Why Obama's message has weakened

Joe Trippi has a good analysis of why McCain has been able to erase Obama's lead. Rather than continuing with the message of experience vs. change that hadn't won the nomination fight for Hillary Clinton, the McCain campaign went with Sarah Palin and a running against Washington theme.

The brilliance of the McCain strategy and messaging is that it includes a trap for Obama. To push back on the McCain claim of “country first” and “the original mavericks who will shake up Washington” the Obama campaign’s attack of “four more years of George Bush” becomes a problem. In a country that yearns for post-partisan change the Obama campaign risks sounding too partisan and like more of the same.

It would not surprise me if in one of the debates Obama or Biden uses the “You voted with George Bush and supported him 93% of the time” and its John McCain that retorts “that’s the kind of partisan attack the American people are sick of….”.

What worked for Obama is now working for McCain. The important lesson for the Obama campaign is that the Clinton campaign kept looking at its research, kept stressing experience and did not adjust until it was too late. The McCain campaign has not only adjusted to the Obama message, they have changed the terrain.

Now the Obama campaign and its allies need to understand that in arguing that John McCain represents a third term of George Bush and the GOP agenda it is the Obama campaign that risks sounding partisan in a country that yearns for the post-partisanship of “country first” and “shaking things up in Washington”.

I always thought that the Democrats were going to have trouble painting McCain as just another four years of Bush. McCain has too firm a reputation of going against his own party for that charge to really stick. And when you examine their records it's going to be tough for Obama to argue that he is more post-partisan than McCain.The Washington Times provides the evidence of what we all knew - that McCain has worked much more across the aisle than Obama ever has.

With calls for change in Washington dominating the campaign, both Mr. Obama, the Democrats' presidential nominee, and Mr. McCain, his Republican opponent, have claimed the mantle of bipartisanship.

But since 2005, Mr. McCain has led as chief sponsor of 82 bills, on which he had 120 Democratic co-sponsors out of 220 total, for an average of 55 percent. He worked with Democrats on 50 of his bills, and of those, 37 times Democrats outnumber Republicans as co-sponsors.

Mr. Obama, meanwhile, sponsored 120 bills, of which Republicans co-sponsored just 26, and on only five bills did Republicans outnumber Democrats. Mr. Obama gained 522 total Democratic co-sponsors but only 75 Republicans, for an average of 13 percent of his co-sponsors.

And Obama's big claims about bills that he has co-sponsored aren't all that impressive since most of them are ones that were noncontroversial and didn't involve his going against his party.

Mr. Obama said his major break with Democrats came on congressional ethics, when he sponsored a bill to curb meals and gifts from lobbyists.

In a memo to reporters, his campaign points to bills he worked on that gained near-unanimous support from both parties, including a bill more than a third of the Senate signed onto, sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback, Kansas Republican, pushing peace initiatives in Sudan, and a bill sponsored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch, Utah Republican, on charitable contributions that passed by a voice vote in each chamber.

But foremost, his campaign cites his work teaming up in 2006 with Sen. Richard G. Lugar, Indiana Republican, on the Cooperative Proliferation Detection Act, a noncontroversial measure to secure weapons of mass destruction, and with Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to force the administration to create a searchable database to track federal spending grants.

....Mr. Coburn, in an interview, said Mr. Obama is a good senator to work with, but said there's no comparison to Mr. McCain's long record.

"Barack is a great guy, a nice guy, he's a good friend of mine. He has passed two pieces of legislation since he's been in the Senate - had his name on two," Mr. Coburn said. He praised Mr. Obama's staff for the work they did on the spending grants bill, but he said Mr. Obama hasn't gone head-to-head against his leadership when it mattered: "Where have you seen him challenge the status quo?"

McCain has a whole host of bills that he can point to where he has gone against his party and worked on controversial subjects with the other party. If the American people are looking for a president who can work with the other party to get things done, John McCain is the guy. That means that, if he were elected, he'll drive conservatives crazy. Our only consolation will be that things will still be a little less to the left than they would have been under a President Obama working with a Democratic Congress.

However, as an electoral message, McCain has earned his title of Maverick and that is why Obama is having trouble conducting the campaign as if he's running against George W. Bush.

As the Obama campaign declares that they have started a new page in their campaign against John McCain by strengthening their attacks on him and their pushback against McCain accusations, they're ignoring all the attacks that they have already been launching against him. Michael Goodwin advises them that this is not going to work.

With top Dems fearing Barack Obama is in a hole, the Obama campaign has made a weird decision. It's going to dig that hole deeper, harder and faster.

No more Mr. Nice Guy, Obama vows. He's going to really start hitting John McCain now. He's going to make voters understand that McCain equals four more years of George Bush.

It's a weird decision because Obama has been doing exactly that for four months. The problem is not that Obama hasn't hit McCain hard enough or linked him to Bush often enough. The problem is that he hasn't done anything else.

How about a new idea? How about putting some meat on the bony promise of "change"?

And what happened to that post-partisan uniter who took the country by storm during the early primaries by offering an optimistic vision for America? Why not bring him back?

Apparently that Obama has left the building. He's been replaced with a party man who sees the other side as evil and beneath contempt.

....The decision to stick with a mostly-nasty approach should finally end the myth that the Obama campaign is a flawless machine. It had an extraordinarily appealing candidate, a message of change to an unhappy nation and made brilliant tactical decisions that defeated the Clintons.

But that was last season. Since then, it has frittered away four months and, even before Palin rocked the race, Obama was coasting as the presumptive President. He secured his base in Europe, but neglected West Virginia, where Clinton beat him by 40 points. Poll-wise, he remains where he was when Clinton quit in June.

Now faced with an energized and disciplined opponent, Team Obama is doubling-down on an approach that failed to seal the deal despite a beatable McCain, a favorable environment and a fawning media.

Though, to be fair to Obama, it is hard for him to keep up that whole post-partisan pose when his record doesn't support his pretenses and when his entire base is crying out to him to jump ugly with McCain.