With the McCain camp now floating the lipstick wars and Kindergarten sex ed memes, while continuing to outright lie about facts and policy positions, the media will be locked into its usual silly season mode of covering manufactured scandals and innuendo.
I don't see the narrative turning back to substantive issues until the debates begin in a couple of weeks. And fortunately, this year's accelerated schedule means that the silly season will be mercifully shorter.
Everyone has chimed in about what Obama should do, but I question what the media will choose to cover. Regardless of how hard Obama should hit back, and how he should respond, it seems that the media has chosen to hone in on the personality side and the conventional wisdom has concluded that this favors McCain. Yet, I see plenty of angles by which McCain and Palin's personality issues and likability can be deconstructed.
If Obama is playing rope-a-dope with McCain/Palin, and waiting until they overreach before responding, we're just about at the right time.
IT'S ABOUT PERSONALITY UNTIL THE DEBATES
Listening to Thom Hartmann's program this morning, I thought he was spot on with his assessment that the campaign has become focused on the personalities. He's not saying that this is how things should be, but it's simply the reality. But, rather than constantly trying to steer the discussion back to issues, acknowledge that this is not what the media will focus on and work within that reality.
Even in a campaign dominated by personality "issues," there's still plenty that Obama and his team can use to knock down McCain's strong suits. Hartmann thought that McCain is very vulnerable to attacks on his honesty and his flip-flopping, while Palin can be attacked from any number of different angles for her outright hypocrisy.
SCORING POINTS DURING THE SILLY SEASON
Unfortunately, the kind of guttural nonsense that has dominated the coverage over the past couple of days will likely dominate the media coverage for the next couple of weeks. But, it's a silly season game where Obama can still score political points until voters actually look at substance.
And I don't think that any of the attention will turn on substance until the debates begin, or Obama tries a game-changing media play like an economic summit or major address similar to the one that he gave on race during the primaries.
Town hall meetings, stump speeches, et al, are frankly boring to the reporters who hear them everyday. This leaves a news vacuum that's wide open to nonsensical memes, like the ones that McCain has decided to throw into the mix, dominating the news cycles.
Every reporter I've seen on MSNBC and CNN this morning seems to think that this story is ridiculous and will fade quickly, yet they continue to cover the story as if it was legitimate. In a vacuum, this is the garbage that fills the time.
Obama has already begun to respond. While it's very clear that he won't let these smears fester and take hold like Kerry did, I think the campaign needs to remain vigilant, respond quickly and decisively, and be on target with their counterattacks. In his nomination speech, Obama already demonstrated that he can turn the GOP attack points on their ear and expose them for the moronic smears that they are.
THE DEBATES WILL DECIDE THE ELECTION
The debates are really where voters will have an opportunity to assess more substantive issues than whether "lipstick on a pig" is a sexist smear, and whether educating kids about predators equates to sex ed for kindergarteners.
While I doubt that the post-debate media coverage will be any less trivial than the current 24-hour news cycle driven nonsense, the debates will focus attention on what the candidates actually say for themselves, rather than what how ads and surrogates paint and distort the candidates. This is the only remaining time where a very large audience will see the candidates unfiltered, and come to their own conclusions based on what they actually see rather than what someone tells them.
The composite polling (disregarding issues with the sampling validity) shows the race at a dead heat or very slightly favoring McCain. This is a far cry from 2004 in which the composite polling put Bush up by more than 8%. The final vote tally had Bush ahead by less than a 2% margin. (graph courtesy of DaveV on his diary)
http://www.dailykos.com/...
In 2004, the debates helped erode Bush's post-convention bounce. If not for the election eve Bin Laden video (and potential vote tampering in Ohio), Kerry very well might have pulled out a victory since the trends were moving in Kerry's favor after the debates.
So long as Obama can keep the silly season tactical gaming from completely getting out of hand (and in fact, I think the GOP can get plenty of blowback by simply pushing their attacks too far), then that sets him up very well for the debates. In a substantive discussion, Obama has the upper hand. He simply needs to hold his ground, and score the necessary style/personality points with undecided voters. The issues are on Obama's side, and if he can convey that, then that swings the election.