The Obama campaign is up-in-arms about the McCain campaign’s latest tactic of emphasizing Barack Obama’s connections to domestic terrorist, William Ayers. Good. The measure of the damage this line by the McCain campaign can do to Obama’s chances of winning the White House is evident by the ferocity of the Obama campaign’s response: bring up McCain’s involvement in the “Keating Five” scandal. The Obama campaign, if it were so confident about its chances and the weakness of the “guilt by association” tactics, would not have responded with a precisely similar attack unless it realized how damaging these attacks coud be. That *they* (the Obama campaign) think this will hurt is all the more reason for McCain to continue on this line (with Palin right out front who, for some reason, seems better able to deliver political attacks than McCain himself does).
But let’s not fool ourselves; all the “association attacks”, though they may be legion (Ayers, Rezko, ACORN, Rev. Wright), will not lead to a McCain victory. It will knock a few points off of Obama’s lead, but by itself it won’t turn the race around. In order to do that, the McCain campaign simply HAS TO find a more compelling economic message. The economy as an issue is not going to go away in the next 29 days. In fact, it *is* the issue. It is indeed “the economy, stupid”. If McCain and his campaign staff do not realize this, then they deserve to lose.
The McCain campaign needs to retool their economic message, because the message/plan they’ve put out so far is losing to Obama’s message. Yes, there are certainly headwinds, such as the prolific deficits after 8 years of Republican rule, George Bush’s unpopularity and the rapidly declining economy that’s on the news every night. But those headwinds must be met “head-on”, if you will. McCain must retool his economic message and there’s no better time to do that than on Tuesday night, in the second debate.
