Yesterday, a group of us went to hear Obama speak in Manchester. It
was a suberb speech, intelligent, inspiring, and logical. It covered
many of his regular themes with his regular speech lines. People were
fired up and ready to go. Yet when we left, I was scratching my
head because despite speeches like this, it seemed like Mccain had
momentum.
Also, I talked to a reporter for a major paper who asked me how
I thought the election was going. I responded by saying when the
american people understand the substantive differences between the
two candidates, I was sure that Barack would win. He responded by
saying that the McCain campaign realized that they had to make
the campaign about personalities and not about the issues.
We have to be honest with ourselves, the Republicans are succeeding
in making this personality contest and diverting attention from the
problems of the day. How they are doing it and how to combat this
more below the fold.
How did the MCain campaign do this? It is a simple rovean tactic of
diverting attention from the issues to irrelevant baloney. They did
this by nominating Sarah Palin. Now the MSM and many us are talking
about Troopergate, the Bridge to Nowhere, the pregnancy of her daughter,
and whether Palin is like Cheney or worse. Lost in the din is the
discussion of the lousy economy, low paying jobs, unemployment, home
foreclosures, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, high energy costs, alternative
fuels, health care and intrastructure in shambles.
We need to return to these issues. This is like 1992," it is the
economy stupid." We need to return to these issues. Remember under
President Clinton we had good jobs with good pay. Now we have
unemployment and lousy pay.
So forget Sarah Palin. Do not mention her. Stick to the economy.
Can anyone think of a short terse bumper sticker type phrase that
says under Clinton the economy was good as to jobs and pay and
bad under Bush.
One idea is "enough is enough!