rssObama Plays Offense
Monday, September 29, 2008 at 6:00 am
- 24 Comments
Sen. Barack Obama campaigns in Fredericksburg, Va. (Flickr, Obama Campaign)
FREDRICKSBURG, Va.– Sen. Barack Obama is not looking back. In a flurry of campaign activity since Friday’s debate, the Democratic presidential nominee hit several large rallies, paired up with Sen. Joe Biden, his running mate, for two joint events, delivered a keynote address to a Congressional Black Caucus gala, sat for a half-hour grilling on “Face The Nation,” huddled with advisers in Chicago and prepared for a tour through Western swing states early this week.
In interviews and discussions aboard the campaign bus, Obama’s aides sold the packed schedule as a contrast to Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, who hunkered down in Washington after the debate, continuing his strategy of playing economic statesman inside the Beltway. “As John McCain sat in his condominium in Arlington, Sen. Obama spoke directly with more than 20,000 voters in North Carolina,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
While all campaigns declare victory after debates, the Obama camp’s post-debate posture looks more like genuine offense than strategic bluffing.
Snap surveys and traditional polling after Friday’s debate largely favored Obama, which campaign manager David Plouffe heralded in a presentation for the traveling press. He pointed to a CBS survey indicating that after the debate, the number of uncommitted voters who said Obama understands their “needs and problems” jumped 21 points, to 79 percent. In a separate question about McCain’s standing, the Republican nominee improved 5 points on that score, from 36 to 41 percent.
Plouffe argued that Obama’s increase was striking because he already had a “healthy edge” on understanding people’s problems. The campaign also flagged a new USA Today/Gallup poll showing that 12 percent more debate viewers thought Obama won on Friday — 46 percent said Obama did better, while only 34 percent who said Mccain did better.
Yet Obama’s aides did not address a significant setback in the same debate polling. While Obama used the debate to prioritize his signature issue of opposing the Iraq war, a view now shared by most of the public, more voters actually thought McCain would make the “right choices” in Iraq.
In fact, McCain’s support on that measure jumped 12 points among uncommitted voters after the debate — to 56 percent. Only 48 percent of voters said the same about Obama, who gained four points on Iraq from the debate, according to the CBS poll of uncommitted voters. Sensing an opening, GOP operatives spent the weekend blasting Obama for advancing a “misguided and weak” foreign policy that offers “defeat” in Iraq.
Without directly responding, Obama’s campaign appears to have staked its confidence on the surveys showing a lead among debate viewers — which suggests that the Iraq issue did not hinder Obama’s overall standing.
The ultimate indicator of a campaign’s confidence, however, is not in the spin or the early polls or debate reviews. It is written, with sparse prose studded with logistics, in a nominee’s weekly schedule.
Obama’s current itinerary reinforces his retooled stump speech: It is a portrait of bullish offense.
Since the debate, Obama has drawn crowds topping 20,000 in two reliably red states, North Carolina and Virginia. It is hard to imagine McCain pulling off the same feat in, say, California. Then, Obama pulled 36,000 to a Sunday rally in the pale blue state of Michigan.
Obama may have been cool and cordial during the debate, but he punched hard at those weekend rallies. He alternatively blasted and mocked his opponent’s campaign. Looking over crowd of 20,000 in Greensboro, N.C., on early Saturday morning, Obama made a show of laughing at McCain’s newfound interest in running as a change agent. “He’s been grabbing our signs, using our slogans. Come on, John!” Obama said, “come up with your own stuff!”
Later, at a large 26,000-person rally at the University of Mary Washington in Virginia, where the soccer team rescheduled a game to accommodate the campaign stop, Biden reinforced Obama’s post-debate aggression. He assailed McCain for saying after 9/11 that the U.S. could simply invade “Iraq, Iran or Syria” in retribution for the attacks. The GOP nominee was “dangerously wrong,” Biden hollered, for mistaking Iraq as the central front in the battle against terrorists.
On the economy, Biden depicted McCain as erratic and out of touch, “lurching” between opposite positions. “I served with John McCain,” he said, explaining that he had personally seen McCain devote a career to deregulation and “tethered to Bush’s economic policies.”
