McClatchy: McCain's attack ads could backfire, voters and experts say

[babylonsister]

McCain's attack ads could backfire, voters and experts say

By David Lightman and William Douglas | McClatchy Newspapers


RACINE, Wis. — Is John McCain's attempt to tie Barack Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in an attack ad this week the "Swift boating" of Obama?

No, experts said Thursday; McCain's recent barrage of negative ads and charges isn't as vicious as the 2004 campaign against John Kerry. But the McCain effort, led by Karl Rove protege Steve Schmidt, has the same objective: to demonize a little-known presidential candidate.

"McCain is narrative-building," said Allan Louden, an associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, N.C. McCain is trying to plant the idea that the Democratic Illinois senator is simply an attention-craving crowd-pleaser.

It's a risky strategy, as McCain found when he came to this Wisconsin city Thursday for a town hall meeting. A young woman there told the Arizona senator that he's said he didn't want to engage in mudslinging.

"So it seems like, to Americans like me and other people, like you may have flip-flopped on what you had said earlier," she said. Reporters were unable to get her name.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/46078.html

[TheCowsCameHome]

1. It's all he's got - he has nothing positive to offer.

[Whisp]

2. he was goading Obama the 'uppity' one to slip into the 'angry black man' one.

after haranging and poking at him all this time - but Obama didn't bite - he's as gentlemanly and level headed as always, consistent, as always.

too bad, old man. you gambled and you lost.

[NorthCarolina]

3. It's the "Call me Harold" ad remade for Obama

eom

[Gabi Hayes]

4. here's why I worry about these ads, especially WRT the bolded part:

In the United States, researchers have consistently found that negative advertising has positive effects. According to Finkel and Greer (1998), negative advertising “is likely to stimulate voters by increasing the degree to which they care about the election’s outcome or by increasing ties to their party’s nominee.” This is an important feature of negative campaign advertising because it can solidify a candidate's support going into an election. The finding was repeated by Ken Goldstein and Paul Freedman (2002), who found that negative campaign ads raise interest in the election as well as raise the perceived importance of the election, which increases voter turnout. Negative advertising, then, can be very beneficial to a candidate during a campaign to not only win votes but also get out the vote .

Negative advertising can also be used to demobilize voters. Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar (1995) found that negative campaign advertising appeals only to partisans. They go on to say that negative advertising actually alienates independents and demobilizes them as voters, which causes elections to be fought among the partisan extremes. This makes sense since it removes the independents as a voting bloc to be concerned about and allows the candidates to stick to the party line.

..............

one of the KEY elements in pug strategy is to keep voter turnout as LOW as possible, legally or illegally. negative ads are very effective at keeping out the key element of the voting populace from going to the polls

is this year going to be different? I hope so, but don't have any evidence to think any differently, and Obama is going to have to respond much more effectively if they want to keep on message

as Craig Crawford said, the 'red frog/green frog' factor is coming into play as we watch. everything that's happened in the last two weeks has been spun into a situation where Obama is on the defensive. he will LOSE if he can't better control the paramaters of discussion

defending is LOSING, and the media is not assisting at all in providing real facts to the average news consumer, which is obvious

[babylonsister]

5. Since we're fighting for the indy vote, McCrabby might be turning

them off to voting for him. His negativeness won't stop Obama supporters from voting.

[Gabi Hayes]

7. well, no, according to the cite, and what I've read lots of places, including here.

one of the MAIN reasons they go so heavily negative is to reduce voter turnout, and it MOST affects those who can't make up their minds. the hard core supporters of each party are going to vote for their man (automaton in pug case), regardless of how negative the coverage.

swing voters are more likely to turn away from the whole process and not vote. it's a very good scheme, as are most of their strategic moves. they have to be good at the ancillary aspects of campaigning, because they're so bereft of a platform that benefits anybody but the most well-off, corporations, and the military/black intel budget complex, which represents about $600 billion worth of our current GDP

[dansolo]

6. The problem isn't the negative ads, per se

It is the media reinforcement of the ads, basically legitimizing them. McCain is able to turn a minimal ad buy into a free national ad buy because the media outlets continually play the ads, and frame their analysis about how it affects Obama.

[mathwhiz]

8. McCain isn't going to win on his merits

So what does he do?

Run an honorable campaign and just let Obama kick his ass in a landslide?

Ummm, no. It's not going to be that easy.

He's going to try to win and the only way he can win is to slime Obama and make low-information racist voters scared and turn out the white vote in droves.

That's why we're hearing about the race card business. Racializing Obama is the only way he can win.

So there is no backfiring to his strategy.

He either does this and has maybe a 25% chance of winning or he doesn't and he has a 0% chance.

It's clear why he's doing this.