Negative campaigning needs to accomplish two things:
- The negative must to stick with the candidate
- The voter must have a positive feeling after not buying into/breaking with the candidate
The second point is basically the reason, why the first point is so important: If the negative doesn't stick with the personality of the candidate, but spills out to the voters - well, it's not a good idea to insult the people, you want to actually reach.
That's why going negative on Dean or even Kerry did work. And why going negative on Obama just might not. Even if (or should I say "when") Republicans will join the fray in earnest.
More below the fold...
Going negative on Dean probably worked because many voters were still undecided, and painting him as angry and bitter - especially after the infamous "Scream" - gave many voters the opportunity to silently walk away from him, saying: "Thank god I didn't vote for that guy, yet". And thus feel good about it.
So the negative stuck with the personality of the candidate, and the voter could feel good.
Going negative on Kerry might have just have worked for a crucial minority of people, who could privately be angry with him, because - hero or not - they could perceive it as inappropriate that he flung his medals (or ribbons, and were they even his?!) over the White House fence and (again, in their minds) had "backstabbed" veterans in general.
Again the negative would stick with the personality of the candidate, and some voters could feel good about themselves for breaking with him ("There - you won't get my vote!").
But how do you go negative on a candidate, when you can't make the negative stick to the personality but have it going right through the candidate and hit the person of the voter? That's why Obama simply could defuse the "just words" meme by pointing out that it's just an insult to the people who happen to be inspired by those words.
The attempts so far have not been very effective. Sure they are already testing the waters (the most ridiculous piece I found so far tried whether they could evoke the "reckless spender" meme by extending the "plagiarism" meme with the phrases "...he has been exposed as a high-risk borrower,...").
I'm sure they will come up with something much more nastier. I'm sure, I will be baffled again by how low they will try to reach.
I only hope they will find it really, really hard to finds something that just sticks to Barack Obama and will not spill out to the people behind him.