McCain Palin Attacks Not the Same as Obama's

I'm tired of people lumping in Obama with McCain as a negative campaigner. It's just not true. For about a year, maybe more, there has been an underground smear campaign against Obama. What's happening now, is McCain, thanks largely to Palin, bought the wingnut strategy. In fact, safe to say, McCain doomed his candidacy when he chose Palin.

Salon: The Washington Post’s Dan Balz has an article today perfectly illustrating how the modern journalist’s conception of “balance” leads them to distort the truth. Balz’s article is about the increasing use of “character attacks” in the presidential race, and rather than state the truth — that the McCain/Palin ticket is now relying almost exclusively on some of the ugliest and most outright dangerous character smears seen in a modern presidential election — Balz instead pretends that this is a phenomenon of which both sides are guilty in equal measure:
At a time when the nation needs inspiration and confidence-building, the two candidates running for president are trying to ensure that whoever ends up winning next month will be seen as unfit by a sizable portion of the population.
To see the two candidates in a pair of appearances here in Ohio over the past two days is to see John McCain and Barack Obama attacking each other not just because of their different visions and prescriptions for the problems the country is now facing, but going straight at each other over character, fitness and behavior.
Has Balz bothered to watch the news for the last week? The rallies at John McCain and Sarah Palin’s events are rabid, drooling lynch mobs spouting the most vile and extreme accusations against Barack Obama personally that can be imagined. Here is what the AP report of the McCain/Palin event today in Ohio describes — now a regular, daily feature of their events:
....
Saying that McCain has been ”erratic” over the past couple of months is plainly true and, even if it weren’t, it is a claim about McCain’s behavior as a leader, as a candidate, and his ability to lead the country. By obvious contrast —as Balz himself says — “McCain’s code is to suggest something sinister about Obama, to say there is something lurking in his past that Americans should fear.” Those accusations exist in different universes. Beyond that, 100% — 100% — of all McCain ads are now negative attacks on Obama, while only 1/3 of Obama ads entail negative attacks on McCain.
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If McCain Attacks Obama Will Counter

Obama won't go negative tonight, unless McCain drags him there. You can almost bet McCain will do just that. I'm hoping Obama has some sort of surprise up his sleeve. I don't know what that would be but the possibilities are endless.

NYT: NASHVILLE — Senator Barack Obama is prepared to hit back, including with Keating Five scandal if necessary, if Senator John McCain uses tonight’s presidential debate to attack him over his associations with controversial figures like former William C. Ayers, the former Weather Underground leader, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist said this afternoon.

The strategist, David Axelrod, also took a dig at Mr. McCain in a conversation with reporters on the Obama campaign plane, saying that Republicans were off-base to criticize small donations from overseas to Mr. Obama – noting that anyone in the world who buys an Obama T-shirt online would have their payment listed as a donation.

“I know that Senator McCain may not know this, but the Internet – you can get on it anywhere in the world,” Mr. Axelrod said, referring to Mr. McCain’s past statement that he was not savvy about computers.

McCain's Lost His Respect

John McCain started out with his respect but somewhere along the way he lost it.

McCain Proclaims Obama The One

John McCain can't stop talking about Obama, and about how many people admire and respect Obama, and in a new ad, McCain proclaims Obama The One.

Well, it's about time. Although the ad distorts some facts and twists Obama's words (what's a few lies when desperation sets in), McCain has it right. Obama is The One. He's The One who's going to be our next president.

McCain's just sorry he's Not The One.


In the past week, 200,000 people donated to the Obama campaign (including me), including 100,000 just yesterday (for a chance to go to Denver). People having been pouring into Obama campaign offices. McCain's low road tactics has inspired donations and action. 

McCain's Smear Merchants

Look out cause the blowhards are coming to life. About 90 days left before the nomination and John McCain is a miserable candidate in dire need of a platform, and has nowhere to go but down. McCain is outdated. His new ad "The One" distorts and twists all in the name of fun, according to his campaign email. 

Salon: For many of the journalists who regard John McCain as an unusually honorable politician, listening to his increasingly dishonorable campaign rhetoric is a painful and puzzling experience. They are openly wondering what has driven him to denigrate and even smear Barack Obama in a style more reminiscent of McCain's old enemies in his own party than the straight-talking maverick. They want to believe that he has not really changed, and that somehow these lapses can be blamed on someone else. Like a spouse in a bad marriage, they have yet to face up to the fact that he actually changed years ago -- or to ask if he was ever the man they once thought he was.

