Rovian Politics

[zthulu]

Everyone likes to complain about Karl Rove's playbook. He is undoubtedly a political genius.

He spent the 70s and 80s working on campaigns for both Bushes, at one point being caught leaking classified information to Robert Novak.

Rove famously created the push poll which smeared John McCain, asking South Carolina voters "Would you be more likely

Comments

Heh

[lleaf]

The problem is that I have friends who 4 years ago were talking about how they would vote for McCain as President. Most democrats were saying how much better things would have been if he had beaten Bush.

But still we should be able to attack his wartime record. Of course he said everything we would have said during his acceptance speech. I never thought I would hear a crowd of republicans treating the 'I crashed a plain into the middle of a crowd of angry Vietnamese villagers' as a laugh line. And he also admitted to being depressed, and to have broken.

The question is, why is the Democratic campaign not pushing past McCain. they can legitimately begin bringing forward policy changes, offering a sense of the kind of cabinet Obama would bring. When are they going to start that process? Its not like the US can afford for Obama to start making decisions about national affairs in February. he has to hit the ground running. Most of the criticism of Bush coming in 2001 was that he wasn't really prepared to be president and was unable to deal with the reality he was presented until it was too late and he got his big get out of jail free card in September.

Obama's message should be that he is bringing change, that its real concrete changes, that his goals are different than Bush's. McCain can only run against his party in a half assed way. Obama can run against the least popular president since the last Bush with full attack.

He was willing to do it against Hillary. Why is he less capable of handling an old white man?