The blogs have been mocking Senator McCain's initial response to the Obama campaign's wave of attacks charging him with being out of touch. (The Obama campaign tells me the ad is going out on national cable, but won't give me anything else.) The McCain campaign's reply fell into the category of "noun, verb, POW" -- a tactic which has a lot of mileage but now seems to be running out of gas. But now Ambinder reports an incoming counter-punch:
Sen. John McCain's campaign is finishing a hard-hitting television ad highlighting Barack Obama's ties to shady Chicago land dealer Tony Rezko, the one-time Obama patron who was convicted earlier this summer of fraud. ... A campaign official said that the decision to Go Rezko was Obama's. "He's opened the door to this," the official said. The ad will be released to network news divisions in time for their broadcasts tonight. ...Obama's charges "attack Cindy. She owns the homes. I thought he said the wives were off-limits."
This Rezko stuff didn't work during the primaries, and I'm not sure it will work now unless the McCain camp has some new revelations on their relationship (would be a surprise) or just plans on lying about it (given their past advertisements, this wouldn't surprise me). The Rezko attacks didn't work on Obama because he has really established a reformer narrative for himself; conversely, he hasn't had as much luck controlling the narrative around his background, both religious and racial, and this is why the subtle, he's not-one-of-us attacks were pretty effective.
The reason Obama's attack works is that it is part and parcel with the Obama campaign's anti-McCain narrative: McCain doesn't know anything about economic policy, he is out of touch with ordinary Americans, and he's *ahem* really quite old and doesn't remember stuff well. Of course, the McCain flack's comment about Cindy McCain is ridiculous, and I'm not sure anyone will buy into this idea of Obama lacking chivalry -- this is, of course, after Mrs. McCain attacked Michelle Obama's patriotism.
Another snippet:
McCain strategists hope that Obama's brass knuckles punch doesn't work. "Americans don't like this class warfare stuff," the official said. They aspire to be rich, the official said. They don't aspire to eat arugula or hang out with celebrities.
This is a concern I had earlier -- Americans do have a tendency to see themselves as well off and getting better. We'll know how well the Obama criticism is working outside of media world -- where I think it is working -- when we see some polls back next week. But mark this date on your calendar, folks. This is when the general election officially got under way.
--Tim Fernholz
