Over at the Democratic Strategist James Vega, a strategic marketing consultant, takes a look at the big picture of how the the various formally unaffiliated partisan groups will attempt to shape the contours of the 2008 election. He notes that while a lot of money will be flying around on both the right and left, that money won't necessarily be spent in the same capacities:
[B]ecause the large liberal-progressive organizations are generally more oriented toward grass-roots and GOTV organizing then big-money advertising campaigns, it is probable that in the specific area of TV and radio advertising by independent committees the pro-Republican advantage will be even greater. This is particularly disturbing because independent committee money -- free from the need for the candidate to directly endorse its message -- is the best tool for the most dishonest and scurrilous type of attack ads.
Vega doesn't go into great detail about what these negative ads will look like, but he doesn't have to. Voters already have negative associations with certain candidates; all the ad does is subtly unlock that subconscious association. He also suggests how to potentially fight back, but warns that such damage control has to be started preemptively -- something that a drawn-out primary works decidedly against. One such group that has been capitalizing on this is the Republican Majority Campaign, discussed at length here by TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel. "[A]s for the decision to attack both candidates, [Republican Majority Campaign's chairman Gary] Kreep said the group was working to 'soften them up for the general election.... We decided we wanted to be out front on it.'"
When these guys start rolling out their A material we're going to wish we were back in the halcyon days of discussing the Democrats' "race problem."
--Mori Dinauer