As dusk turned to darkness, and rain drenched the enthusiastic young crowd, Obama repeated his core attack on McCain’s debate performance. “Through 90 minutes of debating, John McCain had a lot to say about me, but he had nothing to say about you,” Obama thundered.
The rain kept coming until Obama’s white dress shirt was soaked through. Biden even interrupted, to offer him a baseball cap as protection from the downpour, but Obama declined. The rough weather seemed to mirror Obama’s outrage against McCain’s debate performance: “He didn’t even say the words ‘middle class’ — not once!”
Just as he had at other stops, Obama mixed righteous indignation with withering ridicule. Reprising McCain’s now infamous line about fighting earmarks for bear research in Montana, Obama channeled Jon Stewart to dismiss this as a distraction. “He’s really hung up on those bears,” he said to laughter and applause.
Obama also tweaked Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for her doubletalk on earmarks. If you believe McCain and Palin will cut their lobbyist ties after they reach the White House, Obama told the students, “I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Alaska!”
Obama’s happy warrior vibe carried over off-stage, as best I could tell. He made a rare social visit to the press section of “O Force One” on Saturday afternoon, congratulating a Wall Street Journal reporter on her recent engagement. He joshed around, inspecting her ring, asking where her fiancé worked (Goldman Sachs), and bantering with a few other reporters about baseball. Obama looked perfectly happy, and only begged off after a reporter asked a serious question about the debate.
The first presidential debate was widely covered as a draw, though undecided voters leaned towards Obama anyway. That may reflect a gravitational shift towards the Democratic nominee, regardless of his prime-time sparring ability, but even that dynamic could lull Obama into complacency. Some supporters worry that even when he’s doing well, Obama is doing just enough to get by.
“This debate was Obama’s whole campaign in miniature: morally ambiguous, a slew of missed opportunities for devastating blows and a fundamental lack of a well-crafted plan,” wrote Paul Rosenberg on the liberal blog OpenLeft. In the end, he concluded, it was little more than “a good-enough strategic posture smoothly executed to pull out a tie, which is all he really needed.” Obama probably needs more to close the deal.
On Monday, Obama continues his offensive, visiting two states Bush carried in 2004 that could tip the election. He first has a rally at a high school gym in Westminster, Colo., then a stop in Nevada. Yet if swing voters there take to his current style — calm in debate, aggressive on the stump — then Obama may just be a happy warrior long past November.
24 Comments
Comment posted September 29, 2008 @ 6:00 am
Bush, McCain can run. But they cant hide anymore.
What ever congress does to try and fix our stunning economic catastrophe needs to be done very carefully. Congress needs to take their time, and be sure of what they are doing. Whatever is done needs to be sharply focused at helping, and protecting the best interest of the ordinary Americans. In particular the vast American middle class. 700 billion dollars is a lot of the peoples money to spend to bail out a bunch of corrupt Bush loan sharks.
When have you ever known any government plan, or project to only cost what the government said it would. Remember the war in Iraq. Bush and his so-called advisers said it would only cost you about 80 billion dollars. But we now know that the war in Iraq will cost you, and your children, and your grand children over a trillion dollars, and still counting.
So if 80 billion can end up costing you over a trillion dollars. How much could 700 billion end up costing you. Any math wizards out there. I come up with 9 trillion…:-(
My fellow human beings, just as I warned you ahead of this catastrophic economic meltdown, I must now warn you that what is ahead has the potential to be even more catastrophic than what we are going through now. The worlds geopolitical landscape has been booby trapped by the Bush McCain administration and their republican allies in congress. These booby traps are poised to spring at any time.
Fortunately the Worlds Nations have been blessed with many excellent leaders (except the US) who have been careful, wise, strong, and self-restrained in dealing with the provocations, and antagonism's of the Bush, McCain administration.
Barack Obama and the democrats are your best hope now. Tell your family, friends, and everyone you know to support them as best you can, and vote for them like your life, and the lives of your loved ones depends on it. Because it does. You will not survive 4 more years of Bush McCain.
JACK SMITH – WORKING CLASS…
Comment posted September 29, 2008 @ 7:44 am
The Choice is Simple:
If you want
EXPERIENCE AT GETTING IT WRONG,
Vote for McCain.
