While the Obama campaign has planned and executed a brilliant political primary campaign on the 50-state strategy front, his campaign is doing very poorly on the front lines of the media battle.
Every day we see a parade of clowns on TV: republicans, Clintonoids, and pundits, but rarely does an Obama supporter ever seem to appear.
This is eerily reminiscent of Kerry's awful media (non)campaign in '04.
There were countless oppurtunities for Kerry to rip the Bush administration a new one, on every issue, but the Kerry folks shirked at every oppurtunity.
Consequently, the rightwing dominated the news and spin, giving people the impression that Kerry was unable to respond because he either had no effective response to begin with, or he was afraid to...
Obama's team is making almost the same mistake. There are simply very few Obama surrogates on TV, and it makes Obama look like he doesn't have very many important supporters, nor does it look like he is trying to win the spin wars.
This is vitally important; even though we look down upon 'spin', there is meaningful, truthful spin, and there is bullshit spin.
Right now, the Clintonoids have been hugely successful at pushing their bullshit spin simply because the Obama campaign has failed to get their surrogates in front of the media like the Clintonoids have, and the McCainiacs will start doing soon. I hope this is because Obama's team knows enough supers are behind Obama and will make sure he gets the nomination, but still, this is not a good sign. In fact, it is extremely troubling.
Winning elections is often about getting the most positive attention - and spin - for your candidate.
By far, Obama's biggest problem with alot of voters isn't negativity or perceptions of elitism or even racism, it's unfamiliarity; not just with Obama as an individual, but unfamiliarity with Obama's friends, supporters and ideas.
This remains an issue because there is a noticeable lack of Obama surrogates on the cable TV shows. This has become glaring ever since Obama more or less became the presumptive, but the Obama campaign is making a huge tactical mistake by not getting as many of his supporters on TV as possible.
Why are there so many different Clinton supporters on TV every day, but hardly any from Obama? Where the hell is Richardson? Edwards? Sebelius? etc etc etc...?
While Clinton and McCain have literally dozens of high-profile surrogates on TV every hour of every day, Obama has hardly any at all.
He will lose what should be an easy victory unless the Obama supporters start coming out and talking about Obama, his platform and also ripping McCain on the economy (that's another story)...NOW. Time is of the essence. It is not a very long time until November.