I visualized McCain launching relentlessly into Obama’s unquestionably shady past and dreadful judgment, his radical ties and cynical obfuscations. I imagined the One’s increasingly testy and strident dodges and attempts to smear McCain in retaliation. I imagined myself sitting there in the audience, about 1.5 meters from this. I began to perspire.

I wonder if a choice was made to refrain from showing 70 million viewers the sight of their fellow citizens growing increasingly uncomfortable as two prospective presidents slugged it out right in front of them. However bad either one made the other look, I wonder if it was judged that there would be a Pyhrric quality to it.

Now, making your opponent wilt at a podium, at a remove from the faces and personal spaces of the voters who watch the blistering onslaught from a safe distance…that’s a different matter. And I do hope that that is what we will witness next Wednesday.

Oh, and I really hope that McCain is able to convey a low, grumbling anger and outrage. He has rather a high, piping voice, which grates when raised.

why is it that the economy is the biggest story on news but NO ONE WANTS TO EXPLAIN HOW WE AS A NATION GOT INTO THIS MESS.

socialist policies for the last 20 years have caused the current lack of faith is the u.s. economy. why is it that the stock market is falling????? I will tell you why INVESTORS ARE AFRAID OF OBAMA. obamas policies wil take us back to the 30′s.

I dunno…I’m as big a “McCainiac” as you’ll find, and I couldn’t be more anti-Obama. Or anti-Ayers.

But I really don’t see where rehashing the Obama/Ayers relationship is going to help. If anything, I really believe this route will backfire and cost McCain in the polls.

JetBoy on October 10, 2008 at 7:46 AM

You sound like an Axelrod astroturfer to me.

ex-Democrat on October 10, 2008 at 9:44 AM

ex-Dem, JetBoy has been supporting McCain since the primaries. I checked his old posts (something I find myself doing a lot on HA because of all the astroturfers, frankly).

I agree with JetBoy that the Ayers stuff is not really that effective. I don’t think it will necessarily hurt McCain in the polls (except with aging hippies and their kids), but I don’t think it’s the most powerful of the character attacks. The problem is that the Ayers storyline does not lend itself to a simple line of attack. To be effective, McCain has to:
(1) explain who Bill Ayers is – overcoming that he is now a professor (“rehabilitated”) and explaining what the heck the Weathermen were
(2) explain why what happened during the 60′s is relevant to today – that Ayers is still a radical, etc – as well as de-romanticize the 60′s protesters in the minds of aging hippies and the young generation who crave something to protest; imho, they need to stop showing black and white pictures of Ayers as a first step to eliminating the “this was in the past” excuse
(3) establish the Obama-Ayers connection, which includes explaining what the heck the Annenberg Challenge was and what it means to serve on a board – I think of all the elements the campaign has made the most progress on this recently
(4) establish that Ayers shaped Obama’s political and world views
(5) combat the notion that “that was all in the past” and Obama has seen the light

I think this is a much harder sell than Reverend Wright. It’s easy to show clips of the racist, hate-monger Wright “preaching” anti-Americanism and say this is the guy whom Obama chose to baptize his kids. Very simple – very clear. Obama condones racism or is, in fact, a racist himself. It took a long time for Obama to distance himself from Wright… very recent, so this is much more of a current affair than an historical one. I think most of us agree that McCain needs to get over his fear of being branded a racist and use this line of attack, at the very least do it through surrogates, Palin, and the 527s.

But to me the fatal blow is ACORN. Unlike many folks overseas, Americans are not used to the idea that votes don’t matter or that elections can be stolen. McCain’s campaign needs to tie ACORN firmly around Obama’s neck — where it clearly belongs — and pound on that at every turn.

God bless Congressman Boehner for stepping up to the plate. I wish there had been a group of Senators with him at that press conference with McCain front and center in that group.

/runs away

MrLynn said: . . . The problem with this Ayers ad is that it pulls its punch. The issue is not ‘judgment’. It’s ideology!
Excellent point . . . you hit the nail dead center.

rplat on October 10, 2008 at 8:34 AM

But isn’t poor judgement a symptom of a flawed ideology?

