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08.19.08 -- 7:51PM // link | recommend (11)

Fibbin'

From a Republican pal ...

You didn't get this from me, but use it as you will. Is it just me -- as a Republican knowing how we've played this game before -- or should there be genuine puzzlement why Obama isn't unleashing Democratic veterans (Jim Webb, Jack Reed, John Kerry, BOB Kerrey perhaps, etc. Some Democratic generals, whatever) to go after McCain on this "cross in the dirt" stuff? I mean, if there was one issue tailor-made for "Swift-Boat" payback, I can't think of anything else.

It ain't bean bag.

--Josh Marshall

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08.19.08 -- 7:43PM // link | recommend (9)

I'm still liking but not hearing this. From Chuck Schumer: "I would answer back hard. What do you mean [Obama's] not one of us? It's John McCain who wears $500 shoes, has six houses, and comes from one of the richest families in his state. It's Barack Obama who climbed up the hard way, and that's why he wants middle-class tax cuts and better schools for our kids."

A friend of mine just wrote in arguing, essentially, that the McCain character narrative is unstoppable. You can change the terms of the debate. But there's no way you're going to change people's minds about Mccain, warrior, tough guy, maverick, going to protect your family no matter what. My answer would be, with some people, especially a lot of them in DC but certainly elsewhere too, that's right. With others I'm not so sure. And that's why I really wish there was some independent group out there telling the full story of McCain's life prior to his POW captivity and especially after. $500 shoes. Thinks you're rich after your making $5 million a year. Has 9 or 10 houses.

It's not for everyone. But the guy's pampered. And he changes his beliefs every few years.

--Josh Marshall

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08.19.08 -- 7:20PM // link | recommend (10)

Another View

TPM Reader MR disagrees ...

I think we'll look back on August as when Obama won the election. August was when John McCain had the chance to define Obama and so cement a negative view of him that he could never recover. Now his time is almost up, the conventions are about to begin and we get into the full swing of the campaign. And what did McCain get out of his month? The Gallup tracking poll barely budged; most polls show Obama still with a modest lead, only slightly less than where he started a month or so ago. Obama's negatives are up somewhat -- no surprise after the pummeling he took -- but hardly up to critical levels. Unlike with Kerry, no single message has stuck -- he's a flipflopper! No, he's a scary leftist! No he's an empty celebrity! With no single negative image, the effect is likely to diffuse over time, especially with a successful Democratic convention. I think Obama's played this just right so far. Yes, lots of folks are complaining he hasn't gone after McCain enough but it simply wouldn't have worked. McCain has not been the story -- Obama has been. Unfair, sure, but that's the way it is. Obama's the new guy in town and everyone is trying to figure him out. So instead of fecklessly launching attack after attack on McCain only to have them disappear into the ether, he sat back and played rope-a-dope waiting for his moment. Now his moment is coming. The VP choice, the convention, the post-Labor Day sharpening of people's attention, the debates and the full onslaught of ads, money, and organization. Can he blow it? Sure. He's new to this. He can make the wrong VP choice. He can give an empty, if soaring, acceptance speech (or it could rain!) Hillary and Bill (especially Bill) could add a sour taste to the convention and make that the story. He could fall short of expectations in the debate. But all (or most of those) are under his control. I would *so* rather be Obama heading toward November than McCain. It's his for the taking if he just executes it right.

--Josh Marshall

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08.19.08 -- 6:37PM // link | recommend (20)

Readers Respond

From TPM Reader JT ...

Obama has a frustrating problem. He has arguably run one of the best branded websites and campaigns of any in American history. He's consistent on tone and graphic design. But that's where his branding advantage ends. While he has done an okay job at branding himself, he has failed dismally at branding John McCain.

You mentioned several ways that Obama can improve his messaging, but I'm skeptical any of these will be effective. Your suggestions focus on Bush's policies, and by proxy McCain's. But the arguments are all intellectual appeals to reflect on policy points having very little to do with John McCain, the man. Obama needs to own the branding of John McCain, the man. That's why Karl Rove's assessment about Obama at the country club works. It's a prototypical branding schema from which the entire message of John McCain's campaign is based. It's simple, and it speaks to the heart, not the mind.

To that end, I think the essence of Obama's campaign needs to be "John McCain will do anything to get elected." He will exploit his time as a POW and make up stories about his military "experience." He will flip-flop on any given number of issues -- Afghanistan, immigration, torture, tax cuts, etc. He will use racist appeals and attack Obama's patriotism to get elected.

"McCain. The candidate who will say anything to get elected."
This is short. And it's easy to remember. And it counters McCain's own branding of himself as a Maverick.

I confess I don't know why this point hasn't been hit harder or hasn't caught on more even irrespective of the campaign. Because here you've got a guy who's literally abandoned everything he supposedly used to believe in, all to be president. There really is nothing he wouldn't do.

