No wonder team Obama seems to be floundering a bit - they have lost their way and don't know which way to head now that Palin has sent them spinning. Some pundits say Obama needs to keep linking Bush to McCain - same - same - game plan (yea even though the title has the word "change" it really calls for more of the same):
RealClearPolitics - Articles - Time for Obama to Change the Game
Quote:
Unemployment has risen to its highest level in five years. Uninsured Americans top 47 million. Real wages have fallen in relation to inflation for every educational group in America except for those with professional degrees since 2000. Those recent census figures, plus an unpopular war, have made this a great year for Democrats. Yet, less than two months to Election Day, the party is in a panic.
Quote:
....While Obama's campaign tries to sort out the surprises and come up with a new game plan, polls show the electorate rapidly coming together into a dead heat, at best.
Team Obama spent far too much time and energy defending the Obama comments and as the artical indicates this basically took them off message for several days. They can not let this continue to happen.
Quote:
Palin has famously described herself as a pit bull with lipstick, but the pig metaphor had previously been used by Obama and McCain. The argument is silly, but its impact is very serious. Team McCain pushed Team Obama off-message for at least two days that the Illinois senator will never get back.
I don't agree with this because really the artical is still drawing things into an Obama - Palin comparison - Palin being the "small-town sort of hockey mom". I agree Obama needs to get serious but he needs to push the economic issue, and what is at stake economically more than anything else.
Quote:
What's Obama to do now? First, he needs to get serious. He needs to remind voters of what's at stake. He needs to remind Americans of how the nation voted for a nice small-town sort of guy in 2000 and 2004 and look at what it got us. Eight years later, jobs and home mortgages are down, budget deficits and fuel prices are up and our foreign policy is best described as "Shoot from the hip."
I agree with this bit:
Quote:
With that in mind, Obama should not let the niceties of liberal political correctness prevent his campaign from tying McCain and Palin to Bush. Palin makes that easy. She's a harder hardliner than McCain. The issue is not lipstick on a pig but the Bush years in high heels.
The Clintons seem to have been doing just enough so they can say they are trying to help Obama get elected, but not enough to really have much impact. I really think both Bill and Hillary (but especailly Bill) want Obama to loose. I think they would rather turn the White House over to the red team, just so Hillary can have another shot in four years. Rather than help Obama win this year, and then have to turn around in four more years and try to help him get elected again.
Quote:
Third, Obama needs to put the Clintons to good use. I don't know what Obama and Bill Clinton discussed in their private Sept. 11 lunch in New York. But Obama should have had his big ears tuned in to advice from the master on how to reach those voters who have been the slowest to embrace the senator from Illinois as "one of us."
While others say what he has been doing has not been working, and he needs to change things up:
Barack Obama's big blunder
I included this quote simply because it included the words - "deeper, harder, and faster":
Quote:
With top Dems fearing Barack Obama is in a hole, the Obama campaign has made a weird decision. It's going to dig that hole deeper, harder and faster.
I think there is some merit in what is being said here, but I still think the key for Obama is linking Bush and McCain - with an ecomonic focus. I think part of the problem with what Obama has been doing with the Bush - McCain connection relates to linking them in regard to Iraq rather than based upon the economy. Most polls indicate that folks think McCain is better suited to deal with the situation in Iraq than Obama is, so when Obama draws Bush-McCain comparisons as they related to Iraq I think he actually helps McCain. On the other hand folks tend to think that Obama is better suited to deal with the economy yet the only time I ever hear Obama try to link McCain to Bush as it relates to the economy it is usually related to the Bush tax cuts. And lets face it when most folks talk taxes they like the idea of a tax cut (even though they probably aint' getting it).
Obama needs to stay away from the Iraq Bush-McCain ties, and economically he needs to stay away from linking McCain to tax cuts (the Bush tax cuts). He needs to link McCain to Bush with the rest of the economic picture.
Quote:
No more Mr. Nice Guy, Obama vows. He's going to really start hitting John McCain now. He's going to make voters understand that McCain equals four more years of George Bush.
It's a weird decision because Obama has been doing exactly that for four months. The problem is not that Obama hasn't hit McCain hard enough or linked him to Bush often enough. The problem is that he hasn't done anything else.
This is always a problem with campaign "messages", too many times the actual message gets lost in the slogan. And I don't think the average joe thinks Obama is any more of an agent of change than John McCain. And now I don't know that there really is enough time left to attack this front.
Quote:
How about a new idea? How about putting some meat on the bony promise of "change"?
I really think this is what Obama wanted to do. But I think the gains McCain has made by going negative, and the pressure that resulted from the Dem party have forced his hand, and he has no choice but to take his campaign in the same direction. The problem is I think there is a distinct advantage for the first mover in taking things negative - especially since it has take team Obama so long to adjust. Now I think they are stuck in a perpetual cycle of defending themselves rather than being able to truely go on the attack. I think this ship has sailed, but Obama has no choice but to buck-up and fight. If he settles back into the optimisitc man and he looses, he'll be placed right next to Kerry as yet another blue team guy that didn't have the balls to fight it out.
Quote:
And what happened to that post-partisan uniter who took the country by storm during the early primaries by offering an optimistic vision for America? Why not bring him back?
I think this has been a brilliant move on the part of the red team. Palin is the attack bulldog, and McCain is not. Even when McCain was asked about the negative direction of his campaign he basically disavows himself from it - and folks seem to buy it. They seem to think that Palin and the big, bad, GOP are indeed nasty, nasty, mud slingers. But McCain is clean and above it all. While at the same time both Obama and Biden are stuck in a cycle of addressing "Palin Power".
Quote:
Indeed, even as Sarah Palin has rallied the GOP base, McCain himself has ramped up efforts to secure his brand as a maverick willing to cross party lines. Obama's response appears to be surrender of the high ground.
I think this is largely true - in so much as Obama seems to have done very little to improve his standing with the white blue collar folks that he did so poorly with in the primaries. If he looses this election Hillary will be right there to tell the party "I told you so".
Quote:
He (Obama) secured his base in Europe, but neglected West Virgina, where Clinton beat him by 40 points. Poll-wise, he remains where he was when Clinton quit in June.