The Gen-El!

[nacho]

Oh, right. 

Now, if I were McCain, I'd take the Hillary approach.  Maybe an ad with Obama in mid-angry speech, mouth open.  One word beneath:

"Hussein?"

[Tatertots]

Obama is tryin' to git yer daughters! He's a no-count country ni-.... Wait, was I talkin' 'bout Czechoslovakia? Where am I?

[nacho]

"I think he said, 'The sheriff is near.'"

[Matt]

McCain just needs to appeal to the racist core of American society but he's too busy trying to pander to the Radical Right while being a genuinely nice guy, which I think he is. I'd love for him to be president if he wasn't a Republican. The Daily Show had it the best, though, when he was framed with "DOLE" behind him on the news, as a reminder of another failed Republican vet-candidate.

[fajwat]

Ow.  Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow.  Iraqi-Pakistani border, and that was just Monday's mistake.

http://bourbonroom.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/07/26/obama-looks-forward-sees-foreign-policy-path-strewn-with-mccain-mistakes/

Obama Looks Forward, Sees Foreign Policy Path Strewn With McCain Mistakes
by Major Garrett

LONDON — 2:30 AM LOCAL TIME

There’s a heady feeling in the upper reaches of Barack Obama’s campaign, but not because of what the freshman senator has accomplished in an eight-day trip nearly around the world.

Yes, senior Obama officials believe, Obama acquitted himself ably in a trip that they divide into three component parts: war, peace, and trans-Atlantic aspirations.

They assert Obama navigated Afghanistan and Iraq well, drawing new-found emphasis on the need for more US and NATO troops there — even winning the unqualified commitment from French President Niklos Sarkozy for Europe to step up to the plate in that theatre of conflict.

Obama officials also say the push from Iraqi politicians for troop withdrawal schedules roughly in line with his (with the exception of Sunni chieftains who still fret about a rapid US exit). The language of “aspiration time horizons” agreed upon by Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki and the Bush White House also gave Obama a glide-path in Iraq on the question of troop movements and nothing on they trip, they believe undercut that opening advantage

. In Europe, Obama drew a huge crowd in Berlin and ebullient praise from Sarkozy.

Obama aides expect smooth sailing here in Britain as the politically floundering Prime Minister Gordon Brown may well try to bask in the glow of Obama, a mere candidate for high office as Brown struggles against sagging poll numbers and recent election setbacks.

“The trip spotlights Obama’s judgment, skill and expertise in navigating very difficult foreign policy, national security issues,” a top Obama hand said. “It shows also how he has a strong team around him but how he clearly leads and sets direction.”

All this feels good in the upper reaches of the Obama brain trust.

But that’s not what has spirits so high in the Hyatt Regency Churchill hotel with an elegant broze bust of Sir Winston in its wide, marble-floored and high-ceiling lobby.

What has them so enthused in what can only be described as a series of self-inflicted wounds on what before this week was indisputably John McCain’s strongest suit - his ability to talk persuasively about the way to win the war on terror in the twin battles of Iraq and Afghanistan.

McCain made several errors this week in matters fundamental to understanding how and when both wars began and finished the week coming within a hair of embracing Obama’s 16-month timetable for US troop withdrawals.

In the kinetic world of instant blog posts and furious back-and-forth between campaigns fighting like terriers on steroids over every miscue - real or imagined - it is sometimes hard to measure the damage done over the course of a week.

The Obama’s inner circle, they believe McCain set himself back not only with the general public but also with top-flight Republicans who will have to try to clean up McCain’s national security debris.

Here is what team Obama means.

* On July 21st, McCain said on Good Morning America that the situation was tough in Afghanistan, particularly, he said, “given the struggle on the Iraq-Pakistan border.”

* On July 22 in an interview Katie Couric of CBS, McCain said the troop surge President Bush ordered in January 2007 and which didn’t reach maximum tactical deployment for months after led to the so-called Sunni awakening or uprising against Al Qaeda in Iraq terrorists. While the surge no doubt gave greater confidence to Sunnis over time, the awakening began in the fall of 2006 with the moves against AI Qaeda by a collection of high-profile tribal sheiks.