Rovin on October 10, 2008 at 8:46 AM

Yes, of course. But attacking the symptom leaves the public wondering, “They all say the other guy has poor judgment. Why should we believe McCain?”

The ideology of Obambi’s friends, teachers, mentors, and associates is fact, not opinion, cause not symptom. That’s where the spotlight has to be.

You sound like an Axelrod astroturfer to me.

ex-Democrat on October 10, 2008 at 9:44 AM

Ask anyone here who’s been around the HotAir block for the last couple years. I’m no “astroturfer”…

Don’t set yourself up for poll disappointment! That’s what the media wants …. you too demoralized to vote.

The polls are rigged.

Ignore the polls. Fight all the way to election day!

LET’S ROLL AMERICA!

ex-Democrat on October 10, 2008 at 9:37 AM

Better yet, if the media and pollsters are fabricating their numbers—-MAKE UP YOUR OWN AND POST THEM TO YOUR WEBSITES!

BREAKING! NEWEST POLL SHOWS SUDDEN REVERSAL—McCAIN NOW UP BY 15 POINTS!–MICHELLE’S KIDS HARDEST HIT!

I dunno…I’m as big a “McCainiac” as you’ll find, and I couldn’t be more anti-Obama. Or anti-Ayers.

But I really don’t see where rehashing the Obama/Ayers relationship is going to help. If anything, I really believe this route will backfire and cost McCain in the polls.

JetBoy on October 10, 2008 at 7:46 AM

You sound like an Axelrod astroturfer to me.

It’s easier to tie them to Obama because Obama votes with them more then McCain votes with Bush

He needs to hammer on that in the next debate. When Obama smugly says that McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time, McCain needs to rebut with “I may have voted with the President 90% of the time, but my opponent voted with the liberals in congress who’ve destroyed our economy 100% of the time.”

To me, the ad uses the “one- two punch” approach of, “you think that was bad, listen to this one!”

I find one issue makes the other stronger, and builds the unstated (until the end of the ad) argument that “Obama is unfit.”

I cant wait for the polls to come out in the next few days.

With all the Acorn stuff, Mccain has to be closing or gaining.

Don’t set yourself up for poll disappointment! That’s what the media wants …. you too demoralized to vote.

The polls are rigged.

Ignore the polls. Fight all the way to election day!

LET’S ROLL AMERICA!

The leftist media must…be…destroyed.

Let’s roll.

McCain needs to hammer this theme with lots of ads.

I also hope that McCain/Palin and the RNC can hammer the record of Obama’s Annenberg experience–not so much the association with Ayers, but the ineffectiveness of what he did.

How about this?

“In 1994, domestic terrorist William Ayers hired Barack Obama as Chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, to spend $160 million trying to improve Chicago schools. Obama spent all the money on student activism, nothing on math and science. After six years, no improvement in test scores, NO CHANGE.

Barack Obama. All talk, wasted your money, no results.”

Andy McCarthy at NRO recommended watching the 2004 Oscar-nominated movie, The Weather Underground, which has been uploaded to youtube and provided a link to part one of nine. I watched the whole thing last night.

I was in high school and university in Canada when the Weathermen were active so what they were doing never registered very strongly. They were just the subject of occasional new stories. The bombs weren’t close enough to me to matter at the time.

The tone of the movie is sympathetic and the vietnam footage helps you understand how deep an emotional response drove the anti-war movement. However, it’s also quite clear how particularly extreme the Weathermen were. It’s also clear that Dohrn was the worst of them.

With all the Acorn stuff, Mccain has to be closing or gaining.

Will the media say it’s too late for Obama to regain his lead?

The McCain campaign will be using both themes for the next 25 days to argue that Obama is too great a risk in a time of war and economic turmoil. If McCain wants to make that sale, though, he’s going to have to make both of these arguments in the next debate.