If you want,
JUDGEMENT AT GETTING IT RIGHT,
Vote for Obama.
Comment posted September 29, 2008 @ 8:06 am
it's been said ad nauseum that Barack Obama should be more aggressive towards John McCain, yet the very people who say this – in or out of the media – would be the very first if he were to do what they suggest, instantly apply every black stereotype they can devise and use and brand him as an “angry black man.”
Meanwhile, John McCain can continue being the grumpy, condescending, ill-informed, uneducated and bullying jerk that he is, and has been all of his life, and get away with it. To these same people those characteristics represent experience, leadership and all the rest of it. They don't! But hypocrisy and racism know no bounds when it comes to descending into the sewers of misinformation; and the sooner Americans wake up this reality the better not only for them but the rest of the world. And the way I and millions of others on my side of the Atlantic see it, Barack Obama is currently America's best hope: economically; socially, diplomatically and in every positiv way one can imagine, while John McCain is the complete opposite. An inveterate warmonger; failed navy pilot – he crashed FIVE US fighter jets before he was mercifully taken as POW by the Vietcong to whom the US taxpayer certainly owe a great financial debt as there's no doubt he would have brought other such jets to grief if not killing himself in the process – womaniser, home wrecker, serial adulterer, car crashed and handicapped wife deserter, bully and sad old codger who thinks that the so-called Hanoi Hilton was an academy for leadership – his kind of leadership that is. By the same nonsensical deduction one could put forward the same argument for those held illegally in Guantanamo Bay and America's secret “extraordinary renditioned” gulags worldwide, in blatant violation of every international law and Geneva Convention; but somehow I don't think that either Jon McCain, the Republicans or their surrogates in the media and supporters across the US would see it that way.
How can anyone, bearing in mind what has been said above, consider this man who spent more years in captivity than the US participated in World War Two, as any kind of war hero. Had McCain's grandfather and dad not been US admirals and taking into account John's total failure at the Navy Academy would he have been allowed to continue his dismal military career? I think not.
That's why Barack Obama has got to carefully walk this tightrope that he's been forced onto and use the abundant commonsene and intellectual acumen that he has to overcome obstacles that would never ever be put, in a million years, in John McCain's way.
Professor Dr. Stanley Collymore
London, England.
Comment posted September 29, 2008 @ 8:10 am
And all of this wasted on woman-worshipping, freedom-loving pigs like america in their final days before Obama. Don't worry bitches, Obama will make it all better for everyone. You just sit there and be stupid.
Obama 08
Comment posted September 29, 2008 @ 8:43 am
I attended the event in Charlotte, NC. There were 20,000 allowed in to the event, but the fire department estimated another 10,000 – 15,000 were turned away. It's fair to say that Obama brought out closer to 30,000 in Charlotte. The Greensboro event held after the debate drew 20,000 according to the police count.
Comment posted September 29, 2008 @ 10:40 am
Down in Nebraska strange things are happening! Were mostly republicans down here. Real die hards in fact! I changed sides long ago, and gradualy my family taged along. than talking to my nieghbors, it seems Palin scared the heck out of them, and they are seriousely thinking about Obama now! When we caucused this summer, Hillary only had a few over Obama, and we certainly had more than we thought we did in this small county That has decided to go Dem! we'll never change some of these people. But I see a lot of Republicans who's on the brink here of just saying they can't vote for Mccain/Palin, that its just to dangerouse this time to get caught in a party thing, when they fear Mccains age/health/Med's and his pick of Palin! I think Chuck Hagel has changed alot of peoples minds to! He's very welll respected here in Neb.
Comment posted October 2, 2008 @ 4:55 am
It is interesting that McCain's staff and the media grossly inflate the size of the crowds going to see Sarah Palin, sometimes by as much as ten times the actual amount, while the media tend to underestimate Obama's crowds. It is also strange that no major media outlet has spent time reporting on the two major anti-Palin demonstrations in Alaska in past few days. No matter. McCain and Palin generate so much bad publicity simply by being themselves that the subtle media bias against Obama has been largely overcome.
