Campaign Diaries

Last spring, John McCain told his campaign that the campaign would not invoke Jeremiah Wright and he has stuck to that promise ever since, frustrating many Republicans who saw Wright as their single best weapon to disqualify the Illinois Senator.

That using Wright would have indeed hurt Obama was never a sure thing, of course. The Democrat’s general election numbers noticeably dropped in March when the controversy first erupted, but he effectively put the issue behind him with his speech on race. But many Republicans were hoping that some outside group would take it upon itself to bring up Wright, allowing the GOP to hit Obama on the issue without McCain’s taking hit for breaking his promise.

Let’s be honest: We all thought this was bound to happen. The only question in most people’s minds were who and when.

Yet, the cavalry did not come, and no well-funded independent group emerged to do either campaign’s dirty work. Until the past week, that is, as two different Wright-related ads have gone up on air in the final stretch before the election. The first came courtesy the National Republican Trust PAC, and it labels Obama “too radical, too risky:”

It was not clear at first whether this group was intending to go up with a real ad buy or whether it was merely looking for free publicity, but news that the group has spent $6,5 million leaves no doubt that there was some serious money put behind this ad, ensuring that voters in Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania are exposed to it in the campaign’s final week.

A few days ago, a second ad popped up - this one released by the Pennsylvania Republican Party, a fascinating development as it suggests that the GOP’s official structure does not think of itself as bound by McCain’s rules and is willing to take the risk of a more direct connection being drawn to the Arizona Senator:

It appears that this ad is not airing widely, as a Republican official admits that the primary goal was to get free publicity. But the PA GOP’s attempts to make news at least confirms what we have been observing for the past 10 days: Most of the action is concentrated on Pennsylvania, a state McCain chose as his last stand. In fact, TPM reports that the Republican Jewish Coalition is sending a Wright-mailer to Pennsylvania households, accusing Obama of associating with “friends and advisors” that hold “anti-Israel views.”

The mailer serves as a reminder of a story that we heard a lot about throughout the spring and summer but much less so over the past two months: Obama’s problem with Jewish Americans. As the general election unfolded, this constituency appears to have reconnected with its Democratic roots, particularly after McCain announced Sarah Palin’s pick (witness Ed Koch’s conversion into a committed Obama supporter).

For the Wright card to have been effective, Republican forces should have brought it weeks ago - not at the last minute. After all, this is not a new topic, so the media was not about to provide any Wright attacks as much free publicity as it did in March or as it did in 2004 with the Swift Boat ads. The Wright card could certainly have backfired against Republicans - especially at this time of economic crisis - but for it to have any chance to work it had to be applied with enough persistence to truly put Obama on the defensive and undermine his favorability ratings. (Is there any better proof that the Obama campaign is not worried about these ads than the fact that they are not bothering offering any response?)

Instead, most recent polls now suggest that Obama is closing the campaign with a far higher favorability rating than when the general election began, which suggests that the McCain campaign’s efforts to connect Obama to terrorists, to Ayers or to sex education for kindergarteners failed to deteriorate Obama’s public image. This might be the single most important reason Obama is favored going into tomorrow’s vote.