* On July 23, McCain said the surge wasn’t really about more troops, but counter-insurgency tactics. And yet the political credit McCain seeks for the turn-around in Iraq is based principally on his advocacy if the surge - meaning more troops to carry out counter-insurgency missions. To say the surge wasn’t really about more troops undercuts much of McCain has tried to tell the public about what has changed in Iraq and why.

* On July 24th, McCain called Iraq “the first major conflict since 9/11.” Tell that to Hamid Karzai, current President of Afghanistan and brought to power by the US-led defeat of the Taliban in the months immediately following 9/11.

* And Friday on CNN, McCain said 16 months for a troop withdrawal from Iraq is “a pretty good timetable.” His campaign said McCain meant it was good so long as conditions on the ground warranted troop withdrawals. But the damage was done. Just check the profusion of blog posts in the hours immediately after the CNN interview with McCain.

The Obama campaign and the DNC is preparing an easy-to-follow guide to these McCain fumbles to assist any and all Obama surrogates in the coming debate over national security, Iraq or Afghanistan. Contrasting one or more of these against McCain’s contention that he alone “knows how to win wars” is likely to become a familiar TV jousting tactic.

The Obama camp believes, whether it’s true or not, that the massive publicity the senator’s trip inspired rattled and frustrated McCain.

The Obama team knew McCain and his allies would sift every word, gesture and footstep on the world stage for any blunder. Obama’s team believes the senator made no clear-cut mistakes and that McCain did, meaning they turned the tables at a time when McCain and the GOP were hoping for Obama to stumble.

“Some people watched the trip from sidelines waiting for a big mistake or a diplomatic blunder” said a senior Obama adviser. “It didn’t happen, frustrating the McCain camp which then escalated their rhetoric and lobbed increasingly desperate attacks.”

All of this is, of course, largely tactical and subject to interpretation. Polling data this week from Fox and Gallup showed little or no “bounce” for Obama and Quinnipiac surveys in key battleground states revealed some tightening of the race in McCain’s favor.

But Obama’s crew believes they earned points in their own right and McCain cost himself points that will take time and effort to win back as the national security and foreign policy debate continues.

[RottingCorpse]

Really?!?

This whole "elitist" argument doesn't hold water with me because I think all politicians are elitists. What makes Obama more so?

GOP's celeb-Obama message gains traction

Barack Obama’s critics laid down the foundations of the strategy months ago: The Republican National Committee started the “Audacity Watch” back in April, and Karl Rove later fueled the attack by describing the first-term Illinois senator as “coolly arrogant.”

It wasn’t until the last week, however, that the narrative of Obama as a president-in-waiting — and perhaps getting impatient in that waiting — began reverberating beyond the inboxes of Washington operatives and journalists.

Perhaps one of the clearest indications emerged Tuesday from the world of late-night comedy, when David Letterman offered his “Top Ten Signs Barack Obama is Overconfident.” The examples included Obama proposing to change the name of Oklahoma to “Oklobama” and measuring his head for Mount Rushmore.

“When Letterman is doing ‘Top Ten’ lists about something, it has officially entered the public consciousness,” said Dan Schnur, a political analyst from the University of Southern California and the communications director in John McCain’s 2000 campaign. “And it usually stays there for a long, long time.”

Following a nine-day, eight-country tour that carried the ambition and stagecraft of a presidential state visit, Obama has found himself in an unusual position: the butt of jokes.

Jon Stewart teased that the presumptive Democratic nominee traveled to Israel to visit his birthplace at Bethlehem’s Manger Square. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd amplified the McCain campaign’s private nickname for Obama (“The One”).

And the snickers about Obama’s perceived smugness may have a very real political impact as McCain's camp launched its most forceful effort yet to define him negatively. It released a TV ad Wednesday describing Obama as the “biggest celebrity in the world,” comparable to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, stars who are famous for attitude rather than accomplishments.

The harsher treatment from comedians and columnists — coupled with the shift by McCain from attacking on policy to character issues — underscores the fine line that Obama is walking between confident and cocky. Once at pains to present himself as presidential, Obama now faces criticism for doing it too well.

“I was puzzled by this notion that somehow what we were doing was in any way different from what Sen. McCain or a lot of presidential candidates have done in the past,” Obama said Sunday, speaking about his trip at a conference of minority journalists. “Now, I admit we did it really well. But that shouldn't be a strike against me.”

