Democrats continue to counfuse insult for logic
Obama's decline began after Super Tuesday and it has continued as his opponents have been able to define him. At first Obama tried to use jujitsu on the inexperience issue by claiming he had not made the mistakes of his more experienced opponents, but in fact he has made a worse mistake in the last year by opposing victory in Iraq and assuming the war was lost. He is now facing an opponent who is calling him to task for that error of judgment and he does not have a good answer,Democrats begin their national convention with a queasy feeling in the pits of their stomachs. Sen. Barack Obama has plunged in the polls, falling into a statistical tie with Sen. John McCain. The election that was supposed to be in the bag isn't.
Democrats blame the plunge on negative ads. They plan to respond in kind. The first few days of their convention will feature nonstop assaults on the presumptive Republican nominee.
The Democrats' strategy is driven by what they think happened to John Kerry in 2004. His plans to run as a war hero came a cropper when 15 of the 23 officers who served with him in Vietnam declared him "Unfit for Command." Democrats believe Mr. Kerry's sluggish response to their charges is what cost him the presidency. Mr. Obama has declared he will not be "swift-boated."
But the Democratic strategy has two serious flaws. The first is the blithe assumption by Democrats that if voters prefer the Republican candidate, it has to be because the Republican played a dirty trick. The thought that voters might prefer the Republican because of perceived shortcomings in the Democrat never crosses their minds.
It should. The Swifties' charges hit home because they were credible, and came from a credible source. It is Mr. Obama's inexperience and ego, not the brilliance of Mr. McCain's ad writers, that have made his ads mocking Mr. Obama's celebrity status resonate.
The second is their tendency to confuse rudeness with toughness. Liberal bloggers imagine they're being tough when they use profane language to say nasty things about their opponents.
Whining isn't toughness, either. After Mr. McCain bested their man at the Rev. Rick Warren's Faith Forum last weekend, Obama staffers told reporters the old white guy must have cheated. Mr. Obama complained, falsely, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Tuesday that Mr. McCain has been questioning his patriotism.
Nor is braggadocio. In North Carolina Tuesday, Mr. Obama said: "John McCain doesn't know what he's up against."
"All that is missing is the quivering lip and foot-stomping," wrote Jennifer Rubin of Commentary's blog about Mr. Obama's remarks in North Carolina. "I am too tough! I am not going to lose! Presidential it is not. Panicky and defensive it is." There's more to being tough than talking tough. Unless Mr. Obama resolves rising doubts about his toughness, talking tough just makes him seem wimpier.
Democrats plan to paint Mr. McCain as the reincarnation of George W. Bush. This will be difficult to do, since it is so obviously untrue.
Not that truth has been much of a barrier to a Democratic line of attack. Obama surrogates have been referring to Mr. McCain as "Exxon John" because both he and the giant oil company favor offshore drilling. But Exxon employees have given more money to Mr. Obama ($42,100) than to Mr. McCain ($35,166), and Mr. Obama voted for the 2005 energy bill that gave massive tax breaks to oil companies, while Mr. McCain voted against it because he opposed those tax breaks.
But even if Democrats succeed in tarnishing Mr. McCain, it won't solve their fundamental problem, because this election is mostly about Barack Obama....
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The McCain campaign has done some political jujitsu of its own by attacking Obama as a political bimbo or celebrity. Obama has aided this message by being really bad when he is off script. He is good with the teleprompter, but stumbles into uhs and ahs elsewhere. By scheduling his acceptance speech at a football stadium he has fallen into a trap of his own making. It will either make him look like the celebrity the McCain camp has framed him as or he will look very small in a sea of people.
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