Obama campaign to roll out 13 minute Keating 5 documentary at noon tommorow.

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My thread covered this already, but oh well

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Us liberals have had to put up with the extreme right in power for 8 years, so you guys should be able to survive some centrists in power.

Obama's no centrist.

I think he means in European or even global terms, where the center-left of the Democratic party fits right about in the average country's centrist party.  Anti-gay marriage, selectively pro-war, and so on.  Since Obama had to compete in a longer primary than McCain, I would even go as far as to say that he has been forced substantially farther left-of-center, for example, his position on free-trade got destroyed by having to compete in the Ohio primary.

Of course, it's a complete miss-use of the term, but that's how partisans spin things  He's not the only one.  

Obama's certainly not a centrist in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, or Florida.  Harold Ford, maybe, but not Obama.  In American political terms, I think John McCain is almost the definition of a centrist, outside of his Cold-War views of foreign policy. So just stating "centrist" is rather misleading.

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I'm seeing a tad bit of over confidence here by the McCain backers. Might be wise not to assume Obama can't play dirty or rough just because most democrats can't or won't.

From what I can tell this is a response to Palin's attempt to associate Obama with terrorists (Ayers) the other day. The McCain's campaign attack of 'Obama = terrorist buddy!' is being countered directly by new adds and message that McCain is attempting to distract from the economy. Then what more, they put forth this documentary to demonstrate why McCain might be trying to distract from the economy.

Overall, I think the move is keyed into two modes. The first is the logic I just described. The latter is in fact to try to goad McCain into continuing the negative attacks. The less McCain gets to talk about McCain, and the more Obama gets to talk about McCain, the more time Obama has to coast to election day. If on the other hand McCain becomes capable of talking about why people should vote for him, Obama's job becomes more difficult again (aka, a return to mid summer when he had a slow decline in the polls).

And as for the expected critique of my analysis here, that if Obama is spending so much time talking McCain that he won't have time to talk about why people should vote for him, who has pulled out of Michigan. Obama's advantage at this point is his ability to raise funds continually through election day. More money = the ability to talk about any and all subjects simultaneously via commercials. He bypasses the media and pundits and gives both the anti-McCain message and the pro-Obama message simultaneously.

As for folks wondering were the heck I came from just popping in like this, I'm a long time lurker whom finally opted into getting an account.

Welcome!  It's 5 am in New Hampshire

I disagree with you though that Obama wants this race to descend into an Obama-McCain personality match.  Clearly if partisanship becomes eroded and the (D) and (R) become removed from the candidates' names, McCain has the advantage.

Obama is simply trying to keep McCain's attacks a wash.  McCain wants to talk about taxes?  Obama will say McCain wants the biggest middle-class tax-hike in history (his new ad).  McCain wants to talk about associates?  Obama will say McCain wanted to deregulate and is corrupt himself.  Thus, every time the media reports on Obama's attacks, they will mention the counter-response with roughly equal time, meaning a narrative is difficult to develop.  Even ignoring the media, anyone that sees both attack ads but ignores the media (apolitical, ignorant swing voters) won't know how to differentiate between the two candidates when it comes to these issues (raising taxes, associates), meaning these issues cease to be clear winners for McCain.

But they are still better ground for McCain than the economy, so it's still his best strategy, although he shouldn't have pre-announced it with a Palin comment in Omaha and Tucker Bounds announcing the McCain campaign would "turn the page on the economy" to attack Obama's character on a Saturday - giving Obama two days to come up with the counter-attack before the attack itself airs on the start of the news cycle on Monday.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g72BuIvMbWY&eurl

There's the new 13-minute video.  Remember that the Keating scandal was a banking/financial scandal of sorts.

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Clearly this is something they had ready to counter ayers. So if the McCain campaign goes with the Wright thing, what does the Obama campaign have ready for that?

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/The_middle_name.html

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A glance at Google Trends finds "keating economics" the second-most-popular search term right now. Numbers 8, 11, 12, and 21 are terms like "keating five" and "charles keating."

Bill Ayers shows up at 36, just after "mccain keating."
http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

From BSmith

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Something tells me the "I made mistakes" message won't really resonate with voters over the largest financial/corruption investigation in modern political history the same way that message might resonate over past drug-use.

On the other hand, the Ayers story is easier to articulate.  Obama was friends with an admitted domestic terrorist. 

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David Plouffe just sent me a viral mail message!

Colin --

John McCain wants you to forget about his role in our country's last major financial
crisis and costly bailout: the savings and loan crisis of the late '80s and early
'90s.

But voters deserve to know that the failed philosophy and culture of corruption that
created the savings and loan crisis then are alive in the current crisis -- and in
John McCain's plans for our economic future.

We just released a short documentary about John McCain's role in that financial
crisis -- watch it now and share it with your friends:

http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo

Voters should know the facts about John McCain's poor judgment -- judgment that has
twice placed him on the wrong side of history.

Please forward this email to everyone you know.

Thanks,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

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Obama's Keating video has half a million views so far.