Whether it's related to the McCain team's shake-and-bake or not I don't know, but tonight comes word that McCain is purchasing ad time in Virginia. Halperin puts the media CW thusly:
"Suggests the McCain camp could be worried Obama has a shot in the historically Red state"The McCain camp could be worried that Obama has a shot? I could be worried that I'll have to pay taxes next year. Obama leads in all three recent public polls of the state (albeit by tiny margins). The state has a popular Democratic governor and a popular Democratic senator, and will soon have a second, because the best candidate the GOP could recruit against Mark Warner was Jim Gilmore, who was last seen sitting at the Tancredo/Brownback table at the Republican Debate afterparty. The good thing about a staff shake-up is that it can give you an excuse to swallow your pride and do some things that an underdog needs to do -- like playing defense in Virginia.
EDIT: After reading Jonathan Martin's description of the McCain campaign's shake-up, it's a bit harder to attribute this decision specifically to Schmidt, since the official line out of Crystral City is that Schmidt is responsible for communications and message control, while Rick Davis retains responsibility for strategy. That may be being said out of politeness to Davis, though. At the very least, there was a certain nonchalance in the way that Davis had been handling the campaign that this decision marks a reversal from.
21 comments
Hey, what happened to the must-win states??
Hiring a Rove disciple would seem to put the lie to McCain's claim that the generak election campaign would be a positive one rooted in the issues.
Remember, if McCain is significantly behind, no one pays attention. You've posted a million things about how the crazy media keeps making it look closer than it is.
I think Rove and the RNC meddled and rammed this "adjustment" down Krustys throat. One bad thing about most of your funds being in the party is its controlled by the party.
Smart money in the GOP is Krusty is on his way to a beating.
A lot of people are commenting that this thing is over. It aint! The rebublicans haven't even started yet. we haven't seen Jeremiah Right, or Bill Ayers in an add yet. McCain probably wanted a clean campaign, but he's realizing he can't win that way. I have a feeling they're warming up the ol' attack machine. See how the public reacts to "God Damn America" the third time around. He'll win if he can withstand that.
Matt:
The Bill Ayers thing was over almost as soon as it began except among America's most willfully ignorant and ashamedly racist, and that's a demographic that Obama can unfortunately never hope to win. The Jeremiah Right thing isn't over, but Obama already recovered from it fairly well considering how relatively unknown he was to the public and distanced himself greatly enough that McCain making a concerted effort to retread that ground is almost like taking a fool's gambit. Obama can turn that around with ease while also taking the higher ground and has had plenty of time to prepare should such a need arise.
You are right that this isn't over, but going negative on character and past relationships alone won't be enough to turn this around. McCain needs some really solid and compelling policy and he also needs to cast doubt on the effectiveness of Obama's policies, and so far lining up behind Bush has achived the opposite of what he needs here.
the ayers thing doesn't have anything to do with racism (he's white) it's about the weather underground and his belief they didn't bomb the penatagon enough. also I think it's Wright, not right.
obamafans shouldn't claim racism regardless of the criticism - it dilutes it when it really happens
Anonymous @ 11:17
Obama survived Jeremiah right in the democratic primary. Its now the general. Have all ye democrats forgotten the last two elections. The democrats should have won those hands down, and they lost.
The last non southern democrat to win the presidency was JFK. JFK!!! Like 50 years ago. 50! Obama ain't a southern democrat. I love the guy. But a lot of people don't. He's black. He's named Barack Heussein Obama. and his pastor is famous saying "God damn America." There are a whole lot of Americans who are skeptical. I hope he knows what he's doing. I can't bear another 4 years of republican rule.
The biggest challenge Obama is going to have is not the right, but the left and MSM.
The far left somehow believes that Obama's campaign is a far left rebuke of Bush. They actually believe that Obama is the most liberal senator. However, Obama has been trying to tell people that he wants a center left government that is capable of solving some of our most vexing problems. When he says that he wants to campaign in all 50 states and that he wants "Democrats, Independents, and some disaffected Republicans". That is not a far left campaign.
The MSM also bought the Republican line that he was the most liberal senator and is now trying to destroy his credibility by accusing him of being flip flopping, disingenuous, typical pol in this "move to the center". (Except he was already there.)
He can handle Rev. Wright. Look, he has been called an unpatriotic secret arrogant muslim criminal elitist b–stard who hates the “typical white person” and is the Manchurian candidate brought to enslave the white race and turn us all over to Al-Quaeda…oh and “did I mention he was black”. Oh and by the way, we just learned that he is also baby killer.
However, he can't hand the deflationary tactics of the far left blogs and MSM. It will kill his fund raising capability and lead to a narrative that will undermine the campaign and destroy his ability to fight and expand the map.
In fact, one of the seldom reported facts is that he has been on a downward slide in fundraising since February.
