Enough Not Said

With his radical past and slimy friends, Barack remains the most beatable candidate in the world. Yet the people with the money, who could have financed the sort of PR campaign needed to educate voters, have never stepped forward.

“It’s Oct. 21, and if you can’t say it by Oct. 21, then chances are you’re not going to say anything,” said Chris LaCivita, the strategist behind the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004. LaCivita has been working for a new conservative third-party group this year, the American Issues Project.

I don't think Ronald Reagan could win this election if he'd built his career with the likes of Wright, Pfleger, Rezko and Ayers as his major allies. So why Barack? American Issues Project, known as AIP...

...was eyed by some in the GOP as a potential major player in taking on Obama. It spent nearly $3 million in key states in August on a tough ad tying the Illinois senator to '60s-era domestic terrorist William Ayers and promised additional spots in the fall campaign.

That never happened.

It turns out that the financial crisis was more than just bad politics for McCain.

“Donors just weren’t willing to give the money,” explains LaCivita. “They were hurt badly in the market crash and they were always concerned about how McCain would react.”

The timing of the financial crisis couldn’t have been worse for Republicans. When Lehman Brothers went under on Sept. 15, McCain was tied or in the margin of error in national polls. But when his poll numbers fell along with the stock market, wealthy conservatives saw little reason to invest their shrunken holdings on what was far from a sure thing.

But, surely, some of it must have been personal. There should have been a Swift Boat style campaign going on over the summer, long before the mess on Wall Street materialized.

And it wasn’t just the economic bad news — McCain did little to help his own cause... And donors were always fearful they would be rebuked by their party’s notoriously unpredictable nominee if they underwrote a major effort.

“McCain never gave a real wink and said, ‘Go ahead, boys,’” explained one operative close to a third-party group this year.

Another GOP strategist lamented that McCain lacked a core group of rich friends who were willing to part with their money. Harold Simmons, a Dallas billionaire, underwrote the entire cost of the initial Ayers ad for AIP — but his investment wasn’t matched by other wealthy Republicans.

It's tragic to think that we'll get to election day without voters having been presented with a cohesive image of Barack's radical roots. While liberals think that Ayers and Wright have had their story told, that's just silly. Most Americans, while they may have heard the names, don't get the big picture, and don't realize the degree to which they've been lied to by Barack.

“Time is drying up but not gone,” said Evan Tracey, who heads the ad-monitoring Campaign Media Analysis Group. “For ads to work, they need repetition, so if anyone is going to get involved, they either need a very strong (and unique) message or some kind of national footprint to have any impact.”

By law, campaigns are not allowed to coordinate with outside entities. But McCain aides don’t seem hopeful that help is on the way or interested in sending any signals.

“I have no idea what’s going on with third-party groups,” is all Rick Davis, McCain’s campaign manager, would say this week.

Where are the Boats?

I've always felt that, baring some major upheaval or campaign mishap, Barack Obama was unelectable. My belief that he was unelectable was based on the expectation that voters would have the relevant information, and that it would be provided by a Swift Boat style information campaign. For some reason, that campaign has never materialized.

Independent political groups, some of which made big splashes in the 2004 race, are playing reduced roles in this year's presidential campaign. With three-plus weeks to go, there's less money pouring into nasty negative television advertising from outside groups than in 2004, and much of the activity is directed toward narrow niches in the electorate.

Where are they? is what I'd like to know. Barack is much more vulnerable to this sort of attack than Kerry was, and the Swift Boaters managed to beat Kerry. Are you telling me that we're going to reach November 4 without people understanding that Reverend Wright wasn't a unique character in Barack's past - that he's part of a radical clique who made Barack a political player in Chicago politics?

The 527 was the weapon of choice for many activists in 2004, when major donors wrote multimillion-dollar checks to underwrite advertising and organizing efforts of groups that spent a combined $434 million on federal campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group. As of July this year, 527s had spent about $156 million, the center reports. New reports are due later this month.

