democrats continue to be represented on TV by the most vapid, equivocal, deferential-to-Republican doormats possible. Why put Bob Shrum out there to get eaten alive when you've got a Cliff Schechter available who can rip a few new ones into any Republican opponent? Why is Harold Ford occupying the "Democratic" space on countless talking-head shows when REAL Democrats sit on the sidelines? Why are the roundtables composed of two slick fast-talking Republicans, an "objective" host, and one shoegazing self-hating Democrat? Where do all these wimps come from?

 I didn't get a good answer -- I guess nobody really knows why the Democrats are so clueless about the media. Including the presidential candidate.  

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

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by: Master Jack @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 16:30:57 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

How much does the party .. (0.00 / 0)

push someone like Ford .. as compared to the bookers on those shows asking for him? .. is CNN comfortable with the phony Robert Zimmerman? .. or some of the other hacks they have on?  Can't CNN also do any better than Carville and Begala?  Has anyone ever asked Cliff why he's never on CNN?  Does Cliff even have an agent(which would help get him on I imagine)?  I know Ezra Klein has been on Hardball once or twice .. but not lately

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by: Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 19:04:59 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Since I wrote it (4.00 / 2)

I'll amplify my comment.

Polling data shows that the three main partisan categories of the American public (Dem, Rep, Ind) believe, by not close margins, that the press actively favors Obama and is trying to help him win.  If you click the link to my post at 538 you will see that the Pew survey on voter attitudes about press bias form the basis of the analysis.

When I say the Democratic blogosphere isn't being effective, here's what I mean.  I am a Democratic partisan, and I vehemently agree that the press is giving McCain a free ride.  I cited three examples in the graf Chris quoted, but there are countless more.  However, our collective attempts to take this factual knowledge and push it out into the public awareness has been a failure.  Just look at the Pew polling numbers in my post that Chris didn't cite.  Also, I italicized "Democratic" as in even "it's not even close among Democratic voters that the press favors Obama."

I'm not really sure how more 527 attack ads on behalf of Obama would make Americans believe that the press was more on McCain's side in its coverage.  Where this all began was during the primary, the Clinton whining ala Alan Keyes in the debate about getting the first question (itself a questionable assertion on top of which usually it's a good thing to get to answer first so you can be the aggressor), then her overt trumpeting the SNL parody of the press loving Obama.  She chose to push that argument and so it set in months ago.

Perhaps where I erred was somehow implying - which was not my intent - that it was solely the blogoshpere's responsibility to take its mavenhood (to use the Gladwell terminology) knowledge bank and push it out to the public.  I look around at stories like the US Attorneys scandal, which TPM owned and pushed into the public eye, and I know that Democratic partisan bloggers can do this.  I also know that we're trying to influence the public debate and inform the public.

But right now what you have constantly is outraged rant diaries at DKos reaching the top of the rec list, stridently furious that David Gregory or some such dared to talk about an Obama issue on a day when McCain was nearly literally gaffe-a-minute.  I read probably a hundred posts, articles, diaries, etc. a day, and I can't count the number of "look at what the press is letting McCain get away with!" posts there are everywhere.  So why isn't that permeating public opinion?  

The vast, vast majority of Democratic voters who pay almost no attention to what we write and say online continue to think, by huge margins, that the press loves Obama and is trying to help him win.  That's a major disconnect.  Something isn't clicking with us.  When we have an example of some protection of McCain by the media we rant and rail, and it just isn't working.  I don't think MoveOn or Vote Vets running ads about McCain's bad votes is going to change that.

I mean, only 10% of Democratic voters think the press favors McCain.  That's indefensible.  That's blogosphere failure to reach beyond our own echo chamber.  That's failure on the part of all the "Democratic guy/gal" on political talk shows to talk about these things.  That's their job and our job, and we need a radical makeover, if, and that's a big IF as I said in the piece at 538, we really want to make expend our energy on that argument.

Surely Chris isn't saying, if only we had 527s we could run ads whining about press favoritism.  Because that's the kind of thing losing campaigns do.

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by: PocketNines @ Tue Aug 05, 2008 at 01:10:21 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

527 Defunding (0.00 / 0)

was a serious strategic mistake. I sometimes fear that the Obama campaign is more interested in what they seem to see as their mission to "transform" American politics than in winning the election.  

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by: Jeff Davis @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:32:24 PM CDT

Blame the 527s, too. (4.00 / 2)

They apparently just sat there and took this. You didn't see them throwing any elbows of their own.

Frankly, there's enough doubt about Obama's tepid 'post-partisan whateverthefuck' among progressives who support him to vigorously fund some attack 527s. I know I'd give money to a 527 dedicated to a) attacking McCain during this election and then b) vigorously pressuring Obama once he's in office.

There was a conversation for a time at OL about the need for independent progressive power centers that Obama didn't, and couldn't, co-opt. Well, there's an opening here for any progressive organization that wants to play that role; not just now, but into the forseeable future.

