Barack Obama's new policy of hitting McCain on local issues in battleground states is starting to come to full life. First there was the DHL Job Losses in Ohio. Next was his ad on Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
Now we come to Wisconsin and the issue of...Harleys?! That's right, Obama is taking on McCain with a new radio ad that uses one of McCain's quotes from the Sturgis Festival and turns it against him by painting him as anti-trade and anti-American industry (Harley-Davidson, of course, based in Wisconsin):
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN (transcript below)
Transcript of Radio Ad:
(Motors revving)
Announcer: Listen to John McCain speaking to motorcycle enthusiasts in Sturgis, South Dakota, on Tuesday.
McCain: Not long ago a couple of hundred thousand Berliners made a lot of noise for my opponent. I'll take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day...
Announcer: But when it comes to his record, American-made motorcycles like Harleys don't matter to John McCain. Back in Washington, McCain opposed the requirement that the government buy American-made motorcycles. And he said all buy-American provisions were quote "disgraceful." Surprised? You shouldn't be. This is the same John McCain who supported billions in tax breaks for companies who ship American jobs overseas.
(More motors revving)
Announcer: It's time to hear the roar of the strong American economy again -- and stop John McCain from shipping our jobs overseas.
Obama: I'm Barack Obama, candidate for president, and I approved this message. Paid for by Obama for America.
It is increasingly clear that Obama isn't afraid to go on the attack, but unlike McCain's national ad buys, Obama's are locally-focused and issue-oriented. Sean at FiveThirtyEight.com had a great analysis of this:
...the McCain camp has gamed out the back and forth. McCain’s group raises fear about Obama, Obama calls out the behavior as fearmongering by trying to remind people he's different, McCain replies that Obama is playing the race card. This is catnip for the media. As Chuck Todd said the other morning, any day that race is the topic (regardless of who’s right about who played the race card) is a bad day for Obama.
Obama’s contrasting strategy: Only go negative in substantive ways on a local level. In Ohio, Obama is blasting McCain on the local impact of the loss of 8,000 jobs in the DHL-Airborne Express fallout. Campaign manager David Plouffe says everyone in the Cincinnati and Dayton markets will know that ad by November 4. In Nevada, Obama has an ad hammering McCain on the local substantive issue of Yucca Mountain.
This localized negative ad strategy dovetails with the Obama campaign’s focus that national tracking polls don’t matter, only winning the states it has to win does. Obama’s team beat the inevitable Clinton machine in no small part because it outhustled and precisely targeted its resources to win very specific battles en route to the overall win. It understands the approach we take here at FiveThirtyEight, which is to focus on electoral math and state-by-state polls with an eye toward heavy localized organizing.
Will this approach work? It seems smart enough to those of us who don't know better, but it's clear ultimately a hybrid of local substantive issues and macro-narrative ones are going to combine to deliver someone the victory.
Topic also covered by Slinkerwink at STRATEGY '08
UPDATE: Slinkerwink has an interesting take on it as well:
I think it’s a great approach for Obama to link McCain as being in the pocket of foreign interests since McCain is running on the theme of patriotism as his major strength. Saying that McCain cares about foreign interests more than the economic plight of Americans is going to work–because it’s TRUE. Make McCain into being "just another Republican" who doesn’t care about Americans just like George W. Bush. That way, McCain has to own the Republican brand, which is now badly damaged due to the cute little foibles of the Republican Party during the past eight years.