Gun To A Gunfight

Count me in as down for Barack Obama's McCain is a celebrity ad (with special cameo from Steve Carell).



I've been saying that the Obama camp had 10-15 seconds of a negative ad down before turning to a laundry list, but this one gets it about right. I think the big takeaway for me is that Obama's team figured out that the media is so insipid, they would only get their ad covered if it was seen as a "response" to the McCain ad. So by framing it that way, it gives them the opportunity to shoehorn in a bunch of pictures with McCain and Bush and make the case against their failed conservative policies. The election needs to be less about Obama and more about the axis of Bush-McCain, and this is a way to turn that around. And there's nothing out of bounds here - McCain's campaign is indeed crawling with lobbyists, and he is indeed proclaiming his support for most of George Bush's policies. It also shows how ridiculous the "celebrity" tag is when applied to a well-known politician - of course you can turn that around on everyone, but on the facts, McCain represents the same wrong direction we've been headed in for seven years.

I'm also partial to this DNC ad using the DHL/Wilmington deal to paint McCain as a job killer:



And this Obama ad blasting McCain for his position on Yucca Mountain.



Obama didn't start down this road, but he can absolutely finish it. And what's more, as the election rolls around he'll be outspending McCain 2-1 to boot.

Fluff v. Substance

The McCain campaign is rolling with the celebrity theme, tying the "fabulous life" of Barack Obama, who recently paid off his student loans, to the struggles of working people, who John McCain and his eight houses and $500 loafers certainly connects with.

It is good that the Obama campaign countered by simply calling the ad a lie.

"This ad is a lie, and it's part of the old, tired politics of a party in Washington that has run out of ideas and run out of steam. Even though a host of independent, nonpartisan organizations have said this attack isn't true, Senator McCain continues to lie about Senator Obama's plan to give 95% of all families a tax cut of $1,000, and not raise taxes for those making under $250,000 a single dime. The reason so many families are hurting today is because we've had eight years of failed Bush policies that Senator McCain wants to continue for another four, and that's what Barack Obama will change as President."

What I like MUCH better than that is that the Obama campaign is exploiting the new opening provided by the Wilmington/DHL deal which McCain and his lobbyist/campaign manager supported, which is resulting in thousands of job losses in the Ohio community. Obama is up with a radio ad here explaining the whole thing.

July 9, 2008: Portsmouth, Ohio. Here's what John McCain said about DHL's plans to eliminate 8,200 Ohio jobs:

"I gotta look you in the eye and give you straight talk: I don't know if I can stop it or not. Or if it will be stopped."

But there's something John McCain's not telling you: It was McCain who used his influence in the Senate to help foreign-owned DHL buy a U.S. company and gain control over the jobs that are now on the chopping block in Ohio. And that's not all: McCain's campaign manager was the top lobbyist for the DHL deal...helped push it through. His firm was paid $185,000 to lobby McCain and other Senators.

Now 8,200 Ohioans are facing layoffs, and foreign-owned DHL doesn't care.

"I gotta look you in the eye and give you straight talk..."

John McCain, same old politics, same failed policies.

That is pitch-perfect and the best ad of the cycle for the Obama campaign, hands-down. This Wilmington deal is getting national attention as well as hitting regional news in Ohio. Without Ohio, McCain pretty much can't win. This is a major opportunity and I wouldn't stop running this until November 4. Make TV ads from it as well.

Programming Note

I'm going to be on Bill Scher's Liberal Oasis radio show tomorrow. It airs at 10 AM ET on WHMP in Western MA, and will be podcast at LiberalOasis.com. We're going to be talking about John McCain's travails this week, which have provided no end of amusement. He's backtracking on a couple major stories so you know he senses trouble. He's returned $50,000 in contributions from the shady bundler Harry Sargeant, and he's called for an investigation into DHL's plans to eliminate 8,300 jobs in Wilmington, Ohio (after aiding the merger that led to the proposed job cuts).

My hope is that the Obama campaign doesn't care about these backtracks, particularly on Wilmington. It's very clear that Republican crony capitalism threatens American jobs, and that McCain's campaign manager got rich off empowering multinational corporations to leave American workers in the cold. That's still operative no matter what investigation is now demanded.

The Wilmington Factor

I guess the McCain campaign is going to visit lots of grocery stores and paint Obama as a "job-killing machine" to even out the economic gap between the two. It may just work. Since the media largely stays out of policy fights, the facts of the issue, that McCain will continue Bush's war on the middle class while Obama will have concern for working families, will be obscured, and McCain telling shoppers how to stretch their dollar could make him appear to be in touch with ordinary American's struggle.

But there is a way to combat this, with a very powerful and straight-forward narrative, a story that happens to take place in the one swing state McCain absolutely can't lose if he wants a shot at the Presidency.

At a town hall meeting in Portsmouth, Ohio last month, McCain was confronted by a woman about the closure of a DHL air park in Wilmington, Ohio, shuttering 8,600 jobs. McCain talked all sweet to the lady about job retraining and re-education, but basically said that there was nothing he could do to bring those jobs back to Wilmington.



Turns out that McCain's own campaign manager, a registered lobbyist, had a hand in that closure.

Little known to [Wilmington] citizens, McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, played roles in the fate of DHL Express and its Ohio air park as far back as 2003. Back then, however, their actions that helped DHL and its German owner, Deutsche Post World Net, acquire the Wilmington operations resulted in expansion, not retraction.

In a private meeting Thursday, Wilmington residents will ask McCain for help in stopping DHL’s proposal to quit using the airport as a hub, which could cost more than 8,000 jobs. DHL says that it wants to stay in the freight business but that it can stem financial losses if it can put its packages aboard the planes of a rival - United Parcel Service - before delivering them in DHL trucks. UPS flies out of Louisville, Ky., so the proposed change would render the Wilmington airport unnecessary.

None of that was anticipated in 2003, when McCain and Davis, who was a Washington lobbyist before managing the presidential campaign, first got involved. Several Wilmington civic leaders said that what happened in 2003 created an economic gain for their community, lasting several years.

But because that gain, and now the prospective loss, came from the decisions of a foreign-owned corporation, look for some Democrats and labor to seek to tie Wilmington’s current troubles to McCain.

Essentially, Rick Davis brokered a deal to shift DHL's operational control to a foreign corporation, who eventually cut the jobs in a cost-saving maneuver. Local leaders worried in 2003 about the impact of a merger on their community, and within a few years that's exactly what happened. This has become an election-year issue in Ohio.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, urged Republican presidential candidate John McCain to press DHL and its German owner, Deutsche Post, to preserve jobs that could be lost if DHL hires United Parcel Service for its U.S. cargo airlift work.

McCain, the Arizona senator, scheduled a campaign stop in Wilmington today, Aug. 7, to meet privately with community activists trying to save at least 8,000 jobs at DHL's Wilmington air freight hub. McCain was also to visit Lima.

Sen. Obama, by the way, met with community leaders in Wilmington a month ago. If I were part of his campaign, the ads about backroom deals to eliminate American jobs and destroy small communities would already be up and running. This perfectly fits the theme of the old ways of Washington, with McCain's lobbyist-infested campaign out of touch with the consequences of the policies he pushes.

It's worth remembering that the election is not about one national campaign monitored by tracking polls, but 51 separate campaigns (the states and DC), all with their own parochial concerns. The Wilmington story will resonate throughout Ohio and probably elsewhere in the industrial Midwest. This is a pretty familiar story. Obama needs to run with it.