TPM Reader CD, meanwhile, is very downcast ...

Just read your latest blog post, and am afraid to admit that I feel the same way as you. The only thing that has given me comfort recently --and I'm not able to find the quote exactly, so I'm paraphrasing -- was Plouffe saying "people need to understand much of the electorate decides very late in the game. In other words, I'm not concerned with polls." That makes me think they're hedging their bets, biding their time, etc. until the convention. That's my hope.

But my feeling is far less enthusiastic now. What's really bothered me has been McCain's celebrity ads, or rather, Obama's lack of vigilance in refuting the claims in these ads. The ads are working. How do I know? Because they're working on me. I'm a huge Obama supporter, and he's the first candidate I've given significant money to, and his lack of push back on the celebrity issue has planted the seed in my mind: "is he really so arrogant to think he doesn't need to refute these claims?" I'd like to see some conviction, some insult taken by Obama at these attacks. He is the outsider, he is the change candidate, and he does have more work to do to introduce himself to the voters.
Letting this celebrity-line-of-attack go so unchallenged, to me, is the worst way to go about doing that. He's letting McCain introduce Obama.

However, when he has taken the opportunity to respond to attacks, specifically Corsi's book, his responses have been so long-winded that I myself get bored of them. There is no sound bite, no decisiveness, no energy to the responses. A 42 page response to the book? While I'm sure it was exhaustive, how do you expect news media to cover that?
Where is the quick fatal blow in 42 pages? Supreme Court decisions are shorter.

Maybe it was the timing of his vacation. Hopefully he actually starts to saturate the country at/after the convention. But where is this money advantage? Where is this expert campaign that guided him through a rather monumental upset in the primaries? He coasted out the last remaining primary contests against Clinton, while she "found her
voice." It certainly feels, at least right now, that McCain picked up right where Clinton left off, and Obama is still coasting.

I'm a big believer in Obama's message. I think Bush is a criminal. I think our nation is in a truly perilous state. But for the first time since his campaign started, I'm truly worried and disappointed by him. He looks outclassed, outgunned, and outspun.

I'm an average American, I would say, and I believe I want what most Americans want: a fighter. I don't like to see, nor do I think the country likes to see, someone who isn't up for a fight, and right now Obama just doesn't appear up for a fight. This doesn't just worry me in terms of the political race, it worries me in terms of his ability to actually be President. Me, a progressive mind if there ever was one. That I have this perception should scare the bejesus out of the Obama campaign, because if there's one thing I've learned, I am not unique in these matters.

But then again, I'm not the expert, and Obama and Co. have knocked it out of the park before, so I wait and see.

--Josh Marshall

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08.19.08 -- 5:45PM // link | recommend (34)

Starting Gate

There's been a lot of chatter about the state of the race over the last week or two. Some fretting on the part of some Obama supporters; some McCain supporters thinking for the first time that he might have a shot at winning this thing. There's been some movement in the polls in McCain's favor in various key swing states and nationwide. But it's mainly a matter of cutting into Obama's lead.

Small shifts in polling numbers are very difficult to make sense of in August.

So I want to set that all aside and take stock of where the campaign seems to be in terms of each campaign's message. On this front, McCain's message is pretty clear and essentially twofold: 1) Obama is, in so many words, a frivolous phony, someone who really doesn't have any business running for president. 2) McCain is a strong leader who can defend the country. There are all sorts of sub- and secondary themes -- Obama's an outsider, questionably American, etc. But all the nitty gritty points are subservient to those two interlocking messages.

From Obama, honestly, I don't sense a really clear message. There are attacks on McCain, some of which are quite good. There are positive uplifting commercials. And there are ads/messages targeted to particular states -- like Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the DHL layoffs in Ohio. But it's hard for me to come up with a clear cut Obama message in way that it's pretty simple for me to do with McCain. Even the 'change' message, which is the basis of Obama's campaign, seems much more diffuse to me than it was during the primaries.

It's true that I'm not living in one of the key states -- so there's a lot of atmospherics that I'm not seeing that voters would see in Ohio or Michigan, for instance. But I do run this site, that follows politics pretty closely. So I feel like I shouldn't need to be following things more closely than I already am.

Now, this is a key time to take stock because it's really only with the conventions that the battle is joined. Obama's been on vacation for a week. So when we'll really get a sense of message is the show that each candidate puts on in his party convention and then the campaign they run through September and October.

