Obama supporters are confident but cautious, as they should be. The Obama campaign deserves kudos, for every step along the way, but also for not letting any sort of complacency or over-confidence creep in. This is indeed a very crucial time and the McCain campaign all along, as I wrote in my earlier article, seemed to holding back their knock-out punch till the end as that will leave too little time to respond effectively.

A little bit of history is important here. John Kerry was also ahead in the polls, though not by such big margins as Obama, which actually was incredulous considering his disastrous lack of response to the swift-boat campaign. One event that happened at the end, that many believe might have made a small but crucial last-minute difference, was the release of the Bin Laden tape a day before the election. The tape ridiculed Bush for his response to the 9/11 attacks and by indirect inference the American people assumed that the terrorists must have released the tape to help Kerry.

The possible impact to both campaigns was clear even to a layman, but the mind-numbingly moronic Kerry Campaign again decided to play dead and not give any response hoping that the American people wont read too much into the tape (as they did with the swift-boat campaign). Now, you can have a campaign message built around ‘hope’ but your campaign strategy shouldn’t consist of just ‘hope’. You got to take action and get a clear message out to people. The Obama campaign has been outstanding in that respect anf I hope they continue to do so if the equivalent of the Bin Laden tape comes up.

Like I wrote in the article about John Kerry’s missed slam dunk opportunity, the tape was another golden opportunity in disguise. It’s not often that you get to display bluster, which is very important to win over the key swing voters. All Kerry had to say in response to the tape was something like

“We got the news that a coward hiding in a rat-hole has sent a missive, with the hysterically misguided notion that the American people would actually pay attention to the horse waste that he spews and would let that impact the election in any way. I would like to make one thing clear to the deranged barbarian who made the biggest mistake of his life by attacking us on 9/11 “No matter what the outcome of the election will be, we will not rest till we drag you out of your cave and make you pay for every drop of American blood that you spilled. If I were you I would not waste time making any more of these tapes filled with hate speech and would try to run and hide though even that will prove futile for we will hunt you down like the skunk that you are. “ ….

That's all Kerry needed to win the election in 2004.

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.

The Democrats should not be afraid of hitting back against Sarah Palin. Inspite of the dissapointing experience with the Clinton die-hards I believe women will see through the Republican party's deception and their opportunistic conversion as the party for women. But they have to display some smarts in hitting back which they have rarely shown in the recent past. Here are a few tips for that ad.

1) Make it a joint attack on both Sarah and McCain as that will be less easy to counter as sexist and take both names in the same breath. Use women as far as possible to in these ads to talk about Palin. Yup, believe me, the Republicans will try to hit  back hard on the attack and paint it as sexist and disrespectful for women and unfortunately some women in the category of the Clinton die-hards will fall for it. But the damage can be minimized and reversed with an effective counter counter-attack which shows their deception and manipulation by displaying the attack as a sexist one. The campaign can still come out positive for the dems as if done right it will diminish the GOP pair's image in more eyes that the ad/GOP counter-attack will do the reverse. It will also cut their wings and stop the rocketing rise in their popularity due to the Palin effect.

2) Brand both of them as flip floppers and clueless on the economy (boy, that will be sweet revenge for 2004). As my friend Maureen Dowd mentioned in her article there are a few examples to showcase that. Examples - "Sarah Palin was for the bridge to nowwhere before she was against. She was for earmarks before she was against. For McCain, on Monday he says that the Economy is good and on Wednesay he says it is in a crisis, on Monday he opposes AIG bailout and on Wednesday he supports it. In fact it makes us think that McCain and Palin still don't understand what's wrong with the economy and how to fix it. They seem to be deperately clutching at straws and trying to figure out what to say and do next. In contrast, Senator Obama has been prescient about the economic problems and has long said that more effective regulation is need to fix this problem. The Bush administration is now following Senator's Obama's advise."

3) Brand both of them as unscrupulous manipulators who are running a campaing a deception and will say and do anything to get elected. Sarah Palin said on the 7th anniversary of 9/11 that "the troops are there to defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced from the death of thousands of Americans" trying to play the same innuendo tricks of the Bush administration to link Iraq and 9/11 again. After all these years of unnecessary destruction in Iraq and home she is still trying to continue the misinformation campaign of the Bush adminsitration and she is speaking equally callously about wars with Iran and Russia. McCain still hasn't ever admitted that the Iraq war was based on manipulated intelligence and horrible judgement, instead he continues to manipulate the reason the for going to Iraq (hello, for your kind info we did not find any weapons) while the criminals who destrroyed on 9/11 still run loose.

