Campaign Diaries

In my previous post, I explained that the Clinton-Obama relationship will be the most crucial convention storyline. As if a press eager to find signs of division was not enough, Obama will also have to deal with a Republican Party eager to increase the rift between Clinton supporters and the Democratic nominee. The GOP is perfectly aware that it will make Obama’s next two months of polling miserable if it can capture Clinton supporters and the party intends to make a push for it throughout this week.

In the past 48 hours, the McCain campaign and the RNC unveiled 3 ads using Hillary Clinton, leaving little doubt that Republicans see great potential in the 18 million votes Clinton received. First, the campaign was ready with an ad blaming Obama for dissing Clinton as soon as he announced his vice-presidential pick. This ad, released on Saturday, revisits some of the comments Clinton made about Obama during the primaries.

And here is another ad that the campaign has released in the Denver market alone - a clear signal that they want to inject as much reporting of Clinton-Obama discord in the convention coverage:

And the RNC is following that up with an independent expenditure that calls Obama “the most inexperienced candidate of our times” - framing this as Clinton’s argument against her primary opponent. The ad uses footage of Clinton delivering what was one of her harshest lines (”Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign. I will bring a lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will bring a speech he gave in 2002″). “Was she right?” asks the ad?

We don’t know the size of McCain’s ad buys, but Jonathan Martin has some information about the RNC’s independent expenditure: The buy is somewhere between $2 and $2.5 million and will throughout this week in Ohio, Michigan, Western Pennsylvania (all Clinton states and regions) as well as Wisconsin and Colorado. Clinton isn’t particularly strong in that last state, but that buy is designed to counter-balance the coverage of Democratic unity the convention could receive in the local press.

This is the RNC’s second ad. The first, released in June, was devoted to the energy and it ran in only 4 states - MI, PA, OH and WI. Note that it the same as this new RNC expenditure. Wisconsin’s place in the top of RNC targets is somewhat less expected than Michigan’s and Pennsylvania’s, and it suggests that Republicans have absolutely not given up on the state, despite Obama holding a comfortable edge in the latest polling.

Update with Clinton’s response: “I’m Hillary Clinton and I do not approve that message,” she said to the New York delegation, adding “Now I ask each and every one of you to work as hard for Obama as you worked for me.” The Obama campaign needs to make sure that message is not muddied over the next few days, that she delivers it forcefully and that every Hillary supporter hears it. Meanwhile, Clinton aide Howard Wolfson writes a piece in the New Republic acknowledging the rift between his former boss and Obama and giving advice as to how the two camps should fix that. (He confirms that one of the big sticking points for Bill is that Obama has not respected his 90s record.)