From the Obama campaign....The fight is on. Use the weakness of your enemy as your energy. It goes to the core of the Obama campaign.
Politico Article
Jujutsu article from Wikipedia
These techniques were developed around the principle of using an attacker's energy against him, rather than directly opposing it, and came to be known as jujutsu
Branding his opponent as "erratic in a crisis," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is preempting plans by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to portray him as having sinister connections to controversial Chicagoans.
Obama officials call it political jujitsu – turning the attacks back on the attacker.
And the response:
But Obama isn’t waiting to respond. His campaign is going up Monday on national cable stations with a scathing ad saying: "Three quarters of a million jobs lost this year. Our financial system in turmoil. And John McCain? Erratic in a crisis. Out of touch on the economy. No wonder his campaign wants to change the subject.
"Turn the page on the financial crisis by launching dishonorable, dishonest ‘assaults’ against Barack Obama. Struggling families can't turn the page on this economy, and we can't afford another president who is this out of touch."
Then Obama says: "I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message."
Updated with Video
Great move by Senator Obama. Discredit your opponent before he even starts. It changes the whole story...I think this is the best lesson learned from 2004. If you let this sit, even for a second, it gives the enemy an opening.
But McCain does even worse by showing his hand WAAAAY too early. I think he forgot he is going against a poker player, not some dumbass at a craps table waiting for the dice to fall his way. The biggest mistake is that Obama has the debates to simply repeat his argument of erratic behavior to 60 million viewers for free. No advertisting dollars needed to reach a huge audience - all eyes and ears on the candidates. I think that it would have been far more effective for the McClueless campaign to wait post debates, but the polling numbers must be so bad they have no chance but to try these desperate attacks. Get a little bounce with these types of ads (maybe), and try to take that to election day.
To quote the campaign from the article:
"We think the McCain campaign made a huge error by telling the press that their strategy was to distract from the most important issue facing voters," a senior Obama official said. "Every attack going forward will be easy to characterize for what it is – an attempt to distract from the Bush-McCain economic record."
Or as my wife says, McCain's favorite strategy "Look at me! Look at me! I'm on fire!"
Edit: Thanks for Rec List!
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Off Topic Rant: If anyone from the Obama campaign reads this, why doesn't the offical website have (and Sen. O promote) a tool like this: www.obamataxcut.com