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by: Joel @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:42:33 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I like (b) (4.00 / 2)

A consistent problem in American media is that persons who either functionally are (Kerry) or have a stated interest in pursuing (Obama) centrism are presented as The Most Liberal People In The World by the right and, thus, by the media. This serves to shut out anyone who's legitimately left of center from the national debate; if Obama is The Most Liberal Person Ever, then anyone who's left of Obama is by definition nonexistent, invisible. We need to have a coherent source speaking for unapologetic progressives in this country, an organ to pressure Obama from the left, some kind of nationwide equivalent of the Courage Campaign. This might not even be something Obama himself minds! since visible shows of public progressivism might give him cover to indulge his more progressive instincts if he has the excuse he's just giving the people what they want. MoveOn is the closest thing we have to this but (1) they are-- appropriately, I think-- now integrated with the Obama machine and thus likely cannot altogether serve to pressure the Obama machine and (2) they do seem kinda disorganized at times and have possibly not done as well as they possibly could have at shaping how they appear in the media. I don't know if a 527 is the best way to do it, but maybe we could and should do more beyond just MoveOn.

Meanwhile I think it's pretty clear that a big reason why the Obama campaign is trying to shut out 527s is that they're opposed to the use of 527s as a campaign finance dodge and they're trying to preserve their moral authority to denounce 527s as a concept without the return fingerpointing that they themselves have benefited from 527s, as we saw happen to Kerry. Well, a 527 that satisfies your (b)-- i.e., which is not just disconnected from Obama, but is openly and institutionally on some issues in active disagreement with him-- maybe wouldn't cause this problem.

This said, doesn't VoteVets basically fit your criteria for support? They're tough on McCain, they're running ads, and they're independent of to the point of being (alleges OpenLeft) actively cut off by the Obama campaign.

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by: mcc @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 17:00:09 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Absolutely, I think that pursuing 'b' definitely (0.00 / 0)

enables 'a'. Overt opposition to Obama--not just on policy  but on politics--is definitely valuable, not just for progressives but for the Obama campaign, too.

(And I've gotta say I worry that you're right about 'preserving moral authority', which is so laughably naive I'm ... well, crying.)

Seems to me that VoteVets meets some of my criteria. They've got the passion and purpose to do what they do, and not go on bended knee to the Obama campaign. But I'm not sure they're in action opposition ... and more important, they're a (wonderful) issue group, not broad enough for our purposes, I think.

And good point about The Most Liberal People In The World. I've long thought that something like that was crippling the progressive moment. Because, I think, many many left-leaning politicians buy it. They think, 'I embody the farthest left political position any rational person can take, so anyone farther left is by definition irrational.'

Whereas the right, I think, tends to see those who are farther right as 'more pure'. "Well, I'm engaged in practical politicking, so I've gotta be pragmatic, but those raving wingnuts to my right are, actually, the true conservatives ..."

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by: Joel @ Tue Aug 05, 2008 at 08:11:22 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

I think the way things stand now, we have already lost this race. (0.00 / 0)

and goddammit, the rest of my fucking gay-ass life with rightwing SCOTUS is too much to bear.

McCain is defining Obama.  Obama is neither defining himself nor McCain.  I know McCain.  I used to live in Arizona.  I was (and i am ashamed ashamed ashamed) to admit it, but I was involved with the AZ GOP party in the early to mid-nineties.  I know McCain, he will sell his wife to get the presidency.  Btw, where are all the stories?  Someone find the former Arizona Dept of Transportation Secy Republican Alberto Rodriguez?  His LIFE was threatened by McCain PERSONALLY at one point in the 90s.  McCain smashed a phone and physically accosted the Attorney General Grant Woods, the AG at the time for refusing John McCain's demand that he (Woods) "lay off" and not investigate the then Governor Fife Symington for illegal dealings involving developers (what else, in Arizona would that be? haha).  And Where did I hear that about McCain attacking Woods?  From Grant's own fucking mouth.  He wrote by rec letter for law school.  But we've since been out of touch.  Woods is a good man, a liberal Republican, and one of the key people helping the Siegelman fella in Alabama.

We need to attack and define McCain NOW.  And if Obama's camp won't do it, then perhaps a 527 on our side will.  So, DOES ANYONE KNOW OF ANY 527S THAT ARE/WILL DO THIS?????  Because I want to fund them right now in lieu of all the money i keep giving to Obama.

Oh, and before the inevitable, "why don't YOU get those McCain stories public", I have ZERO contacts with media folk.

Oh, another little tidbit.  After not standing for him at an event in 1995 in California, he knew I was from Arizona and it embarrassed him that a homestater (who had been introduced as such) didn't stand during a standing ovation, he told me, red-faced and to my face...actually right IN MY FACE:  "you name here____________better watch your fucking back in Arizona."  Direct quote.

I want a 527 and i want one now to give money to.

For some reason, it seems that Obama has some pathological and deep-seated psychological need for Republicans to like him.  Seriously.  It's weird.

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by: avenged savant @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:34:16 PM CDT

Damn Chris, there may be a point about styles and amounts of attack (4.00 / 1)

and even an argument on funding outside organizations but this isn't it.

And "if Obama looses this" is almost silly.

Being right soon enough? I have never understood this need.

