The High Road. The Surest Way to Defeat

Lets discuss how Obama has run his campaign since clinching the nomination. In my opinion, he has been running safe. Treading very lightly not wanting to make any waves, any real news. I believe this approach has allowed McCain to push the debate and Obama has been playing defensive all summer. It was last week when Obama finially decided to run his first negative ad against McCain. With the exception of Obama's trip abroad in late July, he's been M.I.A.

You can not coast to the presidency. Michael Dukockus tried that and lost a humiliating defeat. Since winning 14 straight primaries in February, Obama has constantly been playing defense. He played defense against Hillary for the last 4 months of the primary contest and got his ass kicked, now he's been playing defense against McCain for the last 2 months of the general.

While playing defense Obama has lost his entire lead, the race is tied, and supporters are left making excuses like "People are not paying attention yet" or "It's only August." This is the same stuff we said making excuses for Gore and Kerry.

The republicans attacked them every day with smear books, false ads, lies, distortions, anything to bring their opponent down, and it worked. This year the smear tactics are flying every day, the McCain camp are playing false ads on TV, the Muslim smear is constantly being thrown around, now drug use and Obama's a "Marxist" are in vogue. The same campaign style as the last two elections and Obama plays the same type of campaign as Gore and Kerry did, spending all your time defending attacks and smears, instead of smearing right back.

I'm not a big fan of Hillary Clinton, but at least the Clinton's would be in there throwing this crap back at the republicans twice as hard. For every false accusations against them, they'd level 3 against McCain. Now I know this is dirty and beneath the pretty little democrats, but I am sick of watching democrats play nice and hope the American people won't "Buy it" this time while they Democrats continue to lose.

The race is tied, but Obama is losing. Instead of increasing his 5 point lead he had after securing the nomination, its completely disappeared. We can sit hear and make excuses why, and how its still early, and Obama still has the upper hand, and thats all true, but why didn't he go on offense and have a 10 point lead right now instead of losing it all. Aren't we Democrats sick and tired of watching our candidates getting smeared to death and losing while we keep our high moral standards, run our fair campaigns, and play above board.

Obama would be a far better president than Hillary, however Hillary and the Clinton's would win. The Clinton's took the primary for granted and incompetence got them beat. Obama organized caucus states and beat her strategically. A ground game can only do so much in a general. The Clinton campaign was built for a general election against the republicans, not a democratic primary with their hands tied behind their back and the mere thought of going negative would offend democratic sensibilities.

Just tonight I heard analysts pondering why the race is so tight after the "Good" 2 months Obama has had. They've been terrible two months. Obama fights his campaign on the ground, McCain fights it in the media through spin, controversial ads, and over the top campaign statements that get the media talking about what McCain wants them talking about.

McCain issued a 200 word statement accusing Obama of using the race card and the media was talking about it for a week. Thats about $500,000,000 worth of negative advertising against Obama for free. All the Paris talk and celebrity talk is an interesting way of getting the media covering what McCain wants them to cover, and Obama's campaign seems to be oblivious to whats going on.

I know democrats want to have elections based on policy, but the republicans know they can't win those elections, so they turn to the side show, and the media loves it, the republicans know they love it, and the republicans win. Obama HAS to go negative against McCain, not his policies, but him, his character, his money, his 9 homes, the family jet, his lack of understanding how to turn on a computer, his lack of economic understanding, the Phil graham mental recession stuff, all that personal material has to be used. If voters voted on Policy, Kerry and Gore would be President. Instead we got Bush, who wasn't as smart or capable, but had better personal qualities after the republicans smeared his opponents to death, all the while the democrats talked about the strength of their policies.

If Obama stays on the high road, he will lose, and we'll get Hillary as President 4 years from now because the Clinton's could care less about above board campaigns, they want to win . You know what, as much as I deplore that kind of campaigning, I'm at the point I just want to win too.