Hit Back Harder

The Democrats should not be afraid of hitting back against Sarah Palin. Inspite of the dissapointing experience with the Clinton die-hards I believe women will see through the Republican party's deception and their opportunistic conversion as the party for women. But they have to display some smarts in hitting back which they have rarely shown in the recent past. Here are a few tips for that ad.

1) Make it a joint attack on both Sarah and McCain as that will be less easy to counter as sexist and take both names in the same breath. Use women as far as possible to in these ads to talk about Palin. Yup, believe me, the Republicans will try to hit  back hard on the attack and paint it as sexist and disrespectful for women and unfortunately some women in the category of the Clinton die-hards will fall for it. But the damage can be minimized and reversed with an effective counter counter-attack which shows their deception and manipulation by displaying the attack as a sexist one. The campaign can still come out positive for the dems as if done right it will diminish the GOP pair's image in more eyes that the ad/GOP counter-attack will do the reverse. It will also cut their wings and stop the rocketing rise in their popularity due to the Palin effect.

2) Brand both of them as flip floppers and clueless on the economy (boy, that will be sweet revenge for 2004). As my friend Maureen Dowd mentioned in her article there are a few examples to showcase that. Examples - "Sarah Palin was for the bridge to nowwhere before she was against. She was for earmarks before she was against. For McCain, on Monday he says that the Economy is good and on Wednesay he says it is in a crisis, on Monday he opposes AIG bailout and on Wednesday he supports it. In fact it makes us think that McCain and Palin still don't understand what's wrong with the economy and how to fix it. They seem to be deperately clutching at straws and trying to figure out what to say and do next. In contrast, Senator Obama has been prescient about the economic problems and has long said that more effective regulation is need to fix this problem. The Bush administration is now following Senator's Obama's advise."

3) Brand both of them as unscrupulous manipulators who are running a campaing a deception and will say and do anything to get elected. Sarah Palin said on the 7th anniversary of 9/11 that "the troops are there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced from the death of thousands of Americans" trying to play the same innuendo tricks of the Bush administration to link Iraq and 9/11 again. After all these years of unnecessary destruction in Iraq and home she is still trying to continue the misinformation campaign of the Bush adminsitration and she is speaking equally callously about wars with Iran and Russia. McCain still hasn't ever admitted that the Iraq war was based on manipulated intelligence and horrible judgement, instead he continues to manipulate the reason the for going to Iraq (hello, for your kind info we did not find any weapons) while the criminals who destrroyed on 9/11 still run loose.

The main idea is to diminish the image of the two before the advent of Palin creates a permanent sheen for their ticket. The Republicans are deftly doing that and are making Obama look weak, clueless and inconsistent. The other main point is that the Obama campaign should never treat the Iraq war as a non-issue at this stage and should continue aggressive talks on democrats being able to secure the nation better, the the right judgements and go after the real terrorists who are still loose. They got to raise the hubris levels on national security and attack the McCain camp as not being serious about terminating the terrorists who dare to hit the USofA. Tell the voters that I (Obama) will make it the highest priority to hunt down the animals who will be made to realize the consequences of hitting America (in short, say words that the battleground voters love to hear and snatch the hubris card from the republicans).

Obama finally popped his head out of the sand a week ago and said that he will adopt a 'sharper tone' but then they hit back with this stale old rehash of 'McCain will be third term of Bush' campaign. I hope the dems realize that hitting back hard and counter-attacking/defending the republican attacks is not an option and will make the difference this time too. As I mentioned before it does not help if they counter-attack on a unrelated topic. It is extremeley important to hit back on each one of their attacks and shred the credibility of their attacks, if they want to prevent some of the mud from sticking on to Obama's image each time. 

Going through the article in this link - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/us/politics/12obama.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=sharper%20tone&st=cse&oref=slogin - a couple of points come to my mind.

