The Hits Just Keep On Coming

by dday

Another ad from Barack Obama on The John McCain Show:

Hilariously, the McCain campaign put together a new ad today as well, and it opens with – I kid you not – “Celebrities don’t have to worry about family budgets, but we do.”

Yeah, I guess when you don’t even know how many homes you have, a family budget is hard to set. Who knows how many mortgages you’re paying?

The house gaffe made every major paper this morning, and was featured on every nightly newscast. And even a fount of conventional wisdom like Chris Cillizza gets why this matters. And even the “You can’t say that to me, I was a POW” defense is ringing stale among the punditocracy.

I never thought I’d see this kind of paragraph in print:

McCain, who has portrayed Obama as an elitist, is the son and grandson of admirals. The Associated Press estimates his wife, a beer heiress, is worth $100 million. Obama was raised by a single mother who relied at times on food stamps, and went to top schools on scholarships and loans. His income has increased from book sales since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Hilarious.

Of course this is ticky-tack, but as I’ve said, this is how the media works in the modern age, and your choices as a Democrat are limited. Here’s Krugman:

First, Republicans always — always — campaign by portraying the Democratic candidate as an out-of-touch elitist, while their guy is a man of the people. Al Gore grew up in a penthouse apartment! (In a shabby residence hotel, but never mind.) John Kerry windsurfs! Meanwhile, George Bush vacations at his ranch (bought as a prop for the 2000 campaign — and he doesn’t ride horses — but somehow that never got brought up.)

Protesting that the candidate is really a wonderful guy doesn’t work. Stupid as it may seem, counterattack is the only option. If the Gore campaign had gone after the fakeness of the Bush ranch, or the cronyism that made Bush rich, the world would be a different place today.

Exactly. I would love a high-minded battle of ideals, but I’m not going to sit around waiting for it to happen.

There was worry that Obama wouldn’t be likely to attack in the same fashion as McCain, and would resort to “shame on you” entreaties. But yesterday’s action was swift, to the point, and overwhelming, and they’ve sustained it. The GOP does not make this kind of thing a one-day affair. They continue to mock their opponent in any way possible to cut into them and make them a ridiculous figure. Peter Daou has the blueprint:

Expanding the theme, it’s worth noting that the rightwing attack machine has been effective in the past because it serves a singular purpose: diminishing opponents through mockery and marginalization. Bloggers have referred to recent presidential campaigns as “genital-swinging contests” (we’re using the clean version). That crude image underlines the strategy: make your opponent look small – or smaller. Shrinkage, for Seinfeld buffs. Think of how Coulter, Hannity, Limbaugh and their cohorts operate – it’s all about the laughter, the joking, the snide remarks, the scoffing. It’s about cutting someone down to size, making them look meek and meager.

Democrats have been stumped by the technique, missing the underlying purpose and getting sidetracked by the minutiae of the attacks. ‘Rovian’ is an overused adjective, but it is mistaken as a strategy of attacking an opponent’s strength as an end in itself, when that’s just one tactic in the larger mission of systematically belittling the opponent. Going after their strength is a logical part of reducing their stature.

Democratic/progressive attacks generally run the gamut from negative character association (X is just like Y) to policy contrasts (we can handle the economy better than X) to one-off hits and ‘Macaca moments’ (X flubbed the name of a country) to impugning the attacker (look how nasty my opponent is). These can be effective, particularly the latter, but they are qualitatively different from the rightwing machine’s diminishment of an opponent’s character. That’s something that Democrats don’t do as well. It’s less about negative frames, contrasts, rapid response, and all the other mainstays of political strategy and more about making your opponent the butt of a joke.

It’s not like there aren’t additional facts to add into the stew. McCain’s net worth is $36 million dollars, almost 40 times that of Obama. McCain has butlers. BUTLERS! The John McCain Show had 9-car entourage at Starbucks to pick up a latte yesterday. There’s still the matter of getting McCain on the record about the exact number, and detailing – in excruciating detail – all the homes. There are potential events like ringing keys at the DNC and visits to all the compounds. If McCain does indeed pick rich venture capitalist Mitt Romney, then the whole thing is amplified.

A good example of how the right pulls this off is their war on George Soros, where they clamped down and simply didn’t let go:

Soros himself is now cautious about who he funds, refusing to act as lead donor in controversial initiatives where his presence could endanger the project’s credibility. Similarly, various programs and groups are now more cautious about taking Soros’s money because they’re worried about the association. Thus, these projects don’t get funded, and good work doesn’t get done.

It’s been a remarkable coup for the Right, who realized, in 2004, that Soros was readying to step up as an aggressive liberal donor and politicized his money so effectively that he couldn’t fully inhabit his role in the liberal fundraising universe. It’s been an extraordinarily effective effort to starve edgy initiatives of funding. Conversely, liberals have never put much energy into marginalizing conservative donors. If you called something Olin-funded, or Coors-funded, people would scratch their heads. Sheldon Adelson, the gambling tycoon who’s pumping tens of millions into the right wing advocacy group Freedom’s Watch, isn’t even a household name among liberal political professionals. Yet Soros, who spent most of his life funding democratization efforts in the post-Soviet bloc, is somehow radioactive. It’s nuts.

That’s because, even after they’ve destroyed the guy, they’re still going after him, like in this Michelle Malkin piece claiming that there’s some clause in the DNC platform that will open up the money gates for him in an Obama White House. One, what does a billionaire like Soros need with more money? Two, if anyone ought to know about corporate welfare programs, it’d be conservatives, particularly those like Malkin who might as well get a paycheck directly from Scaife or Olin.

It’s real simple; you choose your target, find a line of attack, and relentlessly hammer it in various ways, with total message discipline from surrogates (I’m looking at you, Russ Feingold). And you do it every day for about 3 months.

That’s how you fight fire with fire.

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