Comment posted October 21, 2008 @ 3:29 am
The classic novel, Brave New World, was first published in 1932. The author, Aldous Huxley, conveyed the possible events that would take place if the government took complete control of our daily lives. He wrote in reflection of his own surroundings, of how his hometown of London may look in the year 2540, if they continued with the programs to end war, divergence, suffering, and unreceptive ruling. It defines exactly how everyday lives would be like, with no ability to utilize their voice or live the way they choose to live. This brought a large number of criticisms knocking on Huxley’s door. Conversely, many of the same seeds have been planted in America, which have created a similar scare as was in the classic piece of literature. Although the socialist and the communist movements have been around for several generations in America, it hasn’t taken much prevalence until this one. It’s preposterous that politicians are trying to put a great number of things under the exclusive control of the government. Let’s take the state of California for instance. In some parts of Los Angeles, dishonest officials have put restrictions on various areas, forbidding where fast food restaurants are allowed to set up new shops. That’s right. You can’t have a hamburger in certain places in South Los Angeles, whether you like it or not. On top of the petty matters they base their focus on, they intend to stretch out even further and conquer more than what they currently control. State and national politicians are trying to remove the admission to fast and easy payday loans, only to assemble enough votes to carry out their own self-interest. Undoubtedly, this further proves our government’s intention to stringently control our daily lives.
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Comment posted November 20, 2008 @ 9:59 am
While all campaigns declare victory after debates, the Obama camp’s post-debate posture looks more like genuine offense than strategic bluffing.
Comment posted April 1, 2009 @ 5:08 am
I warned you ahead of this catastrophic economic meltdown, I must now warn you that what is ahead has the potential to be even more catastrophic than what we are going through now. The worlds geopolitical landscape has been booby trapped by the Bush McCain administration bedroom furniture and their republican allies in congress. These booby traps are poised to spring at any time.
Comment posted October 3, 2009 @ 4:41 am
Great blog here. Keep it up! Please try to include more information if possible.
regards
charcoal grill
Comment posted May 7, 2010 @ 7:05 am
This debate was Obama’s whole campaign in miniature: morally ambiguous, a slew of missed opportunities for devastating blows and a fundamental lack of a well-crafted plan,” wrote Paul Rosenberg on the liberal blog OpenLeft.
Comment posted May 10, 2010 @ 6:30 am
The classic novel, Brave New World, was first published in 1932.
Comment posted May 10, 2010 @ 7:49 am
So when we spoke last, he had a question about the P90X bands and the Bodylastics, basically he wanted to know which would give better results.
Since I already had the Bodylastic exercise bands I went ahead and bought the http://www.p90xdvdmall.com bands as well; these are also called the B Line Resistance Bands. I wanted to compare both products even though I was quit happy with the results that I was getting out of the Bodylastic exercise bands.
Comment posted May 10, 2010 @ 7:55 am
Yet Obama’s aides did not address a significant setback in the same debate polling. While Obama used the debate to prioritize his signature issue of opposing the Iraq war, a view now shared by most of the public, more voters actually thought McCain would make the “right choices” in Iraq.
In fact, McCain’s support on that measure jumped 12 points among uncommitted voters after the debate — to 56 percent. Only 48 percent of voters said the same about Obama, who gained four points on Iraq from the debate, according to the CBS poll of uncommitted voters. Sensing an opening, GOP operatives spent the weekend blasting Obama for advancing a “misguided and weak” foreign policy that offers “defeat” in Iraq.
Comment posted May 10, 2010 @ 7:56 am
On Monday, Obama continues his offensive, visiting two states Bush carried in 2004 that could tip the election. He first has a rally at a high school gym in Westminster, Colo., then a stop in Nevada. Yet if swing voters there take to his current style — calm in debate, aggressive on the stump — then Obama may just be a happy warrior long past November.
Comment posted May 10, 2010 @ 9:17 am
what Without directly responding, Obama’s campaign appears to have staked its confidence on the surveys showing a lead among debate viewers — which suggests that the Iraq issue did not hinder Obama’s overall standing.
Comment posted May 10, 2010 @ 9:20 am
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Comment posted May 28, 2010 @ 4:27 am
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Comment posted September 25, 2010 @ 8:08 am
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