Although several prominent pundits have denounced McCain for questioning Obama's patriotism, a lingering reluctance to confront reality still colors much commentary on the campaign. Writing gingerly in the Washington Post of the Arizona senator's "fuzzy" campaign persona, David Ignatius pleaded with McCain to return to the noble, tolerant and healing ways that no longer seem to govern his character.

The Karl Rove Media Flock Goes Tweet

Karl Rove sets the tone and the right wing media goes tweet, tweet. Here's more media tweets and if you read the comments you'll see a lot of people have taken the bait. 

Salon: This is exactly what happens every single election cycle. The Right spews some petty, personality-based attack, and the chirping media birds then mindlessly repeat it until it's lodged into our discourse as accepted fact. That's the media strategy on which the Right is relying to win the election this year again -- dictating the songs sung by the vapid, chirping press birds -- even as they petulantly and incessantly complain that the same media stars who serve this strategy are stacked against them. Yesterday's, National Review's Rich Lowry posted what he called "musings from a shrewd friend" about a Dana Milbank column in yesterday's Washington Post that repeated every last "Obama-is-arrogant" cliché ("there are signs that the Obama campaign's arrogance has begun to anger reporters"). Lowry's "shrewd" friend:
[Obama's] showing hubris and contempt for the rest of us in how he considers America fundamentally broken and he's the solution. Messianism is usually a quality you don't want in a president. This was always the soft underbelly of his candidacy. They've gotten too caught up in their own story. What always does in a celebrity? Overexposure. The question now is whether Dana Milbank is the bird leaving the wire and every other bird in the press follows him or not. If this narrative sets in, Obama might have to move up his VP announcement to change the story.
Actually, Milbank wasn't pioneering anything. He was just doing what Beltway reporters do -- repeating what he's been hearing as standard conventional Beltway media wisdom handed down from Rovian/McCain operatives: Obama is an arrogant, presumptuous elitist. The birds who led the flock are Karl Rove, Steve Schmidt and comrades. Milbank was just one of the many birds "leaving the wire" and following along.

.....
This is what happens over and over and over. Media stars love to be used this way. The themes never change and neither does the process. Still, it's amazing how fast it travels from Karl Rove's lips and then out of the mouths of the vast bulk of "journalists" covering the presidential race for establishment media outlets. As Gloria Borger of CNN and U.S. News & World Report said: "when Rove speaks, the political class pays attention -- usually with good reason."
The fact that they all say the same thing at once ("up next: Is Obama arrogant?" -- "Obama's arrogance can hurt him" -- "Obama is striking many as arrogant and presumptuous" -- "Obama needs to be careful not to appear too arrogant") doesn't strike any of them as evidence that they're mindless, manipulated spouters of conventional wisdom. They actually think it proves the opposite -- that it's evidence that they are political sophisticates plugged into the important election themes ("Obama is arrogant and presumptuous").

McCain Answers Negative Campaigning

At McCain's campaign event in Racine Wisconsin, a questioner asked about McCain's negative campaigning.

"There are differences and we are drawing those differences," McCain said. "What we are talking about here is substance and not style," he said. 

"I'm proud of the campaign we have run," he said. "We're proud of that commercial."
He then made the pitch, again, that he'd like Obama to join him on the town halls.

Obama terrifies an 18 year old in the audience. She stands up shaking and says that Obama terrifies her: "Don't let him get away with a thing."

McCain answers: "I admire Senator Obama but we just have stark differences."
McCain then went back to the surge worked. It's all he's got.

I have to say, McCain's supporters sure are different. The tone of his event is different. They are either very pro-McCain or more anti-Obama than pro-McCain. 

A young girl asked the infamous Viagra birth control question- why insurers cover one and not the other. She said you now have had a lot of time to think about it. He still didn't have an answer. 

Here's what he said: "It's up to the person who purchases the insurance." 

He's lost on this issue. Still.

A Native American asked about a bill that displaced Native Americans. McCain didn't answer the question somehow started talking about "country first" and I don't know enough about this issue to make a smart comment. 

A supporter asked about his mother and McCain told a story about his mother who went to France and couldn't rent a car so she bought a car. Hmmm.

If you haven't ever seen a McCain event, I highly recommend it. I wonder if the press will write about any of this -- how he still couldn't answer the Viagra question, the negative campaigning answer. They probably won't because who wants to watch.