Some believe that a shift in how money is raised for presidential elections explains the lack of an organized effort like we saw four years ago.

The highest-profile 527s in 2004 were the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which spent about $22 million attacking Democrat John F. Kerry's record in the Vietnam War; Progress for America, which spent about $45 million, much of it on a memorable ad in which a girl, whose mother was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, praised President Bush; and The Media Fund and America Coming Together, a related group that spent about $136 million on TV ads and field operations in support of Kerry.

But it seems that there must be a different feeling about this election amongst the big money donors and conservative activists - perhaps a dislike of John McCain?

After McCain-Feingold banned unlimited large donations, or soft money, by corporations and labor unions, multimillionaire activists stepped in and underwrote most of the independent groups that were active in 2004.

That was also the year the Internet began to transform political fund-raising, which Obama has taken to new levels of success. "In the soft-money years, a lot of big checks written by corporations weren't given particularly willingly," said Jim Jordan, a Democratic political consultant who played a leading role in America Coming Together and The Media Fund four years ago.

"McCain-Feingold didn't take money out of politics but it got powerful politicians out of the loop of raising big checks," Jordan said.

Lay some "God-damn America," on the American people, combined with some "I've never been proud of my country," with some Bill Ayers and Rev Pfleger and "I'm not going to put that pin on my chest," and I still say that Barack is unelectable - even with the financial meltdown.

Better Wright

Yesterday I posted an ad from the Judicial Network that attempts to make the country aware of the Obamafia. It was ok. Here's an RNC version that's stronger, I think. But for this to be done with the viciousness it warrents, aren't we looking for a 527campaign of expensive truth telling?

Where is the Love?

Where are the ads? The 527 created campaign that should be re-creating the Swift Boat attacks of four years ago - something Barack's shady past makes him far more vulnerable to than Kerry ever was. Is it possible that the big money GOP donors aren't that interested this time?

This ad demonstrates how easy it is to produce very effective ads on Barack - and Vets for Freedom is paying to run it in California, a Democratic stronghold!

The group, Vets for Freedom, has been active in several battleground states. But this is its first ad buy in California, which is considered to be firmly in Obama's column. His Republican rival, John McCain, is making only token campaign efforts in the state.

With the economic crisis controlling the news cycle, keeping the country reminded of how much people want "change," no matter how random or ill advised, McCain needs to educate about the Obamafia - the Reverends, the terrorist, the Briber, et al.

I fear they're planning a last minute attack campaign, which may be too late.

The Great Lipstick Caper

Did the McCain campaign over reach with the Great Lipstick Caper?

They weren't off-base with the concept. When you see a clip of Barack using the lipstick line, the reaction is - "he's talking about Palin!" That's how it feels, and that's why the crowd reacted with such excitement - it wouldn't have been a standing ovation line without the linkage to Palin.




By hitting him so hard on it, McCain's campaign gave Barack the opportunity to cry, "old school politics," while raising the ire of the mainstream media - which doesn't want to be embarrassed for it's willingness to focus on the sensational.

On ABC News, Lipstick was the lead story. But the Jake Tapper report focused almost exclusively on Barack as victim, and McCain barely made the segment. And CBS had Youtube pull the ad because it didn't like Katie Couric being used in it.

The idea of chasing a theme like this for the McCain campaign is to 1) control the conversation, and 2) reinforce the negative feelings that women voters might hold for Barack. But it could be pushing this sort of tactic out of the fun zone and into the cheap politics realm - potentially reaching a tipping point that could create a backlash against McCain.

The tone of this campaign could change and the momentum could shift - over lipstick.

Surviving Michelle

How does Barack's candidacy survive Michelle's view of America?



You combine these sorts of clips with Reverends Wright and Pfleger, sprinkle in a little Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers, and you've got an ad that the Swift Boat guys from 4 years ago could only dream about.