A New Direction

Mark Coffey of the soon to be renamed "Decision '08" opines that McCain has been barking up the wrong tree:

What Has Doomed The McCain Campaign?  The Wrong Strategy

Sigh…there are apparently a number of conservatives, both prominent and rank-and-file, who think that Americans right now are riveted by accusations of associations with anti-American radicals in Barack Obama’s past. Maybe this is so, and I’ve slipped off into some Bizarro alternate universe - but in the world that I’m living in, people are concerned about the economy, about their credit, about their mortgages, about their jobs, and about their future. I don’t see a lot of appetite for dwelling in the past.

Hmm.  Since I have been pushing at the Ayers story for months one might wonder how I feel about that.  In a word, conflicted - I think it is stunning that the press has coronated a man with a vaporous resume about whom there are so many unanswered questions, so I am happy to thump the press for failing to even pretend to fulfill their watchdog function.

However, I have ocassionally held out the faint hope of a positive, issues-oriented campaign from McCain.  I thought he could ride his perceived strength on national security and a politically more palatable "all of the above" energy plan into the White House.  As a bonus, McCain could have talked about education reform and hoped the conversation drifted inevitably to Bill Ayers by way of his repeated collaborations with Obama on public school reform in Chicago.  Bush never took the lead in kicking the Swift Boat accusations into the news in 2004 so it was plausible that McCain could let others promote the Ayers issue this time around (or what use is this Right Wing Noise Machine, anyway?)

Enough of my kvetching and back to Mark's kvetching:

But there is nothing new about this, and in no way, shape, or form, is this the ‘October Surprise’ that those flogging these stories seem to think it is. We already knew about Obama’s associations with Wright and Ayers, and we know their views already. If Wright and Ayers have not harmed the Obama candidacy irreparably already, there is little reason to believe they will now.

However, by pursuing this angle relentlessly, McCain proponents are actually doing him a giant disservice, and to the extent McCain plays along, he is harming his prospects even further. There is ample evidence that the McCain camp is seen by a substantial part of the voting public as overly negative, and that this perception is harming McCain. McCain’s greatest strength has always been his character, and the tone of the campaign has sullied that reputation, much as the negativity of the Clintons harmed their public standing.

I understand that McCain is behind, and this strategy might be somewhat more understandable if it were having a positive impact in the polling, but that is clearly not the case. The McCain campaign was making real progress towards making the race competitive with the “Obama is the most famous guy on the planet, but is he ready to lead?” punchline…but the selection of Palin made that pitch untenable, and he has been flailing around helplessly ever since, with the exception of a brief bounce during the convention fueled, in large part, by Palin’s admittedly quite strong debut in her convention speech. But as Palin becomes more and more an object of ridicule rather than admiration, the former emphasis on experience that is now forgone is increasingly missed.

I don't know.  Part of "Is he ready to lead?" is "Who is Obama?" and that questions segues nicely to Bill Ayers, hard left education reform and the repeated lies from the Obama camp.

However, this sure works a lot better when the press does its job without constant goading from the candidate.  Look at Joe the Plumber - he has received more media scrutiny in a day that Ayers received in a year, yet Ayers reflects much more closely on Obama's judgment than Joe TP does on McCain.

As to Sarah Palin - groan.  I was not a fan but a lot of Republicans are and there is still the possibility that her crowds and energy will tip the race in a few key states (of which mine was not one).  I also thought that McCain was making a mistake in tossing away the leadership card but obviously before the convention his strategists concluded that they were about to ride "Ready to Lead from Day One" right to a second place finish alongside Hillary.  [Hmm - Mark and Peggy, sitting in a tree.  Sorry, sittin'.]

More gloom:

Those of us who revere the memory of President Reagan can only speculate as to how he would have handled the [economic crisis] if he were alive today and campaigning, but I can state with 100% certainty that he would have delivered a rousing defense of the animating ideas of such stalwarts of free markets as the late, great Milton Friedman, and I also feel quite confident that his own innate optimism would have inspired Americans far more than the current hand wringing so in vogue.

