The McCain Strategy: Divide and Conquer

Many on our side of the blogosphere, this Clintonista included, have expressed some concerns as the polls have tightened over the last few weeks. In an analysis of polling data released on Friday, Gallup argued that the most important factor in the tight polling is weak support for Obama among Democrats.

During this election cycle, in part because of the excitement over the historic Democratic primary and in part because of President Bush's unpopularity, more voters are identifying themselves as Democrats than Republicans, giving Democrats a 7 point advantage nationwide.


If independents are asked toward which party they lean, the lead expands to nine points.


Why isn't the lead in party identification translating into a larger lead in the polls? Because the Democratic party is divided. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released last week gave Senator Obama a statistically non-significant 3 point lead, down from six points a month earlier. The reason, according to the pollster, is the Clinton Democrats.

Yet perhaps the biggest factor keeping the presidential race close has been Obama’s inability to close the deal with some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters. According to the poll, 52 percent of them say they will vote for Obama, but 21 percent are backing McCain, with an additional 27 percent who are undecided or want to vote for someone else.

What’s more, those who backed Clinton in the primaries — but aren’t supporting Obama right now — tend to view McCain in a better light than Obama and have more confidence in McCain’s ability to be commander-in-chief.

Senator McCain, who cannot run a campaign based on his ideas of continuing the policies of George Bush, is trying to exploit the lingering wounds of a tough primary battle by running ads like this, release yesterday:



In this election, the Democrats have the power to decide who wins. The only way that McCain wins this race is if we allow his strategy of divide and conquer to succeed.

What can we do? The most important factor is that we stop fighting the primary wars. The primaries ended more than a month ago. Barack is over it. Hillary is over it. And we need to get over it, too. When a troll comes around trying to ignite a fight over snipergate or bittergate or Hillary said this or Barack said this, ignore it. Don't get sucked in. You may have very good reasons for hating Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama but expressing them now only advances what has become John McCain's only strategy for winning the White House: Divide the Democratic Party.

The power is your hands. Think about it.

Obama Hits Back

Three attack ads, all running locally and somewhat below the radar, consistent with a story in yesterday's New York Times.

Senator Barack Obama has started a sustained and hard-hitting advertising campaign against Senator John McCain in states that will be vital this fall, painting Mr. McCain in a series of commercials as disconnected from the economic struggles of the middle class.

Mr. Obama has begun the drive with little fanfare, often eschewing the modern campaign technique of unveiling new spots for the news media before they run in an effort to win added (free) attention. Mr. Obama, whose candidacy has been built in part on a promise to transcend traditional politics, is running the negative commercials on local stations even as he runs generally positive spots nationally, during prime-time coverage of the Olympics.

The negative spots reflect the sharper tone Mr. Obama has struck in recent days on the stump as he heads into his party’s nominating convention in Denver next week, and seem to address the anxiety among some Democrats that Mr. Obama has not answered a volley of attacks by Mr. McCain with enough force.

(via Ben Smith)

This ad is running in Nevada only, and hits McCain on nuclear waste.



This ad is running in the midwest and hits McCain on the economy.



This ad is running in Atlanta only, which shows that the Obama campaign hasn't written off Georgia just yet!

Democrats Hit Back!

Democrats have hit back with a response to the McCain campaign's web ad which featured clips of Democrats praising John McCain.