Change
"We must break up the banks and never again let them get so big that they distort our politics and take down the economy.

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by: HousesofProgress @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:38:20 PM CDT

i like an Edwards pick. It makes sense. (0.00 / 0)

For some reason, it seems that Obama has some pathological and deep-seated psychological need for Republicans to like him.  Seriously.  It's weird.

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by: avenged savant @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:41:37 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Attack for sure (4.00 / 1)

But coupled with the quick hit about Dem self-identification dropping (R's didn't go up, D's went down), could Obama's sag (such as it is or isn't) be folks on the left getting frustrated?

We certainly see this in Congressional approval ratings, in which neither the Left or the Right are happy. I wonder if Obama's numbers might be taking a hit from people who are a bit disillusioned and frustrated but will potentially come home again if he...attacks.

John McCain opposes the GI Bill.

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by: Lucas O'Connor @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:53:46 PM CDT

MoveOn still making ads? (0.00 / 0)

I heard that their "527" arm was shut down or something, but it seems like they're still making ads?  How about some ads talking attacking McCain's moral fiber?  There's plenty of material..

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by: leshrac55 @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 14:55:51 PM CDT

Stay on Offense (4.00 / 2)

It should come as no surprise to the Obama people that the race has tightend up so much with all these attacks coming from McCain. What's bewildering is that one would have thought that the Obama campaign is smart enough to realize the basic principle of campaigns: stay on the offensive.

It's clear that McCain has been winning the media narrative as of late, with the media focusing on whether Obama is arrogant, or whether he supports the troops. Where are all the stories about McCain's negatives? We cannot blame the media 100% for this, as it is the Obama campaign that has yet to make a hard push at defining McCain in negative terms.

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by: boomersun @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 15:10:28 PM CDT

fucking precisely. (0.00 / 0)

For some reason, it seems that Obama has some pathological and deep-seated psychological need for Republicans to like him.  Seriously.  It's weird.

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by: avenged savant @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 15:41:43 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

I'm afraid Obama is still stuck in the primary (4.00 / 1)

He kept saying he wouldn't let himself be Swiftboated but it seems that was just more talk. His campaign's approach seems to be to stick with what worked for them in the primary, ignoring that the game has changed.  

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by: vosh @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 16:17:47 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Two basic truths (4.00 / 1)

  1. The political media in the US is an atrocity.

  2. The Democrats do nothing to help themselves.

  Not mutually exclusive by any means...

"We judge ourselves by our ideals; others by their actions. It is a great convenience." -- Howard Zinn

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by: Master Jack @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 16:33:01 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Chris, go back and read your post on panic (4.00 / 2)

There is really no point in getting caught by the every day ebb and flow here.  The race is going to be a little fluid.  It goes this way and that.  It has NOT suddenly lurched irrevocably to McCain.  There is some serious  reaction to McCain in the media now.  Obama is hitting his stride on economic issues.  Sure the trad med is going to try to detract from Obama's appeal, but that doesn't mean it is going to always work.  People here really need to take up meditation or something that allows one to gain some distance and perspective and not always be so reactive to every little negative bit of news.  It reminds me of the primary.  And that turned out ok, remember?

John McCain--He's not who you think he is.

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by: Mimikatz @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 15:34:10 PM CDT

I don't know... (4.00 / 1)

About this: "John McCain's campaign website has 5,540 mentions of Obama, and 21,900 mentions of McCain. That comes out to a 4-1 ratio of McCain's campaign talking about himself versus talking about Obama.

Obama's campaign website, by contrast, has 5,680,000 mentions of Obama, and 628,000 mentions of McCain, for a 9-1 ratio."

I have spent a fair amount of time prowling the two candidates' websites, and one obvious reason for this, which has nothing to do with attacks, is that Obama has much more detailed position papers, and many more of them. Since Obama's position papers spend a lot of time saying things like "Obama's plan" and "Obama will do X", a lot of this could be due to that factor alone.

I'm also curious: does your method of counting capture blog entries (the ones posted by people other than the campaign)?

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by: hilzoy @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 15:37:12 PM CDT

Hanging the Point on Ratios? (4.00 / 1)

I don't understand why you would discount the size of the sites to make your point. If Obama's site is bigger, then he's "saying" more things - so even if proportionately fewer of them are attacks, he would still be making "more" attacks by your metric.

It might be interesting to see how often he's criticizing McCain in his speeches, in his ads, and in his daily talking points, at which point we could possibly see if the problem is what he's saying or how it's being reported on.

I also don't understand the constant focus on the 527s or lack thereof. There were 527s galore in 2004 and I don't remember them being able to define Bush or undo whatever negative impressions people formed of Kerry. The independent organization ads from VoteVets and MoveOn that have been praised so often here don't seem to have done much to shape the debate either.

I dunno. I have a feeling that the convention is going to be the key moment in terms of message and staging, and I agree that there needs to be some criticisms of where the country has been along with the talk about where we're going to take it.

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by: Dave Thomer @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 18:16:12 PM CDT

nothing progressive about a 527 (0.00 / 0)

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by: aiko @ Mon Aug 04, 2008 at 22:38:28 PM CDT