Barack may dislike mudslinging, but he needs his people to paint John McCain as nothing more than a slightly older Bushhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/10/barackobama.johnmccainThis week Barack Obama is enjoying a brief respite from the campaign madhouse on the beaches of Hawaii. But the madness itself never pauses, of course. As Obama departed for the state where he grew up, the Republican Party sent him off with a 'Travel Guide' mocking the upscale prep school Obama attended. A McCain campaign supporter marvelled that Obama would be 'swimming' while Americans grappled with high gas prices. And McCain sent him off with a new round of attack ads focusing on Obama's allegedly Paris Hilton-esque celebrity glow. 'Life in the spotlight must be grand,' explains one. 'But for the rest of us, times are tough.'
Petty and churlish, perhaps, but a growing number of Democrats suspect that relentless attacks by McCain and the Republican party may be taking a toll on Obama. Indeed, despite the political tailwinds at Obama's back, and the smooth execution of his vaunted overseas tour last month, he maintains a conspicuously modest lead over his Republican rival. And even as the Obama brand underperforms, the McCain brand is overperforming: The Arizona senator is faring much better than one would reasonably expect of a determined Iraq war supporter and faithful ally of George Bush in the ugly sunset of the post-9/11 Republican era. When Obama and McCain head to their parties' conventions this month, Obama must find a way to change that dynamic, or risk seeing his fragile lead slip away.
Ever since he dispatched Hillary Clinton, Obama has held that steady but slim advantage over McCain. According to the running average of major presidential polls, Obama now leads McCain by 3.6 points. That is nothing to sneer at. Remember: George W Bush actually lost the popular vote in 2000 and still took the presidency after winning more electoral votes than Al Gore (with some help from the US Supreme Court). And by most counts Obama enjoys a substantial edge in the state-by-state electoral count. He is, by any measure, winning.
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The Democratic national convention in Denver at the end of August is the moment to change this tone once and for all. As Jonathan Chait recently noted in the Los Angeles Times, John Kerry's team erred in 2004 by focusing his party's convention almost exclusively around their candidate without targeting Bush's weaknesses. While they command America's attention in Denver, the Democrats should hammer McCain with a new degree of vigour. The Obama campaign finally began that process last week, with a pair of negative ads tying McCain to Bush. But the counterattack must be intensified. The goal must be to convince voters that McCain really is just like any other Republican - part of the 30 per cent ghetto with Bush. During one debate with Hillary Clinton, Obama memorably cracked that McCain's 'Straight Talk Express' campaign bus had lost its wheels. This clever formulation should be a Democratic mantra. They need to drive home that McCain is in line with his party on tax rates for the wealthy, on the size of government, on war in Iraq. That he has described the social security system as a 'disgrace', and supports a highly unpopular Republican plan to privatise the system. And that, although he has spoken out against the fraud and corruption of recent years, he is part and parcel of the machine that enabled his party's perversions.
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