The main idea is to diminish the image of the two before the advent of Palin creates a permanent sheen for their ticket. The Republicans are deftly doing that and are making Obama look weak, clueless and inconsistent. The other main point is that the Obama campaign should never treat the Iraq war as a non-issue at this stage and should continue aggressive talks on democrats being able to secure the nation better, the the right judgements and go after the real terrorists who are still loose. They got to raise the hubris levels on national security and attack the McCain camp as not being serious about terminating the terrorists who dare to hit the USofA. Tell the voters that I (Obama) will make it the highest priority to hunt down the animals who will be made to realize the consequences of hitting America (in short, say words that the battleground voters love to hear and snatch the hubris card from the republicans).

Obama finally popped his head out of the sand a week ago and said that he will adopt a 'sharper tone' but then they hit back with this stale old rehash of 'McCain will be third term of Bush' campaign. I hope the dems realize that hitting back hard and counter-attacking/defending the republican attacks is not an option and will make the difference this time too. As I mentioned before it does not help if they counter-attack on a unrelated topic. It is extremeley important to hit back on each one of their attacks and shred the credibility of their attacks, if they want to prevent some of the mud from sticking on to Obama's image each time.

Going through the article in this link - http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/us/politics/12obama.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=sharper%20tone&st=cse&oref=slogin - a couple of points come to my mind.

1) Plouffe thinks that starting to attack too early is not a good approach. He thinks it is best to start attacking a bit later in the game going into the debates. That strategy is sounding a little like Rudy's startegy to me, where he though he can start later in the game and start from Florida. Plouffe has done a great job in the primaries but he didn't have to deal with such a mean unscupulous attack machine as the republicans have. What he doesn't realize is that once Obama's image has been distorted by these attacks and a negative perception is created in the voters' mind it will be too late if the Obama tries to attack back at that stage. That appears like a loser hitting back.

2) The Obama campaign is too struck with the 'big picture' (like many ultra-cerebral democratic campaigns) of the campaign strategy and and things like forming a coherent message or attack campaign highlighting the top-level aspects of the campaign like 'Change' and 'Economy'. This leads it to ignore the very important tactical moves like hitting back hard at unjustified and untrue attacks from republicans which cause immense damage to Senator Obama's image.

3) The Obama campaign seems to think that it should bother responding to some attacks from the McCain campaign if they think it hasn't received widespread coverage in the interior/local papers in the competitive states. what it doesn't realize is that even if a handful of voters (well, a few thousand maybe) buy into every attack in the key states then it might prove to be pretty costly and also the beating will wear the sheen off the candidate and the sum of the attacks may add up to be a lot more than the individual parts.

The solution for all the three weaknesses pointed above is the same. Every small attack should be countered with the same gigantic force ,especially if it is one of the fabricated and falsified attack as that makes it easier to hit back on the other campaign's character. The reverse attack should come immediately after the commencement of the republican attack and should be very forceful. It should highlight the intentional deceptions/manipulations in the attack (there always is some from the republican side so that should be easy) and should be made out to reflect negatively on the character of the candidates behind the attacks. A strong forceful counter-attack ensures that the allegations don't stick to the candidate for long and wont create a permamnt stain on the candidate's image.

Read the other posts in the blog to get specific details on the counter-attacks.

Along the lines of my previous posts, the Obama campaign probably has the easiest of tasks ever, because the Republican campaign is exposing itself more and more clearly as a complete deception machine with absolutely rock-bottom standards and no ethics. All the Obama campaign needs to do is start pulling a thread from their shirt and let it roll. It makes it all the more important that the Obama campaign not waste any time in hitting back because a good portion of the American population actually buys all the muck that the McCain campaign dishes out (as they did with the Bush campaign in 2004).

Another missed opportunity to highlight the above fact is not exposing the constant effort by the republican campaign to appeal to the 'woman vote' by conjuring up imaginary attacks on the poor VP and using every low trick possible to appeal to the sentiments. See this related article in the New York Times. 

Now, we have to credit the american woman voter with some sense (even the Hillary Die-Hards who frankly should be sued by the Obama campaign for accusing him of being sexist, without any basis whatsoever) and that they will see through the McCain deceptions if they are forecefully made aware of it. The Obama campaign should run an ad campaign which tells the women

1) That it has always been the democratic party that's been the true friend of women and even in this election are fighting for equal pay and expanded health insurance for women.

2) Both Obama and Biden both have a record of caring deeply for women's issues, and have passed laws like the equal pay legislation that Obama co-sponsored and the dometic violence act that Biden authored. They are fighting for expanded health insurance for women and to expand children's coverage benefits.

3) McCain/Palin have never cared for women's issues and they are using deception and blatant lies to portray Obama/Biden as anti-women. They are twisting even innocent comments by Obama on McCain's economic policies as 'sexist' comments. They are misrepresenting words used by Obama and Biden in different contexts as words used against Palin. They are evem misrepresenting Obama's vote to prevent our children from the horrors of sexual abuse as 'Obama voted to teach children sex before they read'

I'm sure the campaign folks can fill in the rest. These ads have to be shown reapeatedly immediately after any such move by the McCain cmapaign, AND in all startegic places where we have 'impressionable' minds that have a history of falling for republican deceptions (read battleground states).

