I didn’t manage to catch up on my writing till now and I’m surprised that, inspite of a few weeks gap,  nothing has occured during these past few weeks that made me unduly concerned. The McCain campaign does not seem to have any of the guile, agility or the pure decepetive Rovian brilliance. But mark my words, they’ll keep trying to come up with a knock-out punch in these last days and it’s pretty clear that they will stick to their ‘scare’ tactics as it’s too late to come up with a new campaign strategy.

Most of what I wrote in my previous article came true but I think it is partly the McCain campaign’s stupidity in not being very innovative in their attacks and partly Obama’s fortune that the Economic crisis has continued it’s headline-hogging, panic inducing free-fall which made the ‘character’ attacks against Obama seem irrelevant and a distraction at best.  If it was a time when the American people were enjoying the fruits of a booming economy like 2004 then some of the mud thrown by the McCain campaign would have stuck and national security would have been a higher concern.  Nationalism would also have been a bigger factor but with their minds numbed with fear by the economic situation the ‘fear factor’ about Obama that the McCain campaign is trying to generate has no effect.

Here’s my take on McCain’s last ditch efforts which I talked about before but I’ll elaborate in this and coming articles. I stil think it is very important that the Obama campaign not get even a wee bit complacent as last impressions matter as much as the first, especially in an election (remember Kerry again).

1)      Hello again, James Wright. Sorry to keep you waiting so long but we had to wait till the right moment to bring you in.

2)      Hello again, Bin Laden. If you can hear us (we certainly didn’t try very hard to find ya) then do come up with a tape again, like you did in 2004. It’ll guarantee you four more years of safety as we will not bother to attack you in Pakistan as that country is our strong ‘ally’ (any country with a nuclear bomb is, which is why many countries are trying to get one).

3)      Finally, sweet revenge on the economy, let’s drop a bomb on how Obama and the dem congress is responsible for the state of the economy (hey, we are the masters of the deception campaign).

Let us not forget this important fact. The debates will fade from memory a week after they are over and the economy might get pushed back a little bit from the forefront if the stock market stabilizes a bit and if we get better news on the credit markets front. What will take over soon is the slime from the rampaging and boldly open gang warfare type warfare between the campaigns, as I'd mentioned before in this article. The Obama campaign must make a list of all possible attack operations from the Republicans who are oiling up their muck-slinging machines and declaring proudly that they will decimate Obama's image and character. I willl list the topics/area the attacks can cover and in my next post I will come up with my opinion on how they should counter-attack and respond hard to these attacks. My overall master strategy still remains the guiding force but tough responses should be prepared and tactical steps need to be taken swiftly and effectively whenever an operation is launched from the other side.

1) The usual attack on security policies and highlighting Obama's vote against the troops funcding. The Sep 11 ads again and how Obama will be soft on terrorism with scary images of another doomsday attack that can happen in the continental US if Obama is in office. Attempts will be made to link this security issue with the economy and the attacks will highlight that if another attack happens during this economically vulnerable period then that will be the death blow to the economy.

2) James Wright will come up again; Michelle Obama will come up again and photos of Obama in Kenyan dresses + images of Indonesian towns where Obama grew up will be shown. The goal (and the closing lines) will be to convince voters that Obama is not one of us 'Joe Sixpack' Americans but he is pretty much a foreigner (from terrorist lands) and is not patriotic enough to be president of the United States. He will not consider American interests with the same zeal that a real American would.

I will add more soon but please feel free to add your own thoughts on what the possible attacks might be, from the republican side, and how the Obama campaign should respond.

Obama supporters are celebrating the new polls which show him taking a lead nationally and in quite a few battleground states. But this a crucial time and they must make sure that complacency and resulting inaction doesn’t creep in.

John Kerry was leading in some polls (though not by this wide a margin) too around this time in 2004 and they decided that they would play it safe and fight a ‘positive’ campaign, avoid attacking (or even defend attacks strongly) and just ignore the republican attacks completely. Obviously, that didn’t help and the sad part is that those attacks actually had given him a golden opportunity to seal the deal but his campaign were just blind to that opportunity.  

Some republicans are still a bit cocky, remembering 2004, and they strongly believe that they can still turn this election around and decimate Obama with their vaunted attack machine. So, make no mistake about it, the republicans are arming the battle stations right now and will come out with a blistering ‘shock and awe’ attack operation soon. They might make  some small incursions while the debates are still going on, as those will be the focus of the headlines till they last. The "Obama is pals with terrorists" attack is just the beginning of a blistering "nuclear" attack wave.

The economic crisis threw a huge spanner in the works for Rove and the McCain campaign for it made them lose momentum on the attacks and distracted the voters’ attention. Starting with the convention they have been doing what they do best, which is to pummel the opponent by whatever means possible including outright lies, deception and manipulation of information and paint the other person as the most extreme wacko left wing liberal this side of the milky way, who is trying to get elected so that he can down wine and cheese (and arugula) with hollywood stars. 

I think the republicans are right to pursue that strategy and just replay the tapes of 2004 because it is implausibly obvious that the democrats still don’t have an answer to their attacks and all they still (!) manage in response is to either say “Oh, we wont pay attention to those mean republicans as their attacks are beneath our response” or the more battle-ready vocal wing will come up with “let us attack back and let us again (and again and again) remind voters that McCain is out of touch, and that his term will be four more years of the Bush and let’s show some photos of him and Bush together”.  Let me give it to you campaign folks straight if you are still dense enough not to get it – “these ads just don’t cut it anymore”.

I looked at the recent ad “attacking” McCain on the economy and they are a mind-numbing repetition of the same “McCain is out of touch” attack that I talked about above and also discussed in detail when a similar rehash of it came out in early September. Any message loses its value when repeated over and over. You got to take a new tack on the attacks. I would receommend trying a new approach and as I detailed in this article earlier, I would try to brand McCain (and Palin) as a ‘flip-flopper’ who just cannot decide if our economy is in trouble or not and when the truth is finally hammered into him he cannot decide what to do get the economy out of trouble. The ad should end with “Clueless and Indecisive on America’s biggest financial crisis. We cannot take a risk with John McCain.” Or something of that sort. The idea is to paint the image of McCain, on a more deeper character level that just saying he’s “out of touch”, as a person who is unfit to be president both on a character level and also on an experience level.

I’ve detailed the overall master strategy in this article, which advocates pre-emptive strikes and strong counter-attacks when they start their bombardment, but obviously our attacks have to be relevant and fresh and have to connect to the voters. I’ve also advocated a few more high-level tactics in my master strategy, especially to appeal to battleground voters, like “hitting them from further from the right than they are” (you gotta scream louder about patriotism and American exceptionalism) on certain topics like destroying Laden and his band of terrorists and on outsourcing of jobs. Another crucial aspect is that you've got to hit back hard on the topic of attack. Do not just counter it by saying "they are saying that to distract voters from the economy" like you did with the recent "Obama is pals with terrorists" attack. Hit back hard on how they are manipulating the information, how deceptive they are, and defend yourself so strongly that you turn the tables. DO NOT try to avoid or change the topic of attack.