I've spent the weekend bouncing between posts that suggest that Obama must stay cool/retool his message/get tougher and posts that suggest all could be lost if he doesn't do one of those things. Then there are the posts that suggest we should all just calm down.
So its been a weekend of conflicting emotions. 2004 left many of us a little wary of trusting in our feelings of pending victory so angst and depression are easy enough for us as is the feeling that we are missing something positive. Still I want to try to flesh out what positive feelings I do have--just in case.
The past few days if not the entire week have been marked by an almost imperceptible tremor in the twisted world of the right. If I am right--and I don't trust that I am--this tremor is opening a crack in the wall of what remains of the right wing's fort--their brand.
If GWB damaged the republican brand, what are McCain and Palin doing to it? If the public has wizened to Bush's lies about Iraq, his incompetence in fighting the war on terror and in dealing with Katrina and his approach to politics, will they see the same sorts of things in the insistent lies that McCain and Palin are serving up?
To be sure, the loyal surrogates are warming up that old bromide of the liberal press as a hedge against the remarkable stories of deception that are airing from the press lately, but will enough of the not yet so polarized portion of the public buy it?
Joe Trippi writes that Obama needs to "Stop listening to the Democrats who are wringing their hands and fighting the last war." Those would be the insider or Washington Democrats who seem to keep falling off the same cliff over and over again. I would heartily agree, but he also posits that Obama must make adjustments and that "McCain is the one running against Washington now. Obama can’t just run against Bush. That’s my take."
Now Joe is way outta my league--he actually knows something about what he is saying. But that has never stopped me before so why should it now?
I wonder if Joe is right about abandoning the McSame frame. I wonder if the Obama campaign couldn't just put together a series of ads that tie Bush's lies together with McCain and Palin's lies. The ad wouldn't have to repeat the words "more of the same", leave it implied for now. It should open a new line--one I think Joe would agree with--that asks how you can trust someone who deceives (better than lies IMHO) you over and over again like McCain and Palin.
I suppose thats close enough to the kind of adjustment that Joe is talking about, but it is still essentially supporting the frame that Obama has been pushing all along--McCain = Bush.
As far as all those other posts I've read that left me a little sea sick, I'd have to say that in the end I feel like the McCain is eating himself.
In doubling down on deceitful tactics he is destroying the maverick brand and digging himself deeply into Obama's McSame frame. If the remaining fence sitters and the soft votes don't buy into the liberal press frame, they are likely to see him as McSame in a way that Obama could never have hoped. Since some of the press manipulation and the orange cake lies of the past 7 years have penetrated to the under informed public, I think he is sinking himself and if he does, the damage he does to the wounded republican brand will be tremendous. So I guess I'm feeling confident--and that scares me a litte. Let me know how you feel, take my feeling poll below.