The simple rule that the Obama commercial makers forget

[burythehatchet]

You don't attack someone's known weakness, you attack their strength. The computer literacy ad does nothing. Attack his DIShonorable nature. Attack his committee chairmanship record.

2 cents.

[Boz]

1. Step one, Move one step, step two, move another step etc.

[BattyDem]

5. Looks like you're right about their strategy.

Someone just posted a new Obama ad. :-)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x7043736

[GOPNotForMe]

2. I completely agree.

Or attack both strength and weaknesses. But do NOT let perceived strength go unchallenged!

[BattyDem]

3. Of all the things they could have attacked McCain on ...

why did they choose something so trivial? :shrug:

Don't get me wrong ... this is a computer-oriented world and I certainly want a president who knows how to use one, but I don't see the value in this particular ad.

[amborin]

4. agree, totally

so many of the O ads seem to miss the point

agree: go after the person's strongest points, not the weakest


i feel the O campaign needs a major shakeup right now

should follow these tips, from a huffington post article i posted earlier:

"Back to the four stories Obama needs.

1. He has (most of) the story about himself: "Change" or "Change we can believe in" -- although, as McCain has shown, it is not really a full frame or extended metaphor because it doesn't really connect Obama's background and values with his policies, as an ideal story would do. Thus it can be twisted into "the wrong kind of change."

2. Obama's best story is about McCain: McCain=Bush, McCain is more of the same. None of these is rhetorically memorable, though at least there are a lot of visuals and facts linking McCain and Bush. This story is, of course, mostly policy-oriented and not a character attack -- and it is certainly true that Obama is winning the policy war but losing the character war.

3. Obama, however, has no counterpunch to McCain's story (or McCain's attack on Obama). Now in part that's because McCain reversed his story from "experience" to "change/maverick." And in part it's because Obama mistakenly muzzled the 527s who would have branded McCain as the out-of-touch old-politics lobbyist-loving flip-flopper he is

It must also be said that Obama didn't have much of a response to the "experience" frame in the first place because Obama insists on calling McCain a war hero, a man of honor, blah, blah, blah. Not exactly how Rovians winners deal with the Kerry team losers. Indeed, by not forcing McCain to defend the experience frame, by buying into his McCain's frame, it was that much easier for McCain to pivot to a new message.

As I've said, Obama should be rebranding McCain as a make-believe maverick. To get in even more alliteration, I might call him "Me-too McCain" since that covers his disingenuous copying of Obama's change message and his dangerous copying of Bush's policies.

Also, Obama should have gone after McCain as an out of touch elitist -- in fact, he still can. The Obama team let Phil Gramm's "nation of whiners" and "mental recession" lines die in the ether, and seems to have dropped the blockbuster gaff of McCain forgetting how many houses he owns. Yet these fit right in with the make-believe maverick meme. I can assure you, a Rovian winning candidate would still be using those dramatic-irony gaffes regularly. Indeed, Palin continues to talk about Obama's "bitter" comment, and that is from even further back in the campaign.

4. The main reason for Obama to continue pushing the extended metaphor of McCain as an out of touch elitist, aside from the fact that it's true and powerful, is to inoculate himself against the McCain-Palin-Rove onslaught that has begun to frame him as the out of touch elitist in the campaign.

Right now, Obama is diving directly into the "too clever" and "not one of us" extended metaphor that overcame Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry. I suspect that this will be the McCain team's central frame for winning the debates even if he loses them on policy points, since that was how Bush bested Kerry strategically in the debates even though the polls seemed to indicate that, at a tactical level, Kerry won them all. But that is a long story I will come back to closer to the debates."

[bushisanidiot]

6. I disagree completely. Weaknesses need to be pounced on swiftly and fiercly

the time for "nuance" about chairmanship records, etc. is gone. This late in the game, it's about quick sound bytes. PERIOD.

keep it simple stupid!! that's how the republicans have won in the past. they don't even bother checking to see if their accusations are true because they know that the whisper campaign is what wins. we are not stooping to whisper campaigns, but we can hit them with truthful quick sound byte ziingers.. e.g. McCain being out of touch with americans because he doesn't understand computers and because he owns 7 houses and has servants waiting on him in those houses. THAT is what needs to be focused on right now. Like it or not.

[Teaser]

8. Just attack everything

reduce everything your enemy does to an item of mockery.

[Ioo]

7. Attack it ALL, no one says you have to run one ad at a time.