McCain’s Strategy
By now McCain’s only possible strategy in this election is clear. Turn the discussion to bogus issues about ‘lipstick on a pig’ and false outrage at ‘disrespect’ and ‘sexism’; supplement that with out an out lies and BS: "Obama will raise our taxes", "No thanks to the Bridge to Nowhere"; "Sarah Palin knows as much about energy as anyone in America."
It is tempting to despair on the state and future of our nation.
McCain and the Karl Rove acolytes now running his campaign know that this is their only hope of winning because on issues like the economy, healthcare, and war they are extraordinarily out of touch with the real needs of the people of this country and the world.
It’s a strategy aimed at what someone called the ‘low information voters’ – like the woman I spoke to in South Minneapolis, one of two McCain households in a 114 door knock, whose husband was retired from the Air Force and who didn’t know about McCain’s opposition to extending benefits to veterans and who described Fox News as ‘fair and balanced’!
But it is also important to note that the negative and outrageous lies of McCain are also targeted at us. They tempt us to despair and retreat. The blogosphere fills up with outrage and with ‘advice’ to the Obama campaign – we retreat to talking to ourselves rather than to those undecided, ‘low information’ voters to raise the level of awareness and engagement of people with such a critical stake in this election. Even Karl Rove admits in his Wall Street Journal column "Of all the advantages Gov. Sarah Palin has brought to the GOP ticket, the most important may be that she has gotten into Barack Obama's head." I don’t know what’s in Senator Obama’s head, but I do know that many friends have been hung up around the egregiously ignorant and dangerous Palin and the campaign of lies put forward to defend her ‘qualifications’.
Even some republicans are beginning to fret however that these tactics can backfire. Don Sipple, a republican ‘advertising strategist’ says in the September 13th New York Times: "Any campaign that is taking liberty with the truth and does it in a serial manner will end up paying for it in the end.... It’s very unbecoming to a political figure like John McCain whose flag was planted long ago in ground that was about ‘straight talk’ and integrity."
Amazingly, even Bill O’Reilly defended Senator Obama against the ‘lipstick charges’: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
And even the Wall Street Journal has debunked the Bridge to Nowhere claim: http://online.wsj.com/...
I don’t think we can blame the media for not exposing the lies – though many can be blamed for falling for the distraction and not analyzing McCain’s real record and positions on the economy, healthcare, and war. And we can’t blame and shouldn’t expect the Obama campaign to ‘fight back’ with similar negativity. For one thing, how a campaign is conducted constrains the way the victor can govern. But more importantly, we are the campaign! We need to get on the street and on the phone to raise the information available to those ‘low information’ voters and to those who, for whatever reason, remain undecided.
I spoke to one such voter yesterday while door knocking who declared himself ‘torn and undecided’. When I asked what issues were key to his decision, his first answer was ‘taxes’. I asked, as I usually do, if he made more than $250,000, prepared to counter the republican BS that ‘Obama will raise our taxes’. Surprisingly, for the neighborhood I was in, he said he did; he owns a small financial consulting company. So I asked him if he knew about McCain’s healthcare ‘reform’ proposal to tax employer healthcare benefits. He didn’t; he certainly didn’t know that that proposal would amount to 1.3 trillion dollars in taxes over the next decade. But he could quickly grasp the effect that that proposal would have on small businesses and on swelling the ranks of the uninsured and eventually on raising healthcare costs for all. His other issue was the war in Iraq which he clearly saw and supported Obama’s position. So he took a brochure on Obama’s economic plans and promised to do more research and thinking. His wife, he revealed, is a strong Obama supporter. I think we’ll have his vote.