Beating up on McCain is critical. But it's not a message in itself. And the Obama campaign needs to deepen people's trust in Obama. Not because of all the smears because an outsider running to overturn the status quo always faces trust issues. But, again, not a message. For my money, the essence of this campaign is -- Are you happy with the way the country's been run for the last 7.5 years. Has our foreign policy left us better off? Republican economic policy? You can go through all the different facets. But it's clear that the public overwhelmingly thinks the Bush presidency has been little short of a disaster. And do you want four more years of that? If that's the frame of the election, McCain will be crushed. People know they don't want four more years of Bush. McCain will be another four years of Bush. It's time for change, etc. That's the essence of the campaign. But the message, right now, seems very muddled.

I've misjudged and underestimated Obama at several points in this cycle. And sometimes the public mood leans so overwhelmingly in one direction -- that the electorate gets the message themselves without any help. (This is clearly at least very close to the situation in the public mood at the moment.) But at the moment this is how it looks to me.

--Josh Marshall

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08.19.08 -- 5:42PM // link | recommend (5)

Erosion

The new LA Times/Bloomberg poll shows a tightening race as Obama's negatives rise and his positives fall.

--David Kurtz

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08.19.08 -- 3:34PM // link | recommend (16)

No Lack of McCain Apologists

Shorter David Brooks: Media made McCain run ugly "celeb" ads and smear Obama for lack of patriotism.

--David Kurtz

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08.19.08 -- 2:59PM // link | recommend (5)

McCain and Mother Russia?

As you probably know, there's been a lot of chatter over the last couple days about whether or not John McCain's cross in the dirt story may have been lifted from the life of Alexander Solzenitsyn, the famous Russian novelist and dissident who died earlier this month. Well, whatever the origin of McCain's story, it didn't come from Solzenitsyn because it never happened to him either. The whole thing turns out to be an urban legend, apparently cooked up by Watergate felon Chuck Colson.

--Josh Marshall

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08.19.08 -- 2:27PM // link | recommend (2)

Election Central Needs You

We're gearing up for November at Election Central and are looking for a serious political junkie to join the EC team as intern for the fall semester. TPM interns are quickly integrated into all aspects of our news coverage, but we're looking for someone who has a particular interest in and knowledge of campaigns and elections, from the presidential race down to off-the-radar congressional elections. Needless to say, this fall is going to have no shortage of political news. This is your chance to help cover it. To learn the details on how to apply for this unpaid position, click here.

--David Kurtz

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08.19.08 -- 2:11PM // link | recommend (1)

TPMCafe Book Club: Philip Pan

Former Washington Post Beijing Bureau chief Philip P. Pan sits down at TPM Cafe all this week to discuss his new book, Out Of Mao's Shadow, in which he argues that the battle lines have been drawn in the struggle for China's future:

On one side is the venal party-state, an entrenched elite fighting to preserve the country's authoritarian political system and its privileged place within it. On the other is a ragtag collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, hustlers, and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open and democratic China.

Joining in are Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's China Program, New York Times city reporter Jennifer 8. Lee, Orville Schell, director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, former FCC chairman and information industries consultant Reed Hundt, and Ely Ratner, a UC Berkeley PhD candidate studying the effects of U.S. support for non-democratic regimes.

--David Kurtz

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08.19.08 -- 12:25PM // link | recommend (3)

TPMtv: Live From Denver

We're getting geared up for our coverage of the Democratic and Republican National Conventions coming up over the next couple weeks. And for our evening coverage, for the first time, we're going to be streaming live video from the scene with technology from qik.com. In today's episode of TPMtv, we bring you a preview ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

--Josh Marshall

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08.19.08 -- 9:23AM // link | recommend (43)

Oops

The AP doing Joe Lieberman no favors.

--David Kurtz

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08.18.08 -- 10:15PM // link | recommend (27)

Big Air

Simply defies comprehension how stupid this is. But you can say anything on Fox.

--Josh Marshall

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08.18.08 -- 5:08PM // link | recommend (23)

Mapping the Campaigns

Greg Sargent has obtained some interesting new numbers which shed some light on the state of the race and the different strategies the two campaigns are employing.

McCain is on the air with TV ads in 11 states, which for the most part are considered traditional battleground states (Iowa, Missouri, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Nevada, Missouri, Colorado, Wisconsin, North Dakota). Obama is on the air in all of those states, but McCain is outspending him in most of them, sometimes significantly.

Then there are another seven states where Obama has the airwaves to himself (Indiana, Alaska, Montana, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Virginia).

Greg has more details on the possible implications, which are not cut and dry.

Late Update/Correction: This post originally omitted Michigan and Colorado from the list of states where both campaigns are on TV. Virginia is a special case because Obama is the only candidate advertising statewide; McCain has a limited presence in Northern Virginia.

--David Kurtz

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08.18.08 -- 1:38PM // link | recommend (55)

Bare the Teeth

From NBC's FirstRead ...

