They should've been criticizing him from the beginning for cheating on his first wife and finding a sugar mama. It worked against Kerry in 2004. It's time we started playing by the Republican's rules whether they like it or not. At this point in time, I say nothing's off-limits. Why isn't McCain's theft of the cross in the sand story bigger news. I'd have ads running about that as well. There is no higher ground any longer. Taking the higher ground led us to where we are now and if they continue to do it, we're looking at four more years of Bush and I'm not sure this country can take it.
Still a difference between calling someone "not a normal everyday American" and calling someone an elitist. If they're going down this route just to prove he's not a normal average Joe, I'm not sure if that's going to hurt McCain's chances much. Cause I mean, no ****.
Has the Obama campaign actually called McCain an elitist? Or just out of touch? From what I see, they've used out of touch and just repeat that he doesn't know how many houses he has.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FlZ-_Sstt5I&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FlZ-_Sstt5I&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object> Here is what Obama has to say about that elitist John McCain.
Josh Marshall expands on the dynamic I was describing above- Ya Brought It on Yourself! About four years ago I described what I called the Republicans' 'b**** slap' theory of electoral politics. Stuff like the Swift Boat attacks on John Kerry and McCain's Celeb/P Diddy assault on Obama aren't really about the attacks themselves. In themselves, they're often too cartoonish to be believed in any literal sense. What they're about is smacking the other guy around and making him take it. There's no better way to demonstrate someone's lack of toughness or strength than to attack them and show they are either unwilling or unable to defend themselves -- thus the rough slang I used above. That not only makes the other guy look weak. It also transforms him into an object of contempt, which together are politically fatal. It's this meta-message of weakness that resonates far beyond the literal claims. And it's this that Democrats so often seem to miss -- explaining the factual inaccuracies of the claims, demanding that the attacks stop, all the while reinforcing the intended message of the attacks in the first place. You can even catch a hint of the mentality in the McCain camp's huffing and puffing Thursday afternoon. The new and somewhat improbable line from the McCain camp is that they've actually been doing their best to go easy on Obama, to hold back the stuff that would really make him suffer. But now that Obama's gone ahead and raised McCain's inability to remember how many houses, now he's really gonna get it with a super-mean Rezko ad and maybe even Reverend Wright. "He's opened the door to this," a McCain official told Marc Ambinder, in a campaign version of the wife-beater's "You brought this on yourself!" As if McCain and his Rove lieutenants paid much mind to closed doors. In effect, the devastating Rezko ad McCain says it never wanted to have to run is pretty weak. Which is pretty much what you'd expect for an ad put together in three or four hours by a campaign shell-shocked by a media firestorm they couldn't put out by screaming POW, POW, POW. What we'll see now is whether Obama keeps McCain on the run with a continuing line of attacks or whether they'll let up after this one reactive pick-up from McCain's mistake. The House? gaffe exposes two of McCain's biggest vulnerabilities -- 1) the contrast between his old soldier pseudo-mystique and the pampered life he's lead for almost 40 years and 2) the age-related wobbliness which has his campaign aides keeping him largely off limits to the traveling press. These dovetail with his loose-cannon approach to critical foreign policy questions. These issues -- particularly 2 and 3 -- are substantively critical issues. 1 is to the extent that it sheds light on McCain's general ignorance and indifference to bread-n-butter economic issues and his willingness to flip between progressive and Bu****e tax policy over the course of a couple years. But the tempo of this election and the fall out from the 'celeb' attacks will be determined in large part not by factual particulars but by whether Obama can show that when someone hits him hard he hits back twice as hard. Not cowering, ignoring or complaining. This is about the score and not the libretto. --Josh Marshall http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
Wait, I thought Obama was a different kind of candidate, he is above and beyond the usual politics, attack ads. I mean, that's a large reason why so many want to vote for him in the first place right? Seriously though, the more both of them campaign, the more I think with a few exceptions, they are not all that different. Even with those exceptions I fully expect Obama to compromise on some on them.
Fine ...he slipped and make a silly comment. ...and McCain slipped and also made a silly comment (about not knowing how many houses he has). NET NET ...McCain now needs to drop the "Obama is an elitist" mantra.
McCain and his sugar mama said the same thing. The Democrats have sat back and taken the punches for far too long. I love that they're finally fighting back. The attacks on Kerry in 2004 were so despicable, yet we just trusted that the public would see right through them. If John McCain was a Democrat, the Republicans would already be questioning what excactly went on in that POW camp for five years, saying McCain had been brainwashed by commies or some other BS. Anyway, I love how the second they do fight back, they're criticized by those who have watched their guys do the same thing for years.
