More on McCain's Strategy

My last post played up the strategy of alterization for McCain. Make Obama seem like he's not American enough to be president. But how to do this? The obvious way for McCain's campaign is to play up his personal bio as much as humanly possible. He's been doing that already, of course. The other is to portray Obama as a newbie, someone who doesn't deserve to just show up and lead, who hasn't earned it. This was tried by Hillary, of course, and she lost. But very narrowly.

The Britney/Paris/Obama ad was brilliant. Talk about getting bang for your buck, the ad only ran briefly on the air, yet got over a million views on YouTube! Right when Obama's overcoming a lack of presidential stature by appearing very presidential, McCain goes right for the jugular. Obama's a phenomenon--do you want to vote for a phenomenon, or for a president? People who are on the outside looking in to the rock star rallies feel left out. McCain can capitalize on this big time.

Letterman is now making jokes about Obama's overconfidence, how he seems like he is entitled to the presidency.

There's a debate online about race. This ties into alterization, of course. But every time race was brought up in the primary (by Bill or by Axelrod) Obama gained from the exchange. Will this be the same in the general? Josh Marshall thinks it won't, that it hurts Obama. Daniel Larison and Ana Marie Cox think not. I don't know. I suppose I agree that it will be like the primary, that Obama will look like he's being unfairly picked on, and the historic nature of his candidacy will be emphasized yet again. Obama certainly thinks so--his big Berlin speech began with "I don't look like previous Americans blardy blar blar." There could be backlash though, with the same idea as above, viz. lower-class whites (Hillary's voters) who already feel left out of
affirmative action will feel left out with having to elect a black president to prove you're not a racist. Lower-class whites don't have to prove that anyway; it's only in the higher echelons of society in which you actually have a lot to lose if there's any whiff of an emanating penumbra of racism.