...

This message, though, essential as it is, has been made ineffective by McCain’s inconsistency, praising the market on one hand, while slapping at the ‘greed’ of modern Wall Street with the other. Further, his policy prescriptions for what ails us do not show a faith in the market. To give one example, his proposal for a systemic renegotiation of mortgage principal would be enormously expensive and probably unworkable, and a massive government intervention in marketplaces when we are already swimming in such interventions.

You go to the polls with the candidate you have.  McCain has never been a big free markets guy and here we are.  It's maddening, one example being McCain's mortgage meltdown.  Mark's Big Finish:

Those who criticize McCain as weak for not bringing up Ayers more show a fundamental misunderstanding of the man, and of the moment. Now is not the time for negativity and dwelling on the past - now is the time for a positive vision of America’s future. And right now, Barack Obama is doing a better job of meeting that objective.

Yes, Obama is.  But this is far from over!  Did the Red Sox quit last night when trailing 7-0 in the seventh?  They did not!  Did they quit when the Cleveland Indians had them down three games to one last year?  They did not!  Did they quit when the Yankees had them down three games to none in 2004?  They did not!  And am I sick of hearing about the 'effing Red Sox, who cried like shcoolgirls after Mariano stifled them in 2003?  Yes I am!

Comments

[madawaskan]

You should hear the pathetic ads here in my Western swing state that Obama is doing-

He. Is. On. THE ROPES.

McCain should bomb the hell out of the San Diego area with the Ayers ads just to drive up the popular vote if that's needed.

He should hit the naval areas of Virginia with the ads, I think he's been hitting Colorado and it looks like it's working.

Colorado Springs is home to Peterson Field, the Aerospace Command out there, the Air Force Academy-with a large number of retired Air Force there, and Fort Carson.

They are going to "get" that you don't hang out with a guy who tried to bomb Fort Dix even if he was unsuccessful and has been given the honorific of-

College Professor.

College Professor-w'ere Americans we don't get impressed like the English keneggets with "titles" around here.

[sbw]

Huh?

[sbw]

That "huh" applied to the original blog entry. Reading it I felt like I was caught in the middle of a McCain speech.

[bio mom]

"revere Ronald Reagan". That's the problem. The Reagan obsessers have been the biggest reason for the decline of conservatives IMHO. They are constantly whining, brook no deviations from the orthodoxy, and continuously give ammunition to their opposition. The press just loves to tout it when they criticize McCain as they do when they criticized Busy. A Bill Kristol knock against the McCain campaign last Sunday was immediately used by Tom Brokaw on Meet the Press, almost as soon as he said it. That's called cutting off your nose to spite your face.

[bio mom]

Bush, not Busy.

[clarice]

Sorry but his kvetching reminds me of the scene in Animal House where Katy saves Boon from arrest by breathlessly warning the cops there's looting going on at the Piggly Wiggly.

[hrtshpdbox]

It would be nice to have a positive uplifting message if the media would cover it, but they're a lot more brazen about their partisan coverage than they were back in 1980 - it's not applicable to ask "what would Reagan do?". Not enough voters realize that Obama is a man with no accomplishements, dicey associations, and classic lib policy prescriptions; that message needs to be hammered constantly right up until election day. At the end of the day, the anti-Obama vote will be more important to the GOP than the pro-McCain vote; that's just the way it is, and the phoney-baloney lamentations about it are just noise.

[clarice]

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/plumber-savaged-obamas-socialism-ignored

Just a reminder of the atmosphere in the media and how silly the kvetcher is ..

[Pofarmer]

It would be nice to have a positive uplifting message if the media would cover it

And there, in a neat little heart shaped box, is the problem.

[rhodeymark]

"We already knew about Obama’s associations with Wright and Ayers, and we know their views already. If Wright and Ayers have not harmed the Obama candidacy irreparably already, there is little reason to believe they will now."
---------------------
Operative word "We". The zombie masses don't assimilate information that way, and they know it. That is why Mark Foley and Augusta National ran non-stop. They blur a story or two that they wish to disappear, then "move on". Or, if dragged back, kicking and screaming, they respond as in the mentioned piece. What this tells me is that IT WORKS, IS WORKING - and they don't like it one bit.