Obama and his supporters dismissed the line of attack as the latest desperate missive from a foundering Republican campaign.

Bloggers at the Huffington Post launched a backlash to the backlash against Obama’s overseas trip, arguing in part that he wouldn’t face such criticism of acting premature if he were white. Separately, the Obama campaign pushed back hard at journalists who used a report that detailed Obama’s move to assemble a transition team to describe him as presumptuous by pointing to an interview in which McCain had owned up to the same thing.

 

Some Democratic operatives described the narrative as a Beltway creation, the pastime of journalists looking to keep the presidential race competitive.

"Self-absorbed press speculation,” concluded consultant Bob Shrum, the chief strategist during John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. “Most Americans are not paying the slightest bit of attention to this.”

Mark Mellman, a pollster for Kerry, said Obama acted the same when he was struggling last year against Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“The only people who are making him seem inevitable are the commentariat,” Mellman said. “He seemed this confident and self possessed when he was down 30 points to Hillary Clinton. He is a confident and self possessed person.”

Republicans have long tried to turn his assuredness into a shortcoming. National party operatives began sending e-mails to reporters in the spring detailing some of Obama’s bolder moves, including using a faux presidential seal at a policy roundtable. The RNC rolled the headlines onto one site, “Barack Obama Audacity Watch,” that it unveiled Wednesday.

The McCain campaign piled on with its “Celeb” ad, which juxtaposed Obama’s speech to 200,000 people in Berlin with photos of Spears and Hilton.

“Do the American people want to elect the world’s biggest celebrity, or do they want to elect an American hero?” Steve Schmidt, one of McCain’s top aides, asked on a conference call.

They stayed personal later in the day when responding to Obama’s suggestion at a Missouri town hall that Republicans would use his unusual name and his race to paint him as a risky choice.

“This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria,” McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said.

Later Wednesday, the Obama campaign responded within hours to the “Celeb” ad with one of its own, accusing McCain of taking the “low road” and “practicing the politics of the past.”

Responding to questions from reporters about McCain's ad, Obama said: “I do notice that he doesn’t seem to have anything to say very positive about himself.”

The strategy has very real potential dangers for Team McCain. Obama’s unmistakable charisma and his campaign’s deft brand of stagecraft have created an often lopsided contrast with McCain’s sometimes painful-to-watch public events. As presidents as diverse as Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy showed, Americans do like a touch of celebrity in their commander in chief; though not too much.

Obama’s steely sense of self-confidence, even destiny, is also one of the traits his supporters like most and which could, as the fall campaign heats up, be one of the qualities that help him make the sale.

But the slippery slope for Obama is allowing a McCain campaign that is searching for a consistent theme with which to attack him to latch on to a way of making him seem alien to ordinary Americans. Douglas Schoen, a Democratic pollster, argued that Obama was not yet in a danger zone, but he needs to pay heed to the gathering storm.

“My sense is that all of those attacks individually are frankly not particularly potent, but taken together, they are creating a narrative about Obama that is not helpful,” said Schoen, who worked on President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign. “It is a warning sign for Obama that he’s got to get back on the trail and make the case that there is a real contrast.”

[Matt]

Well, he's not white.

[Matt]

Not really white, anyway. He looks black.

[nacho]

Well...he knows black people.

[Tatertots]

Ah, here we go!

http://www.perspctv.com/

[nacho]

Love that electoral vote poll.  It'll be nice if we get a landslide victory.  No more of this 50/50 bullshit.

[Tatertots]

What'd be nice is if McCain turned out to be gay. That would be just awesome. I love it when gay-bashing Republicans turn out to be pedophiles.

[fajwat]

What'd be nice is if McCain turned out to be gay. That would be just awesome. I love it when gay-bashing Republicans turn out to be pedophiles.

Um.  gay != pedophile.

[Cassander]

what scares me is we have the most milquetoast, run of the mill, old, white, reactionary republican candidate running in a stool pigeon race since Alf Landon and we'll probably see down to the wire results.  unfortunately, if obama were white, this would be a landslide. 

[Tatertots]

I phrased that poorly, right, but they all turn out to be little boy touchers. They never seem to go for girls.

Well, there's the bathroom stall stuff looking for middle-aged queens looking for glory-hole action, too, but still, always the young boys.