Is Obama having a Jon Lovitz-as-Dukakis SNL moment: "I can't believe I'm losing to this guy"? Well, Obama isn't losing -- he still has a small single-digit lead in most national polls, and he's ahead narrowly in current electoral-vote projections. But his tone changed a bit campaigning in Reno yesterday, his first full day on the campaign trail since his vacation. To put it simply, he was much more aggressive on the attack. As the AP writes, "So much for hugging in church... [A]fter praising the Arizona senator as a 'genuine American patriot,' the Democratic presidential hopeful got back to business -- methodically tearing into McCain's health care, tax and energy policies and criticizing his advisers. More: "The Illinois senator also criticized McCain's advisers as 'the same old folks that brought you George W. Bush. The same team.' He noted many had been lobbyists in Washington before McCain asked them to sever all lobbying ties." We've been hearing for a few weeks that the Obama campaign believes it hasn't been tough enough on McCain. Might we have seen a preview of a rougher treatment of McCain from Obama at his Reno stop yesterday? And does this mean the convention week will be tougher on McCain than either Gore or Kerry were on Bush?

--Josh Marshall

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08.18.08 -- 12:44PM // link | recommend (105)

Biden?

I just noticed that CNN is saying that Biden's the big buzz for VP down in DC political circles today. So I'm trying to process what I think of Biden as a potential pick.

On the one hand, it's not the most exciting choice. He doesn't bring a state. Delaware's going to go Democratic. And it's barely a state at that. And I'm not sure you'd rate it as a first: "history is made -- first sixty-something white senator with deep foreign policy experience chosen to be vp nominee!" Biden clearly thinks well of himself and likes to talk. But he's been a US Senator for pretty much his entire adult life. (He's 65 today and was elected at 30.) So I'm not sure you can expect anything different. Finally, Biden also occasionally says something really whacked, which we'll probably find out more of if he's the pick.

On the other hand, wholly separate from the cosmetics and electioneering calculus, I think he'd be a good choice. On substance, maybe a really good choice. Most senators grasp of foreign policy is fairly thin -- and it tends to be heavily influenced by whatever lobbyists or power players are in their orbit. But Biden has a pretty deep knowledge of pretty much every big foreign policy question. And his ideas and judgment strike me as fundamentally sane.

Back in 2004, when I was writing a piece for The Atlantic about John Kerry, I did long interview with Biden in his office on Capitol Hill. And I remember coming away thinking, this is the guy you'd want to have making big decisions on the key foreign policy questions. To the extent that we think Obama needs someone with deep foreign policy knowledge in a constitutional office (i.e., non-fireable) to add ballast to his foreign policy vision I'm not sure I could think of a much better person.

--Josh Marshall

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08.18.08 -- 11:18AM // link | recommend (18)

TPMtv: Sunday Show Roundup: Georgia Veep Sweeps

The crisis in Georgia provided all the potential vice presidential candidates a crucible in which to do some last-second cramming for the big #2 job. We see how they did in today's Sunday Show Roundup ...

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

--Ben Craw

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08.18.08 -- 10:43AM // link | recommend (94)

From TPM Reader AG ...

I find it disconcerting that Obama, after all this time, is still playing with kid gloves with McCain on issues of security and national defense. If Obama thinks he can win with McCain cornering the market on security issues, he and Kerry will have lots to talk about next year in the Senate Cloakroom.

McCain's first reaction to the Georgia crises was to urge action that would commit the United States to war with Russia (by having Georgia immediately admitted to NATO). Obama needs to point out that, in this test for whether McCain is ready to be commander in chief, McCain grossly overreacted. Indeed, several days later, after McCain had time to cool down, he retracted his statements, saying that military intervention should not be considered. McCain fundamentally does not understand the purpose of NATO. Obama needs be repeating this series of events like a broken record. McCain overracted, and then changed his mind 3 days later. A President has no such luxury. McCain is no
match for the calm and calculated actions of a player like Putin. Words such as "confused," "hot headed," "overreacting" and "indecisive" need to become synonymous with the Obama campaign's portrayal of McCain. Don't just answer back with Celebrity ads.
Don't whine that McCain had previous exposure to Warren's questions. Drive the debate into his territory.

McCain is playing his Georgia actions as a victory in every speech, and unless unanswered, it will become common wisdom. We keep waiting for Obama to do what we were promised he'd do: take McCain down at the knees on his one point of perceived strength. It is so much harder to do this after the narrative continues to harden.

--Josh Marshall

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08.18.08 -- 10:15AM // link | recommend (51)

Palpable

With so many instances of corruption and influence-peddling around him and whatever problems with the candidate that are keeping the campaign from letting reporters interview him anymore, John McCain is now again charging Obama with what amounts to soft treason -- wanting to lose the war in Iraq in order to make himself president. The lack of any consistent lines of attack against McCain is becoming palpable.

--Josh Marshall