He is in trouble, despite the pols, if he can't get his brand understood and respected, he may not be toast, but he definitely will not get the governing majority that he was looking for and could very well be toast.
Last week interviewed a pollster who agreed with Anonymous above that "going negative" will not work for McCain this year. Not only will it hurt him with people who like Obama, which is a majority, but it reinforces the image of the GOP candidate as yet another manipulative old school politician.
Schmidt apparently is not going with that strategy, instead deciding to paint Obama as an opportunist himself, without McCain's willingness to go against the grain.
As an Obama supporter, this does not panic me. It will incline the skeptical to listen to Obama speak.
What more could a politican ask?
Anonymous @ 11:17 here:
I apologize for not explaining "The Bill Ayers thing was over almost as soon as it began except among America's most willfully ignorant and ashamedly racist" fully, and I can understand why it sounded stupid and perhaps offensive.
When I say "willfully ignorant" I mean people who neither pay attention to more than one news organization (e.g. NBC and CNN or AP and Reuters, not Countdown and Hardball) nor do any research into issues themselves. Further, I also mean such people that will themselves into ignorance by being more likely to believe things because they are more outrageous. When I say "ashamedly racist" I mean those people who are subtly racist who are ashamed of or unwilling to admit it, people who wouldn't consciously treat people of a different race in a special way but would in their minds reserve more skepticism and caution towards such people.
The Bill Ayers thing ended so quickly, almost without even a reflective explanation, because when investigated more deeply it turned out that no significant relationship existed between the two men. Obama and Ayers both did work at the same charity. It was a charity that Obama believed in and the operators of the charity also believed in Obama enough to give him an important position there. Unfortunately, they also gave Ayers such a position. Obama had nothing to do with the fact that Ayers was there and Ayers had nothing to do with the fact that Obama was there. Because Obama felt that the work the charity did was important, he continued to work there, sometimes having to work with Ayers. Yes he could have left the charity, but that would be just as silly as dropping a GE college course because you don't like the person you were assigned to work with. Being adults, Obama and Ayers worked together amicably and did become friends, but they were never the best buddies that the media tried to make them out to be (just as they tried to do with Rezko, with whom he was much closer friends but still not close enough for it to be reasonable to suspect a corruption of his principles).
Putting this altogether, the people who still say the Ayers thing is important either ignore the reports that it was at best a tenuous connection (and the fact that no one with journalistic integrity brings it up anymore), believe the story not because it is well documented but because it is more interesting than the humdrum nothing, or say it is important to them simply because they are exercising the maximum skepticism they can against Obama for no reason other than they determined that they didn't like him from the first time they saw that he was black. To put that last group another way, you could say something crazy like "Obama is a secret muslim" or "Obama isn't patriotic despite his service to this country and him being beloved by the people of this country who have gotten to know him" or "Obama is a radical leftist that will destroy this country" and they will attach themselves to it with equal furvor to how they have with the tenuous Bill Ayers connection. It has nothing to do with reason, presentation of facts, or even importance of the issue itself (Who cares if Obama spoke with someone with differing views on a regular basis at one point in his life? That's how you get to better understand others' views and the populace in general.) but it has everything to do with the people disliking Obama deep down for reasons they are unwilling to admit and thus search for reasons to justify their dislike other than admitting that they themselves have the problem.
It's good to see that McCain is taking VA seriously. He definitely can't take it for granted because the state would be a pure coin flip if the election were held today.
The truth though is that if McCain can get his national polling average up a few points to where he is only down by one or two percent against Obama then he'll take Virginia.
In 2000, the state voted about 9 points more Republican than the nation as a whole. That was reduced to about a 6-point GOP advantage in 2004. Even with Fairfax, Alexandria and the rest of NoVA quickly turning blue it's pretty clear that it's going to take another cycle or two before Republicans are going to be at a disadvantage in a presidential election here.
If McCain loses Virginia he will have already lost Ohio and Nevada and Colorado anyway.
now that McCain has got the Bush 2004 people on board doesn't this just add to the Democratic message that this is the 3rd Bush term?
I love this Bush third term thing!
Of late, it appears that it is Obama that is running as Bush III.
Look at his recently adopted positions on Guns, the Death Penalty, Faith-Based Initiatives, and FISA.
Obama's stated position on the Bush tax cuts is virtually the same as McCain’s, with a difference only over the smallest sliver of the population -- those earning over $250,000. This is akin to the difference he had with Hillary over universal healthcare.
The real problem will come when he has to back off his position on Iraq. Then the wheels will finally come off the bus.
"For The Record" said "The far left somehow believes that Obama's campaign is a far left rebuke of Bush". You're getting the netroots confused with the far left. Many in the netroots are center-left, it's just that they're more assertive than center-lefties usually are so to a right-winger they may appear radical. I don't think anyone believes that Obama is a far-left liberal,it's just that he's not ashamed of his liberal side.