Ad: Now THAT"S what I'm tawkin' 'bout

Yes, that title is exactly as ineloquent as this ad is eloquent. Show Obama at his best, lays out a vision, and got me on the gut-level in the final moments.



I believe ads like this can make a difference. I'm a skeptic, and a student of advertising, and can usually approach ad analysis with some detachment. But this ad broke that down.

I want to see more of these, Mr. Obama, because I want to call you Mr. President. You had me at "I approve this message..."

Ad: The fundamentals of our economy...

It didn't take long for the Obama campaign to jump on McCain's comment Monday that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." Biden started hitting McCain on it later that same day, and this ad has already started airing:

Angela Natividad at AdGabber, from whom I first got word of the ad, called it "dirty press." My first responses to that were a chuckle, as though the dirty card hadn't already been solidly played by the McCain camp, and derision. Personally, I feel McCain is out of touch and likely to do further damage to the economy should he win the White House.

But, the more I think about it, I'm not sure I like this ad. Though not as blatant or laughable as the McCain ad that tried to take mention of a pig and lipstick out of context, I think this too is an example of distorting your opponent's intention.

Look at the whole McCain quote:

"The fundamentals of our economy are strong, but these are very, very difficult times. I promise you we will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street!"

Now, let me be clear - I don't think McCain will clean up Wall Street and I don't think he has any clue how bad things are for average Americans. But, I also don't think he was saying that economic indicators are positive or that there aren't problems to be addressed. Frankly, I believe he meant "fundamentals" to refer to the people and companies that make up the basis of our economy.

And, he's quite possibly still wrong. I'm one that believes that the fundamental bases of our capitalist economy are fundamentally fucked, that the system has bred a atavistic culture that will eat and eat and eat until it consumes itself.

But that isn't what the ad is inferring. It takes that quote to mean that McCain believes that the economy, right now, is strong, which is obviously not the case.

It isn't a terrific distortion, but it feels like one all the same, and that isn't a tactic I want Obama to adopt. The decontextualized distortion is the oldest trick in the poli-ads book, and that's not change, that's more of the same.

Do I want Obama to go on the offensive? Yes. But I want a good clean fight, and this ad veers awfully close to a rabbit punch. Let the other side be the ones swinging for below the belt.

But maybe I'm a minority voice in this. What say you? Do you like the ad? Do you like these tactics? What do you want to see out of Obama ads?

AdGabber: 'The Fundamentals of Our Economy Are Strong.'

ABC News Blog: Biden Rips McCain for Saying the Fundamentals of Economy are "Strong"

Massive Goings On

- There's really no other way to put this. Sarah Palin's Tax Problem. Seriously.

- In a similar vein: Oy vey. Turns out a group known as The Republican Jewish Coalition conducted a survey that targeted older Jews and peppered them with questions like the following:

Would it affect your vote if you knew that Obama has had a decade long relationship with pro-Palestinian leaders in Chicago?

...the leader of Hamas, Ahmed Yousef, expressed support for Obama and his hope for Obama's victory?

...the church Barack Obama has attended is known for its anti-Israel and anti-American remarks?

It is groups like this that are responsible for the hard-to-dispel-from-the-minds-of-intractable-middle-state-voter memes like "Obama is a Muslim, he will be sworn in on the Q'uran." This poll is targeting Jews in Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

- 527 ads came out swinging today (527s are political groups that do not have fundraising limits placed on them, and don’t have to adhere to Federal Election Commission rules; Swift Boat Vets for Truth and Move On are a couple of 527 groups, for example). Two ads in particular, from both sides of the chasm, are garnering attention: Born Alive Truth’s ad on Obama’s abortion record, and Move On’s attack-style ad pointing out that McCain has surrounded himself with lobbyists.

- An update on JJ’s entry regarding voter suppression in Michigan: Obama and the Democrats are filing an injunction that will prevent the GOP from challenging the registrations from voters whose homes have been foreclosed. Republicans countercharge that this is nothing but a diversionary tactic, natch.

