People vs. The Powerful: Is It Enough?

From a messaging standpoint, since I've been talking a lot about field, I think Barack Obama's going to come through the Democratic convention as a full-throated populist, much like Al Gore did in 2000. That was when Gore's numbers shot up, and Obama's advisors clearly see that as the antidote to their recent difficulties. They're already doing it:

Democrat Barack Obama pledged Wednesday to create millions of union jobs in alternative energy and to end tax breaks for companies that move jobs overseas, using tough new populist language to persuade voters that he, not rival John McCain, is best positioned to lift the limping U.S. economy [...]

With Mark Warner, the former Virginia governor now running for Senate, at his side, Obama said it was wrong that the Iraqi government has been sitting on billions of dollars in oil revenue while the U.S. spends billions to rebuild the war-torn country.

"We should be using some of that money to rebuild Virginia, laying roads, building broadband lines and putting people back to work," Obama said.

As for tax breaks to companies taking jobs overseas, Obama said: "We sure as heck don't have to give them incentives to move. ... We should give companies tax breaks that are right here."

Obama made an appeal for votes that sounded much like the closing pitch Clinton would offer in similar settings.

"If you give me that opportunity, if you give me that chance, I will fight for you every single day," he pledged. "I'll wake up every day in that White House thinking about those people in Martinsville."

Let the Hillary for VP speculation begin...

This is a very obvious bet, which may work as well as it did for Gore in 2000. Obama is already doing this off the radar with ads about the economy in battleground states that show McCain as out of touch.

In Philadelphia; East Lansing, Mich.; Green Bay, Wis.; and at least five other major cities, Mr. Obama is heavily showing an advertisement contrasting a statement by Mr. McCain that “we have had a pretty good, prosperous time with low unemployment,” with appearances by people making statements like, “The prices of gas are up; the prices of milk are up.”

Mr. McCain’s statement was from a debate in January, before the economy took several turns for the worse, and did not include the senator’s acknowledgment of “a rough patch.” Mr. McCain has since run an advertisement going so far as to say, “We’re worse off than we were four years ago.”

In Des Moines; Tampa, Fla.; Paducah, Ky., and at least 10 other cities, Mr. Obama is running a spot for a mock book, “Economics” by John McCain: “Support George Bush 95 percent of the time; keep spending $10 billion a month for the war in Iraq.”

On Sunday alone, Mr. Obama’s campaign spent nearly $400,000 to run those two spots more than 600 times, accounting for roughly two thirds of the commercials he ran that day, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group.

I'm sure we'll see a local ad in Colorado, too, about McCain's historic mistake over calling for a renegotiation of the Colorado River water compact, which to Coloradans means "we're coming to steal your water."

It's proven to work, and it's a Democratic year, and nobody really likes the direction of the country, either. However, McCain has crawled back into this race in two ways - he benefited from the Georgia crisis by acting all Presidential-like when Obama was on vacation, and he made a searing set of character attacks that he has largely been allowed to get away with. Obama has for the most part used "shame on you" tactics to criticize these attacks, always backed up with how he "honors McCain's service but not his policies or his politics," as he said today.

Well, Sen. Obama, McCain doesn't honor anything about you. He hates you and he wants his supporters to hate you, too. He can't win on ideas so he'll win on spite, scorn, the anger the Orthogonians feel that the snooty liberal elites are always looking down on them. It's astonishing that this is working after eight years of George Bush, but let's face facts.

Why do they work? Because we don't fight back. The appropriate response to someone questioning your patriotism isn't to say "you're wrong" or "I object!" The appropriate response is to punch the guy in the face, rhetorically or otherwise. Wesley Clark didn't even question John McCain's patriotism - he simply questioned McCain's qualifications for the presidency. McCain responded by punching Wesley Clark in the face, then dragged him around tied to the back of a truck for a week for good measure (and no one in the party came to Clark's defense, big surprise there). McCain didn't just say "stop it," McCain made sure that neither Clark nor anyone else would dare question his commander in chief credentials ever again.

What has our side done to bloody McCain for questioning our patriotism? What have we ever done to fight back when the Republicans question our patriotism, be it in the Congress or at the ballot box? How many times do we have to write about this Achilles Heel before Dems realize it ain't going away? We deal with this issue every election, and on every issue, because Democrats either don't have the balls to fight back, or they don't have the brains. Either way, it's pathetic, and make us looks weak (and unpatriotic). And it's happening again. And again. And again.

Meanwhile, the media covers for McCain by saying he never really wanted to run a divisive, cynical, spite-filled campaign, but he was forced into it. They're not going to help Obama out of this mess, and in fact they'll actively work against him. A lot of this "Obama doesn't fight back" stuff is built into standard media narrative. He actually is, in some ways, but the attacks from the Republican side are amplified.

Still, Obama isn't coming close to doing this (yes, I'm citing Cato), and he has defunded the outside groups who might do it:

At the “Civil Forum” at Saddleback Church in Orange County, California this weekend, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) repeated a favorite line of his about Osama bin Laden:

If I have to follow him to the gates of hell, I will get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. . . . No one should be allowed to take thousands of American, innocent American lives. Of course evil must be defeated . . . we are facing the transcendent challenge of the 21st century–radical Islamic extremists.

What a gift to the recruiting efforts of Al Qaeda! - to have an American presidential candidate declare himself a follower of Osama bin Laden. According to McCain, Bin Laden is so powerful that he poses a “transcendent” challenge to John McCain’s United States.

In his cogent, well-supported, and readable article, “What Terrorists Really Want,” Max Abrahms at UCLA argues that terrorists “are rational people who use terrorism primarily to develop strong affective ties with fellow terrorists.” Think of Al Qaeda as a gang that disaffected youth might join - something powerful to belong to that gives their lives meaning.

McCain’s “gates of hell” talk is leadership malpractice, and he should stop using it immediately. Calling the threat of terrorism “transcendent” is equal parts incoherent and false. Terrorism stands no chance of defeating the United States or the West unless we ourselves collapse the society. Speaking this way about terrorism thrills our terrorist enemies and draws recruits and support to them. Silence would be much better, presidential campaign or no.

Obviously the economy is a top issue, so going full-bore on that makes some sense. And I still believe in the power of the ground game, and I think that after the conventions this whole thing might recalibrate. But I think Steve Schmidt is getting the better of this Socratic dialogue, from where I'm standing. Obama is light-years ahead on organization and technology, but on message he's still pulling off the shelf the old Democratic tropes of years past. The Gore one was successful - but you have to also fight back on the character nonsense.