[steve sturm]

Because conservative Republicans don't think the same way as do moderates and squishy Democrats, by definition, what motivates a conservative Republican is NOT going to work on anybody but a conservative Republican. Thus, beating on Ayers, Wright and ACORN is like trying to get an Arab to buy a car based on its gas mileage, you just ain't going to make that sale (and no matter how loud you all yell that gas mileage is really, really important, and that the salesman really, really needs to keep pushing this, all you are going to do is make me want to tune you out).

And while you're right that there are undercurrents to the Obama-Ayers and Obama-Wright relationships that hint at defects in the way Obama thinks and operates, here again, by definition, undecided voters, who don't dwell about this as you have, aren't going to see what you're talking about and thus won't be persuaded to vote on that basis.

McCain needs to stop listening to people who have already decided to vote for him and start listening to people who haven't yet made up their mind.

[ben]

The problem is not that Ayers and Wright and Rezko are not important. The problem is that the MSM has successfully put out the message that it's not important, Hope and Change is important. And the MSM is winning the battle. The Ayers and Wright connections have the potential to harm Obama but the MSM is playing defense for him.

[rhodeymark]

RAILA ODINGA also drives 'em crazy (and scares the hell outta Hillary Dems - I know this). Even Snopes has stooped to outright obfuscation on this charged issue:

"Although the Obama campaign acknowledged that Senator Obama spoke to Raila Odinga by telephone "for about five minutes" in January 2008 (he also made a public appearance with Odinga during a trip to Kenya in August 2006), we could find nothing substantiating the claim that "Obama and Raila speak daily."

Liars. The Youtube video clearly has clips of Obama & Odinga on multiple occasions in different dress, and contemporary reports described them as practically inseparable during his time in Kenya.

[rhodeymark]

steve sturm - why exactly do you think conservatives and patriotic scoundrels were lighting into McCain? Because he was doing what YOU said - going for the squishy middle when we were sitting on all this (should be) damning info. In the voting booth, at the moment of truth, people have to be given a reason to pause before voting themselves a helping from Big Brother Gummint.

[steve sturm]

Ben: keep telling yourself that they're really important. If you all ever got out of the conservative cocoon, you'd see that Ayers and Rezko just don't matter to the people whose votes are going to decide this election. You all have a choice: you can keep beating your head against the wall trying to get voters to listen to you on Ayers, or you can find an issue that matters*. My guess is that you all will do the former.

* issues that don't matter: Ayers, Rezko, Acorn, whether Obama is a US citizen, having the Democrats in control of both the White House and Congress, Obama's plans to raise taxes on the 5%, thug tactics by Obama supporters, MSM support for Obama, Biden's serial exaggerations, Obama's willingness to meet with our enemies, Obama's lack of experience, Obama's lack of 'reaching across the aisle', McCain's experience as a POW, and McCain's claiming to be the 'maverick'...

[Cecil Turner]

It would be nice to have a positive uplifting message if the media would cover it . . .

Yep, that's it in a nutshell (and the reason the Palin pick was essential, as it allowed a tiny sliver of unscheduled coverage). Like it or not, the MSM still shapes the narrative. And while the blogosphere can fact-check and occcasionally blow the lid on a spiked story, the gatekeepers are still alive (if not well), and following the Grey Lady's lead . . . at least for a while longer.

But McCain's big problem is the credit meltdown, and the media's successful pinning of the crisis on the GOP. And I'm afraid I also have to point out the one glimmer of truth to that meme is the one John pointed out to widespread derision: the SEC's failure to regulate to the limit (and preferably past) of its authority.

[MayBee]

now is the time for a positive vision of America’s future. And right now, Barack Obama is doing a better job of meeting that objective.

Of course Obama is doing a better job of that. It is all he has.
McCain has tried in many ways to tell people to vote for the man based on his record, but people want to vote for the Obama of the future instead.
Is it because his vision of the future for America is brighter? Or because he's done such an excellent job painting America as a dark, unpopular place in the past 20 years?