- A look at the Huffington Post’s front page offers a remarkable sight, one that this political junkie still can’t believe has actually happened: A veritable laundry list of items that show McCain/Palin losing their footing with the media. You have a McCain surrogate saying Palin isn’t qualified to run a company; you have McCain losing his temper (not a tantrum, but still) on MSNBC; you have conservative columnists reacting badly to the ABC News extravaganza (both the Palin interview and McCain’s The View outing); and you have reporters going after McCain over his statement about the fundamentals of the US economy still being strong.

The McCain/Palin camp is being forced to dance right now. There’s no guarantee that things will stay like this for the remainder of the race, anything is possible and the MSM is still easily distracted by shiny things. However, for the moment, things are looking to swing Obama’s way.

- This being the case, everyone is saying that it is important for Obama to strike while the iron is hot. It looks like he’s picking up the cue very well:

"Can you afford to take a chance on someone who's voted against the minimum wage 19 times," Obama asked a crowd of thousands under a blazing sun at a rally in western Colorado at the start of a swing through contested Western states. "When it was $4, he was against it, when it was $5 he was against it, when it was $6 he was against it."
--Obama Slams McCain Over The Economy

“So let's be clear: what we've seen the last few days is nothing less than the final verdict on an economic philosophy that has completely failed.”
--How The World Works: Obama's Economic Plan

- Then there’s the following from today’s bit of recommended reading*, “Why Experience Matters.”

“In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land…I would have more sympathy for this view if I hadn’t just lived through the last eight years. For if the Bush administration was anything, it was the anti-establishment attitude put into executive practice.”

*By no means is this an endorsement of Mr. Brooks' general opinion, the guy is as conservative as they come, and has said some dumb things in his past. However, as an example of how conservatives are essentially abandoning the campaign, this does make for some enlightening material.--TBO

Shut Up And Pay Your Higher Taxes, You Whiners

Something that the media should be pointing out a lot more than they are is McCain's lie about how Obama is going to raise your taxes and McCain is going to lower them. The media has started to question him a little more on it than they have previously, pointing out that an independent and nonpartisan tax group has said Obama will cut taxes for the majority of Americans and only raise the taxes of the highest wage earners.

But one thing they have not tried to call McCain on is his insane tax increase on health insurance. The big thing he says he wants government to get out of the way of is the very thing that he's going to put a tax on.

What McCain is proposing is not just insanity, it is criminal insanity. Under McCain's plan the health insurance you get from your job would now be taxable income. You read that right.

To make sure I'm clear, we are not talking about just the non-taxed portion of your salary that you contribute to your coverage being taxed. That would be bad enough, that $100 to $300 or whatever per month being taxed when you now enjoy being able to put that into your health insurance as pre-tax money. That saves you a few bucks a year.

No, what McCain's plan would do is put the entire value of your health insurance, meaning the amount that it costs your employer, in the taxable income column.

This means that a President McCain would raise your taxes as if you got a $10,000/year raise (average cost for a family on the cheapest plan) without you being able to actually reap the benefits of a larger income.

He would replace this with a $5,000 tax credit for families, which won't pay for even half of a year's worth of health coverage even if what you get even really equals five grand, which for most people it will not. You can't get the whole amount if you don't make enough money to owe that much in taxes to begin with.

So who would this help, when it is obviously not the working people of America? Well, it sure goes a long way in helping the big corporations. Once people can't afford the extra taxes they have to pay they will drop their health plan at work, saving millions for large companies with thousands of employees. (Wal-Mart would presumably be unaffected, not really having a health insurance plan for the majority of their employees anyway)

John McCain is selling a health care plan that would considerably increase number of people who are uninsured in this country.

Add this slap in the face to the working class to the one his biggest financial advisor, Phil Gramm, already did by calling us a nation of whiners about the economy.

That isn't even the biggest sin of Phil Gramm. As the Princeton economist Paul Krugman points out, Gramm - as the head of the Senate banking committee and the chief writer of banking deregulation bills in the late 90s and early 2000s and as the V.P. and main lobbyist for the investment firm UBS - is the person most responsible for the current economic crises, save for one Alan Greenspan.

It is widely known that McCain will tap Gramm as the Secretary of the Treasury if he is elected.

The United States better get used to the phrase, "Brother can you spare a dime?" again.

I beg you to make sure that every voting age person you know knows about this disastrous plan.

Read: Journal Disputes McCain’s Health Care Claims.

