Actually, I didn't find that ad all that much of an "attack."

If the debate is about whether John McCain and Sarah Palin are "mavericks" or not, then nobody's talking about issues.

The ad doesn't mention issues at all. It doesn't even say why McCain having a staff made up of lobbyists is bad. It doesn't say why voting with Bush 90% of the time was bad. They're just isolated talking points, thrust out there with the assumption that people who -- and presumably people who haven't made up their minds yet -- are going to recognize them. So no, I don't think it does a very good job of getting Obama's point across.

Every time Sarah Palin tosses out the words "community organizer," "small town" or "family" when she is in Oregon, we should all make a contribution to Sara Gelser -- a great state rep with all of the kids, but no crazy right wing policies!

Well, I meant more about the calling McCain a liar part. While we throw that word around quite a bit on the blogs, it's still pretty rare in official campaign communications.

And I don't think regular people - even undecided voters - need to have it explained to them why having lobbyists as staff, or supporting Bush 90%, is a bad thing.

If they're among the 18% that still support Bush, then we're not getting their vote anyway.

Remember, these ads are living in a context. Voters are not tabula rasa environments.

There are a lot of us pushing for same day voter registration. We weren't lucky enough to get it through the 2007 legislature, so we're trying again for 2009.

Husky From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Husky is a general term for several breeds of dogs used as sled dogs. Because of their strength and stamina, the name "Husky" is popular for products and for sports mascots. Huskies were originally used as sled dogs in northern regions but are now also kept as pets.

Breeds of sled dog

See also: Spitz Alaskan Husky Alaskan Malamute Canadian Eskimo Dog Eurohound Greenland Dog Mackenzie River Husky Norwegian Elkhound Sakhalin Husky Samoyed Seppala Siberian Sleddog Siberian Husky Tamaskan Husky

In point of fact, Kari, the ad doesn't explicitly call John McCain a liar. It associates "politicians lying about their records" with "more of the same" but it never flatly states that McCain and Palin are lying, just sort of dances around it.

They call themselves mavericks. Whoa. The truth is, they're anything but. John McCain is hardly a maverick when seven of his top campaign advisors are Washington lobbyists. He's no maverick when he votes with Bush 90% of the time. And Sarah Palin's no maverick either: She was for the bridge to nowhere before she was against it. Politicians lying about their records? You don't call that maverick, you call it more of the same.

What it comes down to is whether Palin and McCain are lying about whether or not they're mavericks, a term that doesn't have any real definition in the first place (at least not in this context). You could spend an entire political season arguing about whether 10% deviation with Bush was "mavericky" enough for a Republican or not. As for lobbyists, Obama may not be surrounded by them himself, but everyone he's likely to have involved in his administration is neck-deep in corporate lobby money, something that was fairly obvious during the DNCC news reports.

And I'm not so sure that reminding people of the successful attacks against the previous Democratic presidential candidate, John ("against it before he was for it") Kerry is such a great strategy. It looks sort of derivative, like they're aping four-year-old GOP charges.

Proud North Dakota native here. I wouldn't read too much into the congressional delegation being all Democrat. North Dakotans keep voting for their incumbents until they quit.

The state has a DFL past (much like Minnesota) and a history of populist progressivism. However, the trend in recent years has boosted the Republicans and the evangelical Christian right has taken hold. (They changed my hometown high school team names from the Satans to the Fire.) It's been very difficult for Democrats to get elected to statewide office in the past few years.

The Democrats I know in ND are pretty fired up, though. And Obama's been there a couple times. There might be a chance to get those three electoral votes. And with walk-up voting, it's pretty easy to get folks out. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the Norwegian farmers and the "urban" centers will vote Dem.

Yes, Sue, an Alaskan Malamute is a sled dog -- just like Huskies are. But Malamutes are not Huskies.

Also, from Wikipedia: The Alaskan Malamute is a large breed of domestic dog (Canis lupus familiaris) originally bred for use as an Alaskan sled dog and is often mistaken for a Siberian Husky.

Darrel... I suppose you're technically right -- though the image of McCain and Palin with the superimposed text "A NAKED LIE" is pretty tough.

Darrel, gotta say I think Kari's got the better of this one on the totality of the association of McCain & Palin with the idea of lying, visual & auditory.

Kari and Chris, yes, I understand that there's an association between the lying theme of the ad and the McCain/Palin theme of the ad, but why not just come out and say it, if, in fact, that's what they're trying to say? Why dance around the point and point and look as if you're avoiding explicitly saying "McCain's a liar"? My guess is that if they were attacked on this ad, they could claim later that they never actually called McCain or Palin liars. It just looks weak.

And again, the main thrust of the ad is that they're lying about being mavericks. I hadn't realized that was an essential requirement for either of the top jobs in the Executive. Why not attack them on, say, Iraq? Or the economy (I hear that's a hot topic)? Making it a fight about an ill-defined character issue -- after more than a decade of everyone including a lot of Democrats calling McCain a maverick -- is an exercise in futility. For years, McCain's Senate colleagues like Biden and Clinton helped burnish that maverick reputation, they're not going to be able to wipe it all off by claiming that McCain's the one lying about it now.

Darrel, I don't disagree with any of your suggestions for additional ads but I think they are additional, not mutually exclusive alternatives.

I am not sure that simply calling them liars really is stronger, though it might be. It seems possible that some substantial portion of viewers would see that as simply "calling names" and tune it out mentally for that reason.

Is it stronger to put a label on them for what they are, or to describe what they are doing?

Since you think the label/naming approach is stronger, I'd be genuinely interested in why.

Also, I don't think this is exactly a character issue. Rather it seems to relate to Jeff Allworth's post about what he sees as the Obama campaign's success in making this an election about "change" rather than "experience." It is a way of questioning McCain/Palin's claims to be change agents.

It may be Bush rather than Obama that has brought about that orientation by McCain/Palin, but the "maverick" claim is part of how M/P are trying to get around the problem of belonging to Bush's party. Challenging that isn't the only media work worth doing, but it seems like some of the work worth doing.

Chris, what I said was that -- unlike Kari -- I didn't see this as a particularly effective ad. Obviously, you and he disagree with me on that point. That's neither here nor there about what other ads the campaign might put out in the future, except that if they follow in the vein of this ad, I think they're headed for failure.

I really don't think most people care about whether John McCain is lying about calling himself a maverick, which I perceive as the primary message of this ad.

McCain's the same guy he's been for the past forty years. He hasn't changed. He's always been a conservative Republican -- he holds Barry Goldwater's senatorial seat for chrissake. For that matter, Goldwater was considered a "maverick" in his time, for what it was worth. All McCain has to do is to convince people that he's still the guy Democrats were saying was great a decade ago and that the maverick will be back after the election. I don't think quibbling over his self-description is going to have much effect.

As for why I think the direct approach is stronger, I already explained that. The approach in the ad gives them a weasel out if they get cold feet. They can say they never actually said "McCain is a liar."

But then, even directly calling McCain a liar about being a maverick is a pretty weak line of attack to start with. Surely there are bigger issues to disagree with him about in which he's lied.