[Charlie (Colorado)]

And while we all moan about the lost election, the new AP/Yahoo poll is out and has Obama and McCain within the margin of error (44/42) in a sample that's weighted 4/3 Democrat. (See Drudge.) Most of the polls are tightening, even ones with hard-to-support sampling and voter turnout assumptions (see this WSJ article.) And ACORN vote fraud stories are making it onto CNN.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Oh, and only 58 percent of Hillary supporters were backing Obama not too long ago.

[badjoe]

The muddle is tempted by Obama's promise of tax cuts for 95% of Americans.

[badjoe]

Palin said she and McCain have called for Obama to release his communications with ACORN.

[badjoe]

A newd irection story from timesonline:

Secret coded messages are being embedded into child pornographic images, and paedophile websites are being exploited as a secure way of passing information between terrorists.

Terrorist chatter is accelerating.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

So I'm a little pissed off at Ace (he linked me on the New Mexico stuff with a flaming skull, then backed down, then found the same press release in his own email and now he just found it on "someone's blog", so I'm not going to link or say I found this via his blog) but here's a right nice line by Tacitus, from a very good post about Noonan et al: "You’ve made a choice that will make it easier for you to maintain your credibility as thought leaders and journalists. There is no nobler choice for supporting a particular candidate than self-preservation."

[badjoe]

LUN for the porn story.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

badjoe, do you have a link?

Steganography as a way to conceal messages in photos is an old idea, like, I was researching it in the mid-80's.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Yeah, like that. Thanks.

[badjoe]

Supremes sided with Ohio SoS.

[Charlie (Colorado)]

Geeeez. Why are they interested? Because they're worried about Muslim youths being exploited by older men.

WORRY ABOUT THEM BLOWING SHIT UP, YOU MORONS!

Cripes.

[Pagar]

Issues that matter to me:

"* Ayers, Rezko, Acorn, whether Obama is a US citizen, having the Democrats in control of both the White House and Congress, Obama's plans to raise taxes on the 5%, thug tactics by Obama supporters, MSM support for Obama, Biden's serial exaggerations, Obama's willingness to meet with our enemies, Obama's lack of experience, Obama's lack of 'reaching across the aisle', McCain's experience as a POW," and the complete fraud from the Democrats in every thing they touch. Which is every thing.

I and the people who believe as I do will vote to insure that McCain/Palin are elected in 2008.

I just don't understand how people can say they don't care whether Obama is a citizen, they don't care whether the thugs that work for Obama stole the Democrat presidential primary. That Rezko, Acorn and Ayers don't matter. That Obama's willingness to meet with our enemies doesn't matter. That sounds like the same things a lot of Cubans were saying as Castro came down out of the mouintains.

[SunnyDay]

"He should hit the naval areas of Virginia with the ads, I think he's been hitting Colorado and it looks like it's working."

McCain and Palin have both been here (Norfolk area) - the military vote is not an issue, IMO (if they all get counted), but the "inner city" areas and the government employees will vote as they always do - dem. My precinct is pretty much Repub.

They're really after Thelma Drake's seat, too. I think she's secure, but it's hard to tell. There are a lot of Robo calls distorting her record - SEIU-COPE is one of them.

At least we don't have early voting or absentee voting unless you fill out a form and have a legitimate reason not to vote in person. We've had picture ID for a number of years now.

I read about ACORN coming to VA a while back, but now I hear nothing - I don't think VA's system is compatible with their methods. I'm expecting someone to try to change that at some point in the future. Unless we can convince all the DC escapees in NO VA to go back where they came from. If they like Dem government so much, they shoulda stayed in DC or MD. :P

[Laura]

Sunny Day,
Think you're right about tidewater. There are quite a few young military who will vote Obama for strictly age, race, not wanting to deploy(why did they ever join up I wonder), but in general the military makes this is a rep especially McCain stronghold. Non military people I speak to are really worried about Obama and what havoc a very liberal/left government will do. The rally Monday seemed to open people up to talking about the election and laying their cards on the table.