McCain also has to stop flailing around (e.g., “I’m suspending my campaign to go to a meeting!”, “I have adopted Hillary’s $300bn mortgage buy-back program!”, “Won’t you join me in calling off the debate, Sen. Obama?”) and start talking calmly and authoritatively about the subprime chaos. I have to be honest. I’m as red-blooded a conservative as they get, and after seeing McCain’s flailing and utter failure to respond to Obama’s attacks, I actually thought about voting for Obama on the theory that McCain is too impulsive and erratic to make an effective leader. [Don't worry, I haven't, and won't, vote for Obama.]

I’m pretty sure of just how ACORN thugs would be treated in my area. There is good reason of just exactly why Obama trails in Montana by double digit margins; his biggest problem being the second amendment and and his “record” that has been exposed in this gun totin state. Obama flooded this state with phony & dishonest ads regarding his “support” for the right to bear arms, but then some good people came out with the truth about Obama’s actual record, and the messiah tanked as a result.

Obama’s “character” has been questionable (to put it mildly) since day one. People just don’t seem to care.

JetBoy on October 10, 2008 at 8:38 AM

Slow down for a sec and lets look at what is happening now that wasn’t happening since “day one”. (And please realize that we here have known the facts for months. But we are wonks and are dissociated from how real folks process the information. They have heard of the association, but never the details. The details are devastating and you need to allow that others will take the same attitude toward this that all of us did as we systematically learned the facts.)

The MSM is now reporting on this even to the extent that CNN reported most all of the sordid details.

Oslime-a and his surrogates are in a tail spin and have contradicted themselves since this story broke.

Oslime-a is scared and is compounding his mistakes exponentially. THAT hasn’t been happening simce “day one” and it will matter to people who haven’t been hearing the facts since “day one”.

But I really don’t see where rehashing the Obama/Ayers relationship is going to help. If anything, I really believe this route will backfire and cost McCain in the polls.

JetBoy on October 10, 2008 at 7:46 AM

Since the general electorate are dimwits and are content with their thoughts being spoon-fed to them by The One’s media, you may have a point.

McCain needs to make the point that Obama’s associations will have an effect on all our pocketbooks. It will be a stretch for some to actually comprehend this, but maybe some lightbulbs will go off. Obama’s ideology and the people that he has associated with his entire life want to destroy America as we know it. They are hell-bent on taking away our freedoms and moving us towards a marxist society. This will definitely effect our pocketbooks. It is about the economy and Obama can not be trusted.

When I try to explain this to some dimwits, they get a glazed look in their eyes. So frustrating…maybe I’m not coming across loud and clear! UGH!

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print

You couldn’t become chief of surgery after 143 days of
experience of being a surgeon.

You couldn’t get a job as a teacher and be the
superintendent after 143 days of experience.

You couldn’t join the military and become a colonel
after a 143 days of experience.

You couldn’t get a job as a reporter and become the
nightly news anchor after 143 days of experience.

You couldn’t get a job as Director of Nursing after 143
days experience as an RN !!!!!

BUT….

From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United
State Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a
Presidential exploratory committee, he logged 143 days of
experience in the Senate. That’s how many days the
Senate was actually in session and working. After 143 days
Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World … 143 days.

We all have to start somewhere, but after 143 days, that’s all it is – a start.

AND, strangely, a large sector of the American public is
okay with this and campaigning for him. We wouldn’t
accept this in our own line of work, yet some are okay with
this for the President of the United States of America?

MrLynn said: . . . The problem with this Ayers ad is that it pulls its punch. The issue is not ‘judgment’. It’s ideology!
Excellent point . . . you hit the nail dead center.

rplat on October 10, 2008 at 8:34 AM

But isn’t poor judgement a symptom of a flawed ideology?

The McCain campaign’s new 30-second commercial, tying together William Ayers and the financial crisis via a common thread: Barack Obama’s ambition Keep it up, Maverick, and hit him with this at the debate. And do one devoted just to the……

The good news about this group of young people, is that as of last weekend, not one of these Obama kids had actually registered to vote. My son has registered, knows his polling location, and is voting for McCain/Palin.

Keemo on October 10, 2008 at 8:20 AM

What ever you do my friend, don’t mention the name of the school. ACORN WILL DESCEND ON IT TO ENLIGHTEN THE MULTITUDE.