1) Plouffe thinks that starting to attack too early is not a good approach. He thinks it is best to start attacking a bit later in the game going into the debates. That strategy is sounding a little like Rudy's startegy to me, where he though he can start later in the game and start from Florida. Plouffe has done a great job in the primaries but he didn't have to deal with such a mean unscupulous attack machine as the republicans have. What he doesn't realize is that once Obama's image has been distorted by these attacks and a negative perception is created in the voters' mind it will be too late if the Obama tries to attack back at that stage. That appears like a loser hitting back.

2) The Obama campaign is too struck with the 'big picture' (like many ultra-cerebral democratic campaigns) of the campaign strategy and and things like forming a coherent message or attack campaign highlighting the top-level aspects of the campaign like 'Change' and 'Economy'. This leads it to ignore the very important tactical moves like hitting back hard at unjustified and untrue attacks from republicans which cause immense damage to Senator Obama's image.

3) The Obama campaign seems to think that it should bother responding to some attacks from the McCain campaign if they think it hasn't received widespread coverage in the interior/local papers in the competitive states. what it doesn't realize is that even if a handful of voters (well, a few thousand maybe) buy into every attack in the key states then it might prove to be pretty costly and also the beating will wear the sheen off the candidate and the sum of the attacks may add up to be a lot more than the individual parts.

The solution for all the three weaknesses pointed above is the same. Every small attack should be countered with the same gigantic force ,especially if it is one of the fabricated and falsified attack as that makes it easier to hit back on the other campaign's character. The reverse attack should come immediately after the commencement of the republican attack and should be very forceful. It should highlight the intentional deceptions/manipulations in the attack (there always is some from the republican side so that should be easy) and should be made out to reflect negatively on the character of the candidates behind the attacks. A strong forceful counter-attack ensures that the allegations don't stick to the candidate for long and wont create a permamnt stain on the candidate's image.

Read the other posts in the blog to get specific details on the counter-attacks. 

Along the lines of my previous posts, the Obama campaign probably has the easiest of tasks ever, because the Republican campaign is exposing itself more and more clearly as a complete deception machine with absolutely rock-bottom standards and no ethics. All the Obama campaign needs to do is start pulling a thread from their shirt and let it roll. It makes it all the more important that the Obama campaign not waste any time in hitting back because a good portion of the American population actually buys all the muck that the McCain campaign dishes out (as they did with the Bush campaign in 2004).

Another missed opportunity to highlight the above fact is not exposing the constant effort by the republican campaign to appeal to the 'woman vote' by conjuring up imaginary attacks on the poor VP and using every low trick possible to appeal to the sentiments. See this related article in the New York Times. 

Now, we have to credit the american woman voter with some sense (even the Hillary Die-Hards who frankly should be sued by the Obama campaign for accusing him of being sexist, without any basis whatsoever) and that they will see through the McCain deceptions if they are forecefully made aware of it. The Obama campaign should run an ad campaign which tells the women

1) That it has always been the democratic party that's been the true friend of women and even in this election are fighting for equal pay and expanded health insurance for women.

2) Both Obama and Biden both have a record of caring deeply for women's issues, and have passed laws like the equal pay legislation that Obama co-sponsored and the dometic violence act that Biden authored. They are fighting for expanded health insurance for women and to expand children's coverage benefits.

3) McCain/Palin have never cared for women's issues and they are using deception and blatant lies to portray Obama/Biden as anti-women. They are twisting even innocent comments by Obama on McCain's economic policies as 'sexist' comments. They are misrepresenting words used by Obama and Biden in different contexts as words used against Palin. They are evem misrepresenting Obama's vote to prevent our children from the horrors of sexual abuse as 'Obama voted to teach children sex before they read'

I'm sure the campaign folks can fill in the rest. These ads have to be shown reapeatedly immediately after any such move by the McCain cmapaign, AND in all startegic places where we have 'impressionable' minds that have a history of falling for republican deceptions (read battleground states).