What's McCain's Next Play?

[davefoc]

...
The real question is whether or not it will alienate the very voters that McCain needs to win, namely undecideds & independents. I question whether or not it is a useful strategy for reaching those folks, and I think it is very likely that it will actually backfire and repel more undecideds from McCain than it attracts.

...

That is certainly one of the main questions involved in this thread and I remain less optimistic than the apparent consensus of this thread that negative campaign tactics especially when tag teamed with Fox News, Limbaugh and Glenn Beck will backfire.

Let's take a couple of unfair negative attacks on Palin:
1. Palin favored charging rape victims for rape kits.
2. Palin tried to ban books in the local library.

What has been the net effect of these charges? I suspect that the net effect is a loss of votes for McCain and Palin. Was it fair to drag these charges up and parade them around in misleading way? I'm not sure. Politics is a competition and this kind of thing seems to be accepted as a legitimate strategy today. Both sides do it. It would be difficult to restrict. There is a big gray area between legitimate attack and illegitimate attacks and I don't know who you'd get to sort out the illegitimate from the legitimate.

It is easy to attack Fox News for their shennanigans with regard to this but about 25% (Wild ass guess) of the HuffingtonPost headlines are significantly misleading about the underlying story, often for the purposes of skewing the story in the direction of the candidates and causes they favor.

 

[DavidJames]

If McCain brings up Ayers and Rezko during the debate, all Obama has to do is say, "John, I know you want to turn the page on the economy, and I could talk about your friendship with G. Gordon Liddy and Charles Keating, but the American people can't turn the page on the economy, so that's what I'm going to talk about." The media then reports on Liddy and Keating.

Exactly and I think Obama's ads should do the same. Pound away about how McCain doesn't want to talk about himself, he doesn't want to talk about the real issues, he just wants to shovel dirt.

 

[not_so_new]

That is certainly one of the main questions involved in this thread and I remain less optimistic than the apparent consensus of this thread that negative campaign tactics especially when tag teamed with Fox News, Limbaugh and Glenn Beck will backfire.

Let's take a couple of unfair negative attacks on Palin:
1. Palin favored charging rape victims for rape kits.
2. Palin tried to ban books in the local library.

What has been the net effect of these charges? I suspect that the net effect is a loss of votes for McCain and Palin. Was it fair to drag these charges up and parade them around in misleading way? I'm not sure. Politics is a competition and this kind of thing seems to be accepted as a legitimate strategy today. Both sides do it. It would be difficult to restrict. There is a big gray area between legitimate attack and illegitimate attacks and I don't know who you'd get to sort out the illegitimate from the legitimate.

It is easy to attack Fox News for their shennanigans with regard to this but about 25% (Wild ass guess) of the HuffingtonPost headlines are significantly misleading about the underlying story, often for the purposes of skewing the story in the direction of the candidates and causes they favor.

I am with you on this one. I think negative ads do more than people give them credit for, that's why campaigns do them after all.

The Republican base is going to eat it up but they were not going to vote for Obama anyway and stuff like this will bounce off Democrats so this is completely about independents.

How does it play with people who are not sure what to believe in the first place? I have to assume that these negative things will get more people to vote for McCain than against him.

I think the people who are going to vote on issues are just going to put up their hands and "that's politics" while staying on the fence. Call me cynical but I don't know if a lot of people are going to get so turned off to vote against McCain so the net effect is that some people will buy it and it could make a bigger difference than people here are giving here on this board.

 

[Pookster]

The Dow is down 374 points at this moment. It is below 10,000 for the first time in 4 years.

The economy must hate John McCain. It must, I say!

 

[fuelair]

Beg Palin for a Snow Job or something like it.

 

[Upchurch]

I honestly don't think Obama will even have to say anything about that. Chances are you'll be seeing news stories tomorrow about McCain's association with both Liddy and Keating. It's already all over the blogosphere.

McCain messed up. The Dems were waiting in the wings with some big guns, and now they've clicked the safeties to "off" and are taking aim...

FIRE!


So, on the one hand, we have Obama who was on the board of a charitable organization with a former 60's dangerous radical hippy and had nothing to do with said dangerous radical hippiness. On the other hand, we have McCain (allegedly) helping out a corrupt banker during an economic crisis that cost tax payers about $124.6 billion.

They are either very desperate or very stupid. Not that the two are mutually exclusive, mind you. In fact, the one probably leads to the other.

