Tough Enough

A reader writes in-

As somebody who supported Obama for over a year now, I am having doubts as to whether Hillary would have been a better candidate against McCain. I have definitely preferred Obama to Hillary, but do you think she would have sat idly by after hearing how McCain and Co. have trashed their opponent? No. Do you think this kind of timid response will be enough to prevent the inevitable caricature of Obama as a smart but ultimately weak leader?

Not that the media is not at fault for sensationalizing the whole weird family pregnancy thing and not focusing on Palin/McCain's records, but what are Obama/Biden doing by being so timid in their response. What are they afraid of? The cynical reactionaries of the extreme right-wing, which will lie and distort anything Obama says anyway? At least he won't be seen as such an elitist pussy getting his salad tossed by the "Pitbull." Sorry for the imagery, but this is very depressing to watch the Obama campaign get derailed by these political hacks. What is the point keeping the tone of the debate civil if the country doesn't care about that? What is the point of Change if you can't win the White House?

I'm worried about this too, although the new ad (posted below) is a great start at hitting back. I think part of the problem is that it's really difficult to directly counter the attacks on Obama in any effective way. How does Obama go about proving that he's not a celebrity or an elitist in an ad or a speech? What the campaign has done is worked to slowly change those narratives over time- by decreasing the number of rallies, focusing on working-class Americans, doing more photo-ops in factories, etc. I think that those changes will resonate with voters, but they don't give Democratic partisans the charge of going on TV and directly refuting the charges.

Obama has fought back directly, apparently fairly effectively, against the ads tying him to 60s radical Bill Ayers. Obama's had ads running in states where the Ayers ads are running that bring up how ridiculous it is to pin Ayers' conduct on Obama when Obama was 8 years old when it happened, and then talk about the bigger problems we need to solve.

I think the Dems maybe miscalculated in their initial response to Palin- hoping that the media would trash her for being ridiculously unqualified, or perhaps hoping she would self-distruct in her speech. The media (as usual), screwed up the coverage, devoting way too much time to conspiracy theories about Trig Palin and ignoring Palin's record of mismanagement in Wasilla and her reliance on federal pork while governor. Then, after realizing that they'd followed the wrong story, the media was so cowed by charges of sexism that they quit holding Palin accountable at all.

With the new ad, I think the Obama folks have their feet under them again and are figuring out how to take on Palin and McCain without falling victim to charges of sexism or elitism.