Poll Says Attacks Backfire on McCain

[swag]

Source: New York Times

Over all, the poll found that if the election were held today, 53 percent of those determined to be probable voters said they would vote for Mr. Obama and 39 percent said they would vote for Mr. McCain.
. . .

Voters who said their opinions of Mr. Obama had changed recently were twice as likely to say they had grown more favorable as to say they had worsened. And voters who said that their views of Mr. McCain had changed were three times more likely to say that they had worsened than to say they had improved.

The top reasons cited by those who said they thought less of Mr. McCain were his recent attacks and his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. (The vast majority said their opinions of Mr. Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee, and Mr. McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, had remained unchanged in recent weeks.) But in recent days, Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin have scaled back their attacks on Mr. Obama, although Mr. McCain suggested he might aggressively take on Mr. Obama in Wednesday’s debate.

With the election unfolding against the backdrop of an extraordinary economic crisis, a lack of confidence in government, and two wars, the survey described a very inhospitable environment for any Republican to run for office. More than 8 in 10 Americans do not trust the government to do what is right, the highest ever recorded in a Times/CBS News poll. And Mr. McCain is trying to keep the White House in Republican hands at a time when President Bush’s job approval rating is at 24 percent, hovering near its historic low.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/us/politics/15poll.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

[swag]

1. I have news for McCain: the election is being held today.

Early voting is happening all over the country.

And McCain is losing badly.

So funny that the RNC is throwing McCain-Palin under the bus and trying to rescue its few barely-salvagable congressional losers.

The Republican brand is shit for years, and rightly so.

[Schema Thing]

2. from your keyboard to god's inbox

[TerribleLarryDingle]

3. I Voted for Obama yesterday

and there were people as far as the eye could see.

I am really starting to feel optimistic for the first time in a long time.

:dem:

[Juche]

4. I hope so

With luck the GOP has lost the support of an entire generation of people born after 1977, all minorities (GLBT, blacks, latinos, asians, non-religious) and pretty much all unmarried women. If the GOP maintains those losses the democrats are in for some long term majorities.

[newtothegame]

5. Duh ;)

[PATRICK]

6. The politics of negativity

do not work when the guy being attacked can defend easily and still appear above the fray. Negative politics do work when the tar sticks and defense turns off the voters as "they both are bad" in such a way as to favor the guy who started it for just that purpose. That i8s one reason- though not the only one- where a NY Galahad won his gerrymandered district against truly slanderous attacks by the GOP incumbent. He simply let them fall all over themselves with the public as they were caught in the offense then remained the nice positive guy. In my district going head to head with the negativity of the GOP troll ruffled the feathers of the "why can't we all get along crowd" and peeled away support from the one
with justified anger and healthy self-defense. Gore writes well about the Madison Avenue expertise that uses the attrition of negativity to deaftea one's opponent, but seemed not to have learned that much about the entire mechanism which ground him down in 2000.

Once in the "caught" and desperate zone the only thing inevitably left, as one GOP loser put it with the wisdom of hindsight, was to lock and load and shoot yourself in the foot- then reload and shoot yourself in the other foot." That is where McCain haplessly lies, roped in completely by the tantalizing presence of a powerfully favorable MSM to fling the garbage one more time.