 

[Pookster]

The Dow is down 374 points at this moment. It is below 10,000 for the first time in 4 years.

The economy must hate John McCain. It must, I say!

Now it's down 500. Guess what will dominate the headlines.

 

[BenBurch]

Beg Palin for a Snow Job or something like it.

A stripper I know got arrested for saying "Something like that." when a client asked if he would get a *ahem* in the champaign room... The judge asked her what she meant and she said (truthfully) that she was going to tease the client by doing a banana...

For future reference please see; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Sex_(In_the_Champagne_Room)

 

[not_so_new]

"And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, 'launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,'" she (Palin) continued.

"Boooo!" the crowd repeated.

"Kill him!" proposed one man in the audience.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/06/in_fla_palin_goes_for_the_roug.html

 

[Pookster]

Now it's down 500. Guess what will dominate the headlines.

Make that 612 points.

 

[BenBurch]

Make that 612 points.

709 points now.

 

[BenBurch]

Oil below $89/bbl! The wheels of the world really are grinding to a halt!

 

[Pookster]

709 points now.

Oil below $89/bbl! The wheels of the world really are grinding to a halt!

These are the headlines. People are seriously worried about the economy. A poll out today showed 60% think we could fall into another Depression. The McCain campaigns attempts to refocus the message just got a face full of fail.


ETA: Link to poll - http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/06/news/economy/depression_poll/index.htm

 

[DrBaltar]

I was glad to see that McCain was finally going on the attack over the Obama-Ayers association. I figured the average American wouldn't stand for that kind of past in a presidential candidate. And obviously (at least to me, apparently not to Obama or the media or to Obama supporters) the McCain campaign wasn't suggesting that Obama was with Ayers during '69-'72 when the Weather Underground was bombing government buildings.

I had hoped that McCain & Palin would have spelled it out better that Obama and Ayers worked together on the bylaws of the CAC (Chicago Annenberg Challenge) to raise money, not for schools, but for organizations that the schools were supposed to then be associated with. So basically CAC just used the education angle to fund radical left wing socialist groups. Groups like ACORN which pressured mortgage companies into making bad loans, which of course relates directly back to the current economic crisis, and places Obama with not only a domestic terrorist, but knee deep in the action where groups like ACORN were demanding that poor minorities get these loans. This also explains the large amount of campaign money that Obama received from Fannie & Freddie, etc.

I would think all of this is relevant. Both to Obama's character and to the economic crisis which is probably the #1 priority with voters. I mean, we can't just bail out these companies and assign blame to the ones who have been trying to warn congress about the coming financial crisis. Do you really think that Obama would tell lenders not to give loans to minorities who can't afford them?

So in light of all this I was glad to see these things brought up. Looking at the reactions though, I failed to remember that people just want 'hope' and 'change'. They don't want silly details. Who cares about that Bill Ayers guy that Obama worked with for years. He was just some misguided youth who bombed government buildings and broke people out of jail with his buddies. Come on, haven't we all done silly stuff like this when we were young? Ignore things he says like on 9/11/01 when he said "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough." He's just a bit eccentric.

 

[not_so_new]

I was glad to see that McCain was finally going on the attack over the Obama-Ayers association. I figured the average American wouldn't stand for that kind of past in a presidential candidate. And obviously (at least to me, apparently not to Obama or the media or to Obama supporters) the McCain campaign wasn't suggesting that Obama was with Ayers during '69-'72 when the Weather Underground was bombing government buildings.

I had hoped that McCain & Palin would have spelled it out better that Obama and Ayers worked together on the bylaws of the CAC (Chicago Annenberg Challenge) to raise money, not for schools, but for organizations that the schools were supposed to then be associated with. So basically CAC just used the education angle to fund radical left wing socialist groups. Groups like ACORN which pressured mortgage companies into making bad loans, which of course relates directly back to the current economic crisis, and places Obama with not only a domestic terrorist, but knee deep in the action where groups like ACORN were demanding that poor minorities get these loans. This also explains the large amount of campaign money that Obama received from Fannie & Freddie, etc.

I would think all of this is relevant. Both to Obama's character and to the economic crisis which is probably the #1 priority with voters. I mean, we can't just bail out these companies and assign blame to the ones who have been trying to warn congress about the coming financial crisis. Do you really think that Obama would tell lenders not to give loans to minorities who can't afford them?

