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.