I can't believe that the Obama campaign's comeback after Palin's Peak and some nasty attacks by Republicans consisted of the same recycled stale news that McCain is out of touch and is a Bush redux. Common guys, if you can't do better than that then admit it and resign and let somebody else do a capable job for the first time in a democratic campaign after JFK (and I certainly don't mean Kerry). I'll give you a quick rundown of what you should be doing.

Whenever the McCain campaign comes out with an attack ad (or verbal attack) HIT BACK with a HUGE RESPONSE which should just floor them. For example, I've outlined in my previous post how you should have responded to the 'Lipstick Ad' (Post link - http://www.hitbackharder.com/blogengine.net/post/2008/09/10/Why-isnt-the-Obama-campaign-hitting-back-harder-on-the-Lipstick-on-a-pig-comment.aspx). The response to the 'Sex Education' attack should have been equally forceful with the idea that the tables should be turned on their intention to use the attack to create a negative image of Obama as a person, make him lose his credibility and attack his very character to show him as person who is no way eligible to be president. These attacks are god's gifts to to the democrats and provide an effortless way to undermine the credibility of McCain and show their campaign (and their candidate by association) as scheming, immoral and knowingly manipulating the American voter's minds to get elected.

As I wrote in the lipstick post the monstrous response to every attack should include words like 'The McCain campaign has knowingly twisted Senator's Obama's words (and/or votes) and has adopted a lowly road to this campaign of trying blatantly cheap and dirty tricks to get elected.' The same approach can be used for the Sex education attack.  It is completely obvious from the law that Senator Obama voted for that this law can by no means be called sex education and is a very well-intentioned measure to prevent our children from getting abused and make our children aware of the predators that are around'. There is no room for doubt for any person who has read this law, so this clearly shows that once more the McCain campaign has adopted the disgusting tactic of spreading blantant lies about Senator Obama to malign him and create a nagative image of him amongst the voters. They have compromised their principles so far thay they don't even think twice about knocking down laws that protect our children fr0om the horrors of abuse.' ... I'm sure you get the idea and can take it up from here.

It is extremely critical that the response is given back immediately after an attack and should be so huge that it should flood every communications medium and should not only drown their attack but should show them in extremely poor light for adopting such underhanded and lowly campaign tactics. Any delay in responding or more importantly (which is what is happening) NOT RESPONDING seriously endangers the image of the candidate under attack (Senator Obama) which is very difficult to reverse once it sticks (like it happenned with John Kerry .. .very difficult to shake off the image of a waffling weak french poodle). Also, I'm surprised that the All American campaign teams cannot be insightful enough to figure out how an ordinary american average joe from the mainlands (the 'battlegrounds' which the Obama campaign is supposed to be focusing on) thinks. They respect a guy who stands up for himself and defends himself from unjustified attacks and would likely think of a guy to who keeps quiet under attacks as weak (or guilty as charged). That is one image you cannot afford to have for your candidate especially in a time of war when national security is always in the background of voters' minds. I haven;t spent all my time in America but it's amazing that I can feel the pulse of a regular American much more easily that the Obama campaign folks. There's very little time for you guys to change tack and I implore not to reject any advice outright and come up with a forceful campaign which gives due importance to the importance of image building in a campaign.

 More to follow .. there's so much so add on the winning campaign strategy. 

The chorus is growing and I hope Obama is listening. Schumer said it on Aug 7, 2008 (quoted in politico.com - http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0808/Schumer_Hit_back_harder.html) when the McCain campaign came out with the 'Paris and Britney Ad'. This was the Obama campaigns response - "Obama's campaign responded to McCain's barrage by accusing him in television ads and press releases of taking the "low road," while casting Obama as above such attacks on his opponent's character." Oh my bama, how many times will we do a Kerry-redux? Kerry took the high road while they were gleefully chucking muck at him and he kept bowing and all but saying 'I'm too hoity toity to respond to such un-gentlemanly behaviour'. What was going through the key voter's mind though was "how can any veteran of honor take such allegations against his service without strongly hitting back and defending his sefless and heroic contributions to the nation. What is wrong with the man?" The idea here is that a candidate should act and react like any normal person should.

First of all, we are fighting an election in USA where straight talk is still revered and a man who can hold his ground and fight for himself is respected. Secondly this is (and was in Kerry's time) a time of war. People definitely don't want to see any shades of wimpiness in their candidate and a man who can't defend himself against baseless attacks certainly is not fit to defend the country. There is only one way to win this election and that is HIT BACK HARDER than you get.

Tomorrow I will expand further on how the Obama campaign can hit back harder.