So in light of all this I was glad to see these things brought up. Looking at the reactions though, I failed to remember that people just want 'hope' and 'change'. They don't want silly details. Who cares about that Bill Ayers guy that Obama worked with for years. He was just some misguided youth who bombed government buildings and broke people out of jail with his buddies. Come on, haven't we all done silly stuff like this when we were young? Ignore things he says like on 9/11/01 when he said "I don't regret setting bombs, I feel we didn't do enough." He's just a bit eccentric.

*sigh*

So you claim that it's just Obama supporters overlooking the facts... did you ever stop to think that YOU might have a built in bias here on your side and YOU are not looking at the facts clearly enough?

And IF Obama has a deeper connection to a former radical, which at this time looks to be tenuous at best, what are we supposed to think about Palin and her association to her husband... you know.. .the guy who is part of the party that "hates America."

It's all a bunch of BS. There is SO much more to talk about, SO many things going wrong with our nation (you might have looked at a few headlines in the last few years... or even today).

This whole Ayers is just a diversion to REAL issues, care to talk about them?

 

[David Wong]

I actually laughed out loud at the claim that ACORN caused the credit meltdown.

These guys are just adorable!

 

[DavidJames]

This whole Ayers is just a diversion to REAL issues, care to talk about them?

Exactly, to paraphrase what I said in another thread.

It looks like McCain's next play will include anything but talking about the real issues.

 

[chipmunk stew]

I actually laughed out loud at the claim that ACORN caused the credit meltdown.

These guys are just adorable!

Calling ACORN a "radical left wing socialist group" is ever so cute, too.

 

[davefoc]

...

I had hoped that McCain & Palin would have spelled it out better that Obama and Ayers worked together on the bylaws of the CAC (Chicago Annenberg Challenge) to raise money, not for schools, but for organizations that the schools were supposed to then be associated with.

Can you provide a source?

So basically CAC just used the education angle to fund radical left wing socialist groups.

Source?

Groups like ACORN which pressured mortgage companies into making bad loans, which of course relates directly back to the current economic crisis, and places Obama with not only a domestic terrorist, but knee deep in the action where groups like ACORN were demanding that poor minorities get these loans.

I believe that Obama served as a lawyer for ACORN. At least some pressuring of banks to stop redlining practices seems like it might be justified but beyond a certain point I agree it is advocacy for faulty policy. Do you have source material on what Obama did for ACORN when he represented them?

This also explains the large amount of campaign money that Obama received from Fannie & Freddie, etc.

A legitimate criticism assuming it's true. But a criticism that is true of many members of congress, Republican and Democrat. The tie in to Obama's legal representation of ACORN is tenuous. Lots of congressman got lots of money from Fannie and Freddie and I doubt that many provided legal representation to ACORN.

I would think all of this is relevant. Both to Obama's character

Accepting funds from Fannie and Freddy is a legitimate hit, I agree. The rest borders on pure crap unless you can provide more substantiation than Sean Hannity sound bites. The tie in to Ayers is very tenuous and characterizing it as palling around is a lie.

and to the economic crisis which is probably the #1 priority with voters. I mean, we can't just bail out these companies and assign blame to the ones who have been trying to warn congress about the coming financial crisis. Do you really think that Obama would tell lenders not to give loans to minorities who can't afford them?

The Republicans had six years to fix this problem. They did nothing except drag the country down with crony driven hyper spending. The failure happened on their watch. If you can't see how out of control earmarks and crony driven hyper spending and borrowing contributed enormously to this problem you are too mired in your partisan biases to be worth listening to.

So in light of all this I was glad to see these things brought up.

If you think Obama was palling around with terrorists I can see how you might be glad that it was brought up. It wasn't true in any substantive way any more than Palin wanted to charge rape victims for rape kits. But as MattusMaximus said this kind of crap serves to work up the base as you have so skillfully demonstrated.

 

[boloboffin]

At a rally today, John McCain asked, "Who is the real Barack Obama?"

Someone yells out clearly, "A terrorist!"



John McCain gives a little frown and moves on.

He does not correct the man. After all, his own vice president is currently making connections between Ayers the terrorists and Obama. He simply gives a little frown and moves on.

This is dangerous. Already people have been arrested who intended to try and assassinate Senator Obama. It is unconscionable for Senator McCain to be building this level of anger in his supporters, to try and ride this crest of hatred to the White House. I dare say that should the same thing have happened at an Obama rally, Obama would have been the first to call that person out and dress him down.

But McCain appears to be soliciting votes from wherever and in any way he can.

Shame on him.