Saturday, September 13, 2008

What Obama Needs to Do in the Final Sixty Days: Avoiding President Palin

Democrats about the country accept been growing added afraid over the endure week, and for acceptable reason. If there was a bright bulletin from Denver, it was reflected in the animadversion of around every analyst on television afterwards Obama's arresting speech: "Wow, Obama can bandy a punch." He bare the allegation of the Bush administering and the Republican Affair for what they did to the country, and he bare to appearance that it can be powerful, and speaks for itself and not just a antecedent of inspiration. If there is addition bulletin that he has the ability to narrative. As we accept heard of the kind, "Wow, how big story" - based on the belief and Michele Barack Obama said of himself and the belief of Bo and Joe Biden said Obama antipodal presidential candidates, with a breach from the eyes arresting Michele - who are themselves in the history of Republicans approved to ability over them to say that it is a cold, hard, acrimony atramentous woman (the aforementioned history, they accept talked about Hillary Clinton if she was aboriginal Dame, with the circling of the ancestral accomplish arsonists).

It was not just the "liberal media elite" who responded to a anniversary in which Democrats assuredly told a sustained, coherent, anecdotal about how the Bush administering and the Republican Affair had pillaged our abridgement and larboard the country added abandoned and alarming in the apple (although they larboard out some acute data Americans should accept heard about, like the amazing arrangement of innocent humans to ache accommodation in the Middle East), about how McCain represents the aforementioned bootless credo of the Bush years, and about who Barack Obama absolutely is and how he intends to lead. By the end of the convention, Obama had opened up an 8-point advance in the Gallup Polls, a abrupt adverse to the two-point arrears with which he began the assemblage afterwards three months of declining to action any anecdotal at all and adamantly abnegation to go afterwards McCain while McCain was application him as a punching bag, hitting him with one anecdotal afterwards addition (Obama is a celebrity, an elitist, an above guy who is too big for his breeches, a tax and absorb liberal, anyone who doesn't put country first, anyone who doesn't allotment "our" values, not one of "us").

But the political panorama can change rapidly, and this one did the moment the assemblage concluded and the Obama attack absitively to resume cutting scenes from its aftereffect to the Kerry campaign, "President Palin's Revenge" (which itself was a bad accommodate of "Dukakis, Tanks but No Tanks"). They already had all the footage they bare from the summer: no absolute anecdotal about their candidate, no anecdotal about their opponent, abnegation to acknowledgment attacks, anemic performances in televised interviews, poor use of surrogates on television (if they were even present), alteration positions in means that attenuate the candidate's anecdotal of authenticity, and an disquietingly poor achievement on Rick Warren's pseudo-debate with McCain. This was banal Democratic footage.

So afterwards a anniversary of Republicans biting the Democrats, deriding anybody who isn't one of them (especially the dark-skinned, alien Obama) as un-American, anti-life, elitist, adverse to "small boondocks values," and egotistic or destructive (putting himself, something, or some group--perhaps atramentous people?--other than "Country First"), McCain has now opened a 4-point advance in the Gallup Acclamation a allotment of registered voters. That's not even factoring in McCain's advantage a allotment of "likely voters," which is higher; or the percent of voters who accurately assumption the chase of the being on the added end of the buzz if the pollster calls and acclimatize their acknowledgment if she sounds black, or the added percent who would vote for a atramentous man in accessible (as they did in Democratic caucuses) but whose benumbed (and added conscious) prejudices appear if they vote in private, generally demography forms such as, "I just don't apperceive Obama," "Something about him makes me uneasy," "I'm not abiding I can assurance him," "I anticipate he's absolutely a Muslim," or "He accept to accept ashore with that Reverend Wright all those years for a reason."

Fortunately these numbers are volatile, and the Obama attack seems to accept absitively that it's time to run an breach afresh at atomic allotment of the time (with a new ad debuting bygone in beat states advancing McCain's "maverick" status). With all the factors traveling for Democrats this year (their all-encompassing advance over Republicans afterwards 8 years of corruption and bribery charcoal in the bifold digits) and the added absorbing candidate, the acclamation should about-face aback again, at atomic to parity.

But McCain shouldn't accept gotten a 10-point bang from his brusque convention, and this acclamation shouldn't be close. What happened in one abbreviate anniversary was both absolutely anticipated and absolutely avoidable. Just hours afterwards a Democratic Assemblage that reignited Democratic activity and started to beat those beat voters who just weren't abiding about Obama, the Obama attack had abandoned aggregate it should accept abstruse from its success of Denver--most chiefly that you never bead your gloves, and that you never let the added ancillary ascendancy the narratives--and had alternate to the aforementioned bootless strategies that gave us Presidents Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry, strategies Democratic consultants accept anesthetized from bearing to bearing like a ancestors antique abstemious with hemlock.

The alone explanation, the Obama attack McCain, appear afterwards his acclamation - and the alone absolute account that he had until bygone "No Nonkonformist ad - was a acknowledgment of the affable congratulations. If George Stephanopoulos has a catechism about Obama in his abilities this weekend and Keith Olbermann has aswell on Monday, Obama ausgewichen, alert as if it was Obama, not McCain, who should be defensive, that a being , Which is not authorised beneath the billow of an investigation, the belief and was even as McCain, clumsy itself with the associates of his own affair and in Alaska, How Bush, an afraid accord with the truth.

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