Read: McCain’s Radical Agenda.

__

Quick addendum from JJ:

Mother Jones has a nice piece about McCain slamming Wall Street for the failure, and ignoring how much Phil Gramm had to do with it.

Mother Jones - MoJoBlog: McCain Blasts Wall Street Failure, Neglects To Mention His Adviser Helped Cause It

The best part of the whole financial mess is going to be how it forces McCain out of his comfort zone of personality politics (read: bullshitting the voters) and into actual policy conversations, in which he inevitably flounders.

Irony Check: Karl Rove

People seem to miss the point. The whole thing isn't that if Karl Rove says you're out of line, then McCain must be out of line. No, no.

Karl Rove is the main engineer of this line of politics, he took all of the world's previous smear campaigns and perfected the practice to laser like precision.

He claims that both parties have gone too far, but, come on. Give me an Obama smear ad. Not a negative one, but a smear one. "Obama wants to teach sex ed to kindergartners" that's a smear. If such a thing exists coming from the Obama side, I implore you to provide a link.

The whole lipstick thing is ludicrous, so let's ignore it for the moment.

Karl Rove is a McCain campaign adviser, one with such pull that when Johnny Maverick wanted to nominate either Huckabee or Lieberman, Rove had veto power. You mean to tell me he didn't say "put 'Sex Ed' up the flagpole, see if anyone salutes?"

Please.

Besides, "Sex Ed" is just as false, and about as reprehensible, an accusation as Swiftboaters for Truth, Karl Rove's 2004 masterstroke, wherein the same bunch of political charlatans who smeared John McCain over his war record in 2000 decided to smear John Kerry for his war record.

So when Rove says that McCain went too far, what he's really saying is that "Sex Ed" was too obvious a lie to pull off, while selling the previous object of his derision down the river.

It’s The Economy Again, Charlie Brown…At Least For This Week

The economy figures to dominate this week’s news cycle, what with the imminent collapse of Wall Street, or, as HuffPo dubbed it in their inimitable style, “Black Monday” has arrived.

The news could not be worse for McCain, especially on the heels of having Alan “I’m Still Here” Greenspan say that the country can’t afford McCain’s proposed tax cuts on Friday. So, after the “government-should-not-be-interfering-in-business” Republicans bailed out Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we now have the Lehman Bros. going bankrupt, Merrill Lynch selling itself to Bank of America, with AIG and Washington Mutual on the bubble; grim doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The McCain camp’s response? “The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” oh, and Tina Fey was being sexist in SNL’s parody of Palin.

In other words, expect for Obama/Biden to make hay this week--hey, look! Here's Obama, and here's Biden doing just that.

It’s really too bad for McCain that his campaign blew their credibility wad on Operation: Maybelline last week. If there ever was a time for diversionary tactics, this would’ve been it.

Not that they won’t try it, anyway.
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Update: Special shout out to One Boring Old Man for saving me the hassle of writing a particularly rambling entry.

End of The Week

To think that a week ago some were thinking that the Republican convention bounce woulnd't be too big, and that the McCain/Palin phenomenon would blow over fairly quickly...Okay, not a lot of people were saying that convincingly, mostly because there was too much in the air, far too many uncertainties hanging about.

A week later, after panicking about that bounce, we've seen the Karl Rove playbook jump the lipsticked-shark (one hopes), Obama rolling with the punches and taking control again, and the week ended with women leading the way, appropriately enough; with the women from The View showing the press how to properly grill a candidate, and the women from Saturday Night Live telling the press to grow a pair.



Speaking of pairs, Karl Rove has a couple of brass ones, the size of melons, and in dire need of kicking...This group needs watching, and the New York Times helped us out on that score with their Saturday front page piece about Palin's tenure in Alaska.

Lastly, a reminder for all of us that we, the people, are the ones in the driver's seat. It's easy to get cynical in the face of manufactured outrage, manipulated talking points and fictionalized news stories; just as these things unify those on the Right, we should use them as our battle cry.

Which is why it is particularly encouraging that two Alaskan Democrats, who happen to be female, organized a protest in Anchorage in spite of facing ridicule and harassment. It turned out to be one of the biggest protests in the history of Alaska. Congratulations, ladies!

Now, let's see what next week brings.