Gotta love Thelma, I have been very impressed with her over the last couple of years. Lots of ourtreach with some solid results.

[SunnyDay]

I kinda crack up at the Dem characterization of VA as a potential blue state - we've got to be the most bipartisan state in the union. Where else do they have a Dem governor, Repub Lt Gov, and Repub Atty Gen. :D

The thing is, the Dems that get elected here are almost as conservative as the republicans. The state legislature has had Tim Kaine hogtied his entire term.

Laura, I'm in Drake's district. She's doing a terrific job. She was supposed to speak at the convention but got bumped by the hurricane. Maybe the party has plans for her future?

[Syl]

Damn!

The Obama/Ayers connection IS ALL ABOUT THE ECONOMY, stupid.

They're not separate issues at all. Redistribution of income. Where would Obama get such a notion outside his circle of fellow travelers? Ayers and Rev Wright are both part of that circle and close to being if not actual Marxists.

Is there anything, anything at all, that would show Obama has had a paradigm shift in his approach to economic matters recently? He states he has advisors around him such as Warren Buffet but what gives us confidence Obama will do more than nod? Well, he won't demagogue, he is practical and won't push things too far too fast. But push he will.

Obama's personality is softspoken and even-keeled so he will be more subtle in his efforts and hide them inside causes such as growing cadres of more and more Obamabots.

And THAT answers the question of what do Ayers and Wright et al see in Obama that caused them to mentor him and push him forward. Obama does not seem frightening to the average person!

[badjoe]

Obama does not seem frightening to the average person!

Then I'm not average because he scares me to death.

[Enlightened]

"Obama's personality is softspoken and even-keeled so he will be more subtle in his efforts and hide them inside causes such as growing cadres of more and more Obamabots."

Like he said in his "memoir"

BHO

“One of those tricks I had learned: People were satisfied so long as you were courteous and smiled and made no sudden moves. They were more than satisfied; they were relieved — such a pleasant surprise to find a well-mannered young black man who didn't seem angry all the time.”

[Syl]

Enlightened

Like he said in his "memoir"

Bingo!

[narciso]

I'm sorry, but Mark's really pissed me off with that comment. Who had 'his hair on fire' for much of the early 00s about the Subprime crisis. John McCain. Who knew it's important enough to exacerbate a financial panic, unlike Barak Obama. When the Congress
took a hike, who wanted to steer the Paulson plan through.took the time; forgoing
the debate. John McCain and who doesn't know his legislative resposibilities, when the 'hit fan the shan' Barak Obama. Who
hired a VP mostly likely to drop the
'football' on the way to the bunker. Argument has been made that Sarah doesn't fit the build of a standard VP. As if Lieberman, Pawlenty (are you serious) or Romney would have done better.

Could we anticipate every stupid (Dowd, Krugman, Herbert) downright deranged (Sullivan, Wolf, Lamott,) sexuallysalacious (too many to count, including Flynt's porn film)incendiary comment directed at Sarah, and McCain by proxy. Couric and Gibson's
chainsaw editing, Tina Fey's apotheosis of
a "Plastic" from "Mean Girls". While not chortling at Joe 'stuck in the lunch pail' Biden, and framing him as some kind of statesman. Only in the Ironic Jim Hacker "Yes, Prime Minister" sort of way.
Satire, is not what closes Saturday night, but apparently, whatever lies in the twilight zone, out 'where the buses don't run'.

Obama's campaign has taken advantage of every possible outright lie, partial distortion, convenient omission about McCain's tax, military, health;with the full cooperation of the media.

[pollyusa]

Back to the Redsox

Did they quit when the Yankees had them down three games to none in 2004? Hell No

games 4 and 5 2004

[Antimedia]

Everybody's an expert. Which begs the question. Why aren't you (addressed to all those who wish to pontificate on which strategies are working and which aren't) on the McCain campaign staff?

Perhaps it's because they know something the aforementioned "you" doesn't?