Negative Appeal

by digby

This is anything but dispositive, but it probably does indicate who the McCain campaign was aiming at with their snotty, negative ads:

Small study suggests McCain ads lampooning Obama hurt

John McCain struck again on Friday, releasing a Web video suggesting that his Democatic rival, Barack Obama is “The One,” a semi-religious figure sent to save the world. The spot includes footage of Charlton Heston as Moses, parting the Red Sea.

The ad was the second released this week by McCain intended to make fun of Obama. Earlier, the campaign issued an ad that likened Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in an effort to take the shine off the huge crowds Obama drew in Berlin during his European tour.

Friday’s ad takes that theme one step further, lampooning Obama’s soaring rhetoric and suggesting that the Illinois senator suffers from a Messianic complex. As the ad comes to a close, it shows Heston in his iconic role as Moses parting the Red Sea, then asks the question “Obama may be The One. But is he ready to lead?”

How successful the ads will be at turning what are widely perceived as Obama’s strengths into weaknesses won’t be known for some time. Experts have warned they could backfire on McCain, making him seem bitter and petty and emphasizing differences between him and Obama.

A small study of people’s reactions to the Britney-Paris ad suggested, however, that while people don’t like the ad, it caused them to doubt Obama, and small percentages who’d said before viewing the ad that they’d vote for him said afterword that they wouldn’t.

Those declines didn’t result in more support for McCain; doubting Democrats and Republicans instead moved into the undecided column. Independents who moved away from Obama did say they’d vote for McCain.

Granted, this is a really small sample and I have no idea whether this methodology is considered reliable. But I would guess that the McCain campaign did some focus grouping on Obama’s soft spots before they embarked on this and that they were aiming at those independent voters, which both campaigns think might be attainable — Barack with his appeal to post-partisan compromise and McCain with his straight-talking, macho maverick “I just do what I think is right” approach.

It will be interesting to see which one of those appeals to independent voters will work. McCain’s obviously decided that he needs to turn Obama into an effeminate, foreign peter pan of some sort in order to get them, and if that small study is correct, it may have some impact. I don’t pretend to understand why, but then I’m not an independent and I think both “straight talking maverick-osity” and “post-partisan compromise” are fairly empty concepts. (But then, I believe American politics are almost entirely about the effective use of partisan political power, so waddo I know?)

We’ll have to wait for something more substantial to really tell us if these ads worked and I don’t know even then if anyone can reliably do it. They were designed to work on many levels and I don’t know if it’s possible to unravel people’s feelings about such things with any precision. Still, it’s sort of interesting. Everybody hates negative ads, but they do work, at least on some people.

Update: I am really starting to hate this unctuous, double-talking creep:

Speaking of a much more serious tiff this week about whether or not Obama played the race card in the campaign, McCain seemed to defend his team’s strong response.

“We’re not gonna allow racism to come into this campaign in any form,” McCain said. “And so I’m gonna respond if it comes up again.”

On another hot campaign issue, McCain said “the American people will make a judgment” on whether his campaign’s pressure prompted Obama’s apparent shift this week toward allowing drilling for oil in U.S. coastal waters as part of a comprehensive energy plan.

But McCain claimed his opponent’s position remains much different from his.

“Well, the fact is he still opposes offshore drilling,” McCain said. “He opposes nuclear power. He opposes most every measure, incentives to build a battery-driven car. So, I’m not surprised that he’s hedging on this issue. But the fact is he still opposes offshore drilling. We need to drill now and drill immediately, and it’s disgraceful that the Democrat-controlled Congress goes on a month-long recess without acting on energy.

“I would hope that he would urge the speaker of the House to at least have a vote on it,” McCain added.

“Sen. Obama is still opposed to a comprehensive energy plan,” McCain claimed. “It seems to me the only thing he wants us to do is inflate tires” to improve gas mileage.

Just like Bush: “you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes, rubes.”

At this point I don’t care if Obama flips on every single issue, I will do everything I can to see this jackass defeated. Ugh.

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