Campaign Diaries

Barack Obama has seized health care as its primary attack for more than a week now, and it certainly helped that the segment of the second debate devoted to that topic was by far his strongest. Obama has a number of ads currently on air devoted to this issue, and its latest spot might very well be the hardest-hitting yet. The campaign has not released it, but Politico discovered that it has been playing in at least two states (Florida and Pennsylvania). “It could all unravel, your health care, under John McCain,” says the ad, going on to warn viewers in direct terms that their coverage could be dropped:

Obama has been denouncing McCain’s plan as a threat to people’s existing coverage and as a tax hike - a remarkable turnaround that seems to be resonating with voters, especially at this time of economic crisis, and undercutting the GOP’s central argument that Obama is looking to increase taxes. And health care is an issue that voters profess to care about, ensuring that the Obama campaign does not have to do more work to justify the relevance of their attacks.

The fact that this spot has not been released also confirms Obama’s tactic of under-the-radar negative ads that has been going on for months, and it is a very different strategy from the GOP’s privileging national attacks that seek to attract attention. Democrats have been hammering McCain for months, and it’s barely broken through to the media’s attention.

It helps, of course, that Obama can now rely on outside groups to help disseminate his economic message. SEIU has a new mailer that is being sent to workers in swing states warning voters that McCain and Bush would leave them “sick and broke.” And UAW has just launched a $3 million campaign in four states (Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Ohio) seeking to channel working-class anxieties against Republican governance:

What is most interesting about the UAW’s ad buy is their decision to invest in Michigan. The McCain campaign and the RNC have now deserted the Wolverine state, but Democratic-leaning groups and the Obama campaign have not. This is not a tactical mistake: Until two weeks ago, Michigan was considered one of the ultimate battlegrounds of this election, and poll numbers don’t show Obama in a stronger position here than in Pennsylvania. Michigan’s 17 electoral votes are worth defending, and a one-sided war boosts Democratic prospects tremendously: Obama would have been favored to win the state even if both camps pulled out, but now one party is mounting a full-blown effort as if the state was highly competitive while the other is nowhere to be found. This will have a major impact on MI-07 and MI-09.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign continues to attack Obama’s character, starting with this ad we talked about a few days ago that accuses Obama of disrespecting troops and putting them in harm’s way. But the campaign continues to push Bill Ayers half-heartedly in an effort (as I explained last night) to get the media to talk about it without any dramatic move that could associate the campaign too closely with a nasty attack.

Their latest move is to release a web ad highlighting Obama’s association with Ayers. The logic: A web ad gives the media (or at least Fox News, which treated this web ad as major news this morning) an excuse - but it is too long to even be played by news shows, so it won’t necessarily look like McCain is throwing the kitchen sink. As I argued last night, this strategy might have worked in August, but if the campaign thinks that Ayers is the way to go, they are in too dire a position to use such subtle and deceptive tactics.

[Update: More about this later, no doubt, but the McCain campaign might be moving on to a more aggressive approach, as McCain himself talked about Ayers today on the stump: "We need to know the full extent of the relationship." However, he only did so after being prompted by a question from the audience.]

But if Obama is saying that voters can’t afford John McCain and McCain is saying that voters can’t trust Barack Obama, well, Elizabeth Dole doesn’t want to have to choose! We can’t “trust, believe or afford” Kay Hagan, proclaims her latest attack ad in bold letters:

I am not sure the ad’s content (Kay Hagan raised taxes, an accusation that the GOP has been hurling at Hagan for months) justifies that dramatic a closer, as the accumulation of verbs make the ad into for an over-the-top attack, and it is rather surprising to see how much Dole tries to up the stakes in those last few seconds. This isn’t to say that attacking a Democrat on taxes isn’t effective, or that hyping your attempt to disqualify your opponent is always a bad idea - but you should probably reserve the latter for more appropriate occasions, if for no other reason than not looking desperate.