John McCain has been blaming Barack Obama for high gas prices because Obama opposes more offshore oil drilling. Here’s the response from MoveOn.org:
It’s a simple message: we expected more from McCain than misleading gimmicks.
The Obama campaign has taken this approach a step further by launching a new website: lowroadexpress.com. You can watch Obama’s tv commercial that portrays McCain as practicing the politics of the past and clinging to failed policies. You can read newspaper editorials criticizing McCain’s tactics. The main message of the site is this:
Welcome to the Low Road Express.
John McCain used to stand for “straight talk.” Not anymore.
These days John McCain doesn’t seem to stand for anything but negative attacks and false charges against Barack Obama. This isn’t the John McCain we used to know.
I see the point of hitting McCain on his supposed strength as a straight talker, and I see the point of working the refs in the media by calling out McCain for his negative campaigning.
However, I wonder whether going after McCain’s campaign tactics should be the main thrust of the Democratic response.
I agree with David Mizner, who wrote yesterday, “Good populist rhetoric, and linking McCain to corporate greed, is the way to beat not only McCain’s drilling nonsense, but the Brittany-Spears smear campaign.”
Mizner linked to a great statement from the Obama campaign regarding the record quarterly profit reported by Exxon Mobil:
Perhaps the only thing more outrageous than Exxon Mobil making record profits while Americans are paying record prices at the pump is the fact that Senator McCain has proposed giving them an additional $1.2 billion tax break. While Senator McCain’s plan has succeeded in helping his campaign raise over $1 million from oil and gas company executives and employees just last month, it won’t lower gas prices or end our dangerous dependence on foreign oil. Instead of an energy policy that reads like an oil-company wish list, it’s time to create a new American energy economy by investing in alternative energy, creating millions of new jobs, increasing fuel efficiency standards, and ending the tyranny of oil once and for all.
Now the focus is on McCain as a typical corrupt Republican who takes money from corporate executives and supports big tax breaks for profitable companies.
That seems more damaging than saying he runs mean television commercials.
You might think, of course desmoinesdem wants Obama to talk more about Republicans being bought and paid for by powerful corporations–she was an Edwards supporter!
Well, longtime Obama backer Dansac is concerned that McCain’s attack ads are working and would like to see Obama go on offense:
Get scrappy Obama, no more worrying about “looking Presidential.” The high road is for suckers and we thought you knew this. Winning is really quite simple:
“John McCain is Bush’s 3rd Term” and “John McCain is Completely Out of Touch and Knows Nothing about the Economy”Repeat it over and over. Not just Obama, but a coordinated surrogate strategy with really tough talking points. Call his ads “pathetic” and what you’d expect from someone “who has nothing to offer but a 3rd Bush term and knows nothing about the economy.”
Frame HIM instead of allowing yourself to be framed. Because don’t be fooled Obama folks or Kossacks, that’s what’s starting to happen.
Victory may still be ours, but a landslide is increasingly unlikely and victory will be tougher to achieve. We have a very small window, a VERY small window to start pushing back aggressively. And accusing McCain of taking the “low road” won’t do it. We need to get in the muck and define him.
Offense. It’s what’s for dinner.
About that window: the election is less than 100 days away, and fladem has persuasively argued that most recent presidential elections have been won or lost in the summer, not the fall.
What do you think is the right approach for Obama? Chiding McCain for using the politics of the past? Accusing McCain of doing the oil companies’ bidding? Branding McCain as Bush’s third term?