lipstick mojo

The McCain campaign is playing a risky game. By stoking up fake outrage every day, and just makin' stuff up, they hope to throw up enough dust so as to obscure any of the Obama's campaign's core messages about McCain/Bush and the economy and all the rest of it. If they can they'll keep this semi-chaos going all the way to election day.

But risks sometimes rebound. The lipstick-on-pig nonsense might have unintended consequences. First, it's so patently ridiculous that a lot of Americans, including Republicans and swing voters, will surely just say what the heck are they going on about? I mean, it just doesn't chime with common sense, or fit into a strong pre-existing narrative about Obama. If people don't buy this, then they may be less willing to buy other stuff from McCain.

Second, it might have a galvanising effect on the Obama campaign. Certainly, they'll be raising money off the back off this. But even more importantly, looking at Obama's response, I get the sense he's pretty fired up about this. Not in a negative, angry way, but in a way that suggests he just remembered why he's in this race: to change politics.

Remember the gas tax holiday? During the primaries Hillary Clinton took it up as policy to rally her working class base, despite the fact that every economist and just about anyone sensible said it would be counter-productive. Obama seized on it, and held it up as a prime example of the cynical politics he was running against. It revved up his performances on the stump; he began to enjoy himself again, after a few weeks where he'd looked a bit lost and weary.

Obama has looked a bit underpowered since last week. I wonder if he just got the shot of adrenalin he seems to need now and again...

Comments

[Milly Chen]

Good, this, as per. I was at the McCain-Palin rally this morning. I quite enjoyed the people telling McCain to get off the stage so they could have more Sarah (everyone was dippy about her). I even more enjoyed the way all the involveds said that they were mavericks (Sarah said 'John says I'm a maverick'; John said, 'people call us mavericks'; the introducer said, 'it has been said that this is a team of mavericks' etc.) in a grim, I'm-mad-me kind of a way. Stay on target.