That's what I'm talking about! <embed src="http://services.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1185304443" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" flashVars="videoId=1747186547&playerId=1185304443&viewerSecureGatewayURL=https://console.brightcove.com/services/amfgateway&servicesURL=http://services.brightcove.com/services&cdnURL=http://admin.brightcove.com&domain=embed&autoStart=false&" base="http://admin.brightcove.com" name="flashObj" width="486" height="412" seamlesstabbing="false" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" swLiveConnect="true" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/index.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash"></embed>
Actually the current neocon republican machine already did such a thing to mccain during the 2000 South Carolina primaries. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/19/us/politics/19mccain.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1219433552-HXVctPjMgqTbwuTbAy1RBA But as Mr. McCain seeks the Republican nomination again, the state is also a painful symbol of the brutality of American politics, the place that derailed his 2000 bid and, ultimately, helped reshape him into the candidate he is today. “He would tell you he’s the same guy and they’re over it and I think on many levels they are,” said John Weaver, Mr. McCain’s former chief political strategist. “But it changes you.” A smear campaign during the primary in February 2000 here had many in South Carolina falsely believing that Mr. McCain’s wife, Cindy, was a drug addict and that the couple’s adopted daughter, Bridget, was the product of an illicit union. Mr. McCain’s patriotism, mental well-being and sexuality were also viciously called into question. Evidently unnerved, the McCain campaign stumbled. Addressing the issue of the use of the Confederate battle flag — a subject of passionate debate in South Carolina — Mr. McCain vacillated. He called the flag “offensive” and a “symbol of racism and slavery,” but later backed off those remarks, referring to it as “a symbol of heritage,” the same language flag supporters used in explaining why it flew over the statehouse. “I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary,” Mr. McCain later conceded. “So I chose to compromise my principles.” Perhaps most significantly, though, an underground campaign was bubbling all around. People in some areas of South Carolina began to receive phone calls in which self-described pollsters would ask, “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?” It was a reference to Bridget, who was adopted as a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh and is darker skinned than the rest of the McCain family. Richard Hand, a professor at Bob Jones University, sent an e-mail message to “fellow South Carolinians” telling recipients that Mr. McCain had “chosen to sire children without marriage.” Literature began to pepper the windshields of cars at political events suggesting that Mr. McCain had committed treason while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, that he was mentally unstable after years in a P.O.W. camp, that he was the homosexual candidate and that Mrs. McCain, who had admitted to abusing prescription drugs years earlier, was an addict. As the McCains traveled throughout the state that year, they began to feel, aides said, as if they were being pelted by hail from an underground whispering campaign of unknown origin — a telephone call from a push pollster here, a nasty anonymous flier there — that they could barely keep pace with each attack. In the process, Mr. McCain changed from an underdog Republican seemingly determined to remake his party in his own image — one that would be divorced from religiousness and without dogmatic socially conservative notions — to a candidate who now claims that he prefers a Christian in the White House. Right after his bitter loss in 2000, Mr. McCain stood before an audience in Virginia and said defiantly: “We are the party of Ronald Reagan, not Pat Robertson. We are the party of Theodore Roosevelt, not the party of special interests. We are the party of Abraham Lincoln, not Bob Jones.” Last year, by contrast, Mr. McCain said he would consider speaking at Bob Jones University. Further, while Mr. McCain denounced Jerry Falwell in 2000 as one of the United States’ “agents of intolerance,” he eagerly accepted Mr. Falwell’s invitation last year to be the graduation speaker at Liberty University, which Mr. Falwell founded. And Mr. McCain, who always seemed uncomfortable in 2000 making statements about his own religious beliefs, recently told a reporter he would prefer a Christian as president of the United States over someone of a different faith, saying the affiliation would be “an important part of our qualifications to lead.” Charlie Condon, a former South Carolina attorney general who supported Mr. Bush in 2000 and is now co-chairman of Mr. McCain’s South Carolina committee, said the downward spiral the contest took was not surprising. “Our primaries have a way of doing that,” Mr. Condon said. “There is a tradition of it, it is accepted behavior, and frankly it works.”
I think the repeated golf cart footage darkly accomplishes more than one task. Not sure how I feel about that...
I wanted obama to run a different kind of campaign at first, but after 3 weeks of attacks from the elitest McCain, and republican smear machine...it's about time Obama slaped back!
What does neoconservatism have to do with those attacks? Absolutely nothing. You seem pretty confused. As for the house controversy - not a big deal. If you and your wife (mainly your wife) are worth over $100 million you very well may not be able to list off all your assets from memory, no matter what age you are at the time.
The problem is, he has all these houses and is thinking to himself "I have so many houses I can't even remember! That means the economy must be fundamentally strong. I mean, if I'm doing well, so is the rest of America". He will be a complete disaster for this country. I weep for us if he is elected.
