Some people here on DKOS, TPM, and other Lib sites are saying that the Obama campaign is hitting McCain too late, or not hard enough. I disagree.
HITTING TOO LATE:
This particular meme is not taking into account a few important elements of this election cycle. First of all if Obama had responded to the initial attack ads, then for the past what 2 weeks, all we would have gotten is back to back attack ads which may boost our morale, but would be a disaster for Obama. Let's be honest, what makes Obama a "risky" choice to some people is that people claim to not know enough about Obama. Obama unlike Cliton and McCain is a relatively unknown quanitity to some people. If he had spent the past 2 weeks countering attack ads, what would the people who consider him unknown have discoverd about Obama. The answer: NOTHING! Unlike McCain or Clinton Obama does not have the luxury of just running a counterattack campaign. He has to let those American who are looking for a reason to vote for him other than the fact that yes, we Libs/Dems bloggers like him. The way to do that is not by running a negative non-substantive campaign, one in which all Obama does is counterpunch negative ads all the time. While McCain has been running negative ads, what has Obama been doing, talking about the economy, energy, jobs, etc. He's been giving those voters who wants other reasons to vote for him, exactly what may sway them...policy.
I really think that we sometimes forget that Obama and McCain are trying to reach different audiences. McCain wants to reach the people who are looking for reasons NOT TO VOTE FOR BARACK H OBAMA.
Barack wants to reach the people who are looking for reasons to VOTER FOR BARACK OBAMA, or even AGAINST GWB.
I really think that this should be the eyes by which we view this campaign. Because conservatives will ultimately vote against Obama by voting for McCain (or hopefuly Barr), and Liberals will untimately vote for Obama or against Bush. So I think it's really about who can get out the most of the middle of the road voters.
Obama will not win the people who aren't even contemplating voting for him, but he has a good chance of winning those who are.
NOT HARD ENOUGH
This to me seems to be a particularly tiresome meme. Seriously some people just can't be satisfied. Barack Obama is trying to win the presidency of the USA, not the president of DKOS.
The purpose of the Obama campaign isn't to play puppet to all the wrongs that have been done to Democrats. Obama is not our personal avenger. He has to win all Americans. He can't just make his whole campaign about avenging Democrats hurt feeling from the past 2 elections.
I really think that many of us are pushing our revenge fantasy onto the Obama campaign. I'm sorry, if the Obama campaign becomes all about "Repub done us wrong, so let's cut off their balls" we will lose...period.
This is not an issue of policy here. So yes I think we should be holding Obama's feet to the fire about his policy decisions (FISA, drilling, or whatever), but if you truly voted for Obama, and not just against Clinton or anyone else, then trust the man to at least run his campaign message the way that see fit. They have internal polling, we do not. We are just running on emotions which is fine, but not if you're running a campaign (for an example of letting emotions rule your campaign see Clinton, H)
If Obama runs the dkos campaign, we would be satisfied, but the the 50% of the country would not, and we would lose.
Let Obama control his message and strategy and we should continue to volunteer, donate, and on Nov 4 GOTV. I don't know about ya'll, but I want to win.