DENVER — When Democratic strategist Paul Begala wrote a $2,300 campaign check to Sen. Barack Obama recently, he scribbled in bold letters at the bottom: “FOR NEGATIVE CAMPAIGNING ONLY.”
Obama burst into laughter when he saw the donation, Begala was told. But he and some other strategists won’t be amused if Obama ignores their advice.
Increasingly nervous about polls that show an even presidential race — and no bounce from putting Sen. Joe Biden on the ticket — these Democrats say it’s time for Obama to escalate his attacks on Republican Sen. John McCain or risk blowing an election that should be theirs for the taking.
“We Democrats always pull our punches,” said Joe Trippi, a veteran campaign consultant. When Sen. John Kerry muted his attacks on President Bush in 2004, it was, Trippi said, “a big mistake.”
Voters deplore negative campaigning, but strategists see a redeeming virtue: It works. They wonder if Obama has the backbone to do what they think it will take to hold off McCain.
The Democrat’s lead in the polls began disappearing not long after McCain aired a wave of ads that mocked Obama as a celebrity. The Republican convention, which opens Monday, is expected to be an Obama-bashing fest from start to finish.
Some Democrats complain that their party isn’t doing the same. Attacks on McCain were not a prominent feature on the opening night of the convention, and Tuesday night’s keynote speaker, Mark Warner, couldn’t afford to alienate Republicans because he’s running for the Senate in closely divided Virginia.
Obama’s advisers are assuring nervous Democrats that they’ll turn up the heat on McCain as the convention shifts into its final two days. This week, the Obama campaign began airing a new ad that portrays McCain as clueless on the economy and claims the Republican “really can’t explain the price of gas or what has happened to the middle class.”
Those in the get-tough camp say the anti-McCain effort won’t truly be effective unless Obama himself goes negative as part of a relentless, sharply focused attack.
“The biggest problem we’re facing right now is defining McCain,” said Peter Hart, a veteran Democratic poll-taker. “My biggest question is: Who is going to take on McCain?”
Defining McCain in negative terms is no simple task. His reputation for independent thinking and his sacrifice as a Vietnam-era POW are widely known and seemingly immune to negative publicity about his ties to lobbyists or questions about his temperament.
But Democrats argue that he’s done little to define an agenda for a McCain presidency and say that his positions on issues are open for attack.
Trippi, a former adviser to the presidential campaigns of Howard Dean in 2004 and John Edwards this year, said Obama aides were right to focus more on their man’s life story than on McCain and Bush during the early part of the Denver convention.
“People still need to know more about Obama,” he said. “It would be a mistake to come in here with all guns blazing.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
