Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

The way you win elections is by controlling the conversation. You put your opponent on defensive and you hammer the point home, over and over again. You make your opponent whine like a squealing pig. America does not like whiners.

Today, the Obama campaign won the day.

First, Joe Biden landed a zinger on stem cell research:

I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there’s joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don’t you support stem cell research?

Then, Barack Obama let loose hitting the McCain campaign where it hurts:

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new "change" mantra.

"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It’s still a pig."

"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink."

"We’ve had enough of the same old thing."

Predictably, the McCain campaign cried "sexism!", only to have their hypocrisy shoved back at them by journalists.

Let me understand this correctly. Sarah Palin declares to the world that she is a pitbull with lipstick on. And now her campaign is whining every time someone actually calls Palin and McCain on their lies? I didn’t know pitbulls whined.

The honeymoon is over for the McCain/Palin ticket. Welcome to the general election season.

Guess who is running John McCain’s campaign: lobbyists.

Let me ‘splain…No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

…when you’ve lost the Wall Street Journal you know you are lying too much.

Panic has taken hold in part of the progressive blogosphere. They are all scared of Sarah Palin.

It began immediately after The Speech. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD responded to the Palin speech thus:

We have met someone that we will be doing battle against for a decade or more. Seriously. I’ve never seen a woman, or a man for that matter, speak that way, prime time, national, convention, live, ever. She blows away Hillary Clinton. Sorry, but that’s what it is. Palin’s deft speaking style is like watching visceral connective tissue being torn– with a child in arms [understand that the Clinton comparison is within the context of contra Obama].

Mr. Armstrong has taken leave of his senses and may benefit from a visit to this site.

Today on the Daily Kos the top recommended diary for most of the day was one called "Narcissism on Daily Kos". The diary was bemoaning that too many diaries on Daily Kos recently had focused on Sarah Palin. It urged everyone to get back to the "issues" and was afraid that if they didn’t Daily Kos would become a "laughing stock".

This hand wringing on Daily Kos comes on the heels of the McCain campaign’s attack on the media and the progressive blogs. The McCain camp has been crying all week that the big bad media was asking questions of their VP pick. It is an old trick. The media usually falls for it and backs off. It is called "working the refs".

So now, just like the media, the premier progressive blog seems to be succumbing to the McCain campaign’s tactic.

The story has been, and still remains, that John McCain chose his running mate without doing any vetting. That reflects on his lack of judgment. His running mate, Sarah Palin, gave a teleprompter driven speech on Wednesday and is now hiding from the national press. The McCain campaign blundered on a colossal scale and now they are trying to make lemonade out of lemons. It seems some in the progressive blogosphere are intent on helping him squeeze the lemons.

If Democrats want to win this November, they cannot do it while in a fetal position. They cannot win with long and boring expositions on economic policy (just ask John Kerry or Michael Dukakis). They cannot win by ignoring the elephant in the room.

The elephant in the room is that a 72-year-old man, with a history of cancer, has chosen as his running mate a woman with no foreign policy experience, no national experience, and scandals brewing all around her. Electing John McCain is risky – made even more risky by his choice of running mate. If Democrats want to win, they must succinctly and simply articulate this risk to the American people. If they fail to do so, they will again lose.

As has been said elsewhere, this is a street fight for the presidency of the United States. The Republicans are wounded. To wit, the McCain campaign is frantically trying to derail the "Troopergate" investigation. Now, the progressive blogosphere can ignore these issues and focus on high-brow "issues", but I think we will have plenty of time to focus on those "issues" while another Republican occupies the White House for the next 4 years. A better strategy, it seems to me, would be to focus on the issues that the McCain campaign itself has dragged into the race. John McCain showed his lack of judgment. Let us highlight it. Over and over and over again.

His lack of judgment will manifest itself in the issues that will impact the lives of Americans:

• He has shown lack of judgment. Can we risk John McCain make economic decisions?
• He has shown lack of judgment. Can we risk John McCain making foreign policy decisions?
• He has shown lack of judgment. Can we risk John McCain making decisions if another Hurricane Katrina happens?
• He has shown lack of judgment. Can we risk Sarah Palin becoming president if John McCain becomes incapacitated?

So:

• If you want to risk your family’s economic future, vote for John McCain.
• If you want to risk your job stability, vote for John McCain.
• If you want to risk your health insurance, vote for John McCain.
• If you want to risk your job security, vote for John McCain.
• If you want to risk another never-ending war, vote for John McCain. 

Let us all take Bill Clinton’s advice:

When someone is beating you over the head with a hammer, don’t sit there and take it. Take out a meat cleaver and cut off their hand.

If you are tired of being beaten over the head for the last two election cycles by Karl Rove and the Republican Party, it is time to get out of the fetal position.