Last week we saw John McCain release negative ad after negative ad after negative ad. All the while, to the cries of many supporters, the Obama campaign only released a late token old politics ad and another energy contrast ad that wasn't even released for the media to play. That seemed to lead to a small uptick in the polls for McCain and a complete meltown on DailyKos.
As well run as the Obama campaign is, they couldn't have been surprised or unprepared for this, especially given the heated primary they just went through.
What could the Obama campaign been thinking?
I Dare You - Punch Me In The Face
As Obama let McCain lay cheapshot after cheapshot, a funny thing happened - a narrative developed, developed some more, and then got reinforced. That narrative is that McCain will fight dirty, and that opened a great many doors for us.
Sure - we may have lost a few points in early August - but these doors are worth much more.
We're now able to swing at McCain - and we opened up this week firing - without McCain being able to attack the heart of our campaign - the place where we actually were very vulnerable. This campaign from Day 1 was about "change" and "old politics" (aka gutter politics).
How is McCain going to attack at that now? Even if he tries, it won't stick - it's not part of the media narrative - the narrative is exactly opposite of that (and we know once a narrative starts, everything is forced to fit within it).
So while we tossed McCain the first week in August - we're on the attack on the more important week - the week heading into the Olympics - the last political news people we'll hear about for weeks - and we're free to keep attacking until November without cries about ''the same old politics'' sticking on us.
BONUS VIDEO: ''It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant"