Congratulations on the live streaming!

Is it going negative when you are just telling the truth about McCain? McCain’s been corrupt and ignorant for a long time. How is that negative? Or is that just pointing out how McCain is uufit for office?

This is great, Laura (& crew), congratulations!

I agree with the truth part. If Paris can punk Johnny luxuriating on a plastic lawn device, what more is required but the truth?

No need to go negative. Go funny. Learn from Jon Stewart. He can tell the most blatantly incriminating truths with a wink and a grin, and everyone loves him.

I don’t get why this is even a question.
Does negative campaigning work? Yes, it does. Obviously.
Does the other side do it? Yes, in fact, it’s mostly what they do.
Why are we debating whether we should unilaterally disarm? Why don’t we play to win?

Obama needs to now dominate the airways with anti-McCain ads. Right now McCain is getting a free ride both through ad buys and by still being the media’s pal. McCain benefits from a well crafted but false image. That image must be destroyed with the truth.

Even if the ads are not negative, the Republics will scream that they are. If Obama is to win, he must change the focus to McCain.

The United States military could stay in Iraq for “maybe a hundred years” and that “would be fine with me,” John McCain told two hundred or so people at a town hall meeting in Derry, New Hampshire, on Thursday evening.

voiceover:

Would you entrust the lives of your children to this old man?

When McCain poses his rhetorical question about Senator Obama‘s readiness to lead by saying, “Is he ready to lead?”, the answer is obvious. Senator Obama has already been leading for several months. Both McCain and Bush are following Obama’s foreign policy recommendations on Afghanistan and Iraq. So if McCain and Bush are already following the leader, then, obviously, Obama is the leader. Q.E.D.

That was so fun folks. What do you say?
Let’s make a habit of it?

It’s interesting though –I’m none the wiser about how Obama can deal with race…. The conversation started with appeal to americans’ desire for redemption
and ended there…
but in the middle, the guests wanted facts facts facts.

Strong, but subtle negative. Pound the words old, dangerous, confused to just short of obvious, but no grade school crap like the GOP.

Absolutely. It’s a riveting conversation, Laura.

Dave in Okinawa delurking.

I tried to make a point calling in that Obama’s camp needs to go after McCain’s ‘brand’ as the Maverick. McCain is not, and I think that factual ads from Obama’s campaign that hammer McCain on the falseness of this brand would be effective in countering the effective ‘defining of Obama’ that McCain’s strategists are employing now.

Some of these counter-the-Maverick image could hammer McCain for all the no votes he’s made on V.A. funding bills. Hammer him repeatedly on this, and make the point: McCain talks the talk about supporting the troops and the vets, but he doesn’t come close to delivering. That’s one example that immediately comes to my mind.

Badwater is right; Obama’s campaign needs to change the focus to McCain. The Rovian tactics of attacking the other side’s strengths and negatively defining that opponent with simplistic distortions are in full force. These people handling McCain are playing dirty, and Obama needs to fight back. Do it with the abundant facts out there that debunk McCain’s image as the lovable Maverick. That’s all McCain’s really got going for him.

Back to lurk position

Thanks Jane! We will go live at 12 noon every Wednesday for the Roundtable discussion. Your comments and encouragement are greatly appreciated!

And please don’t hesitate during the live shows to email in your questions or call us at 866-466-2961.

Great program, Laura, and congrats and much appreciation for the expanded access you’ve provided all of us.

Got here a bit late to participate, today, but in future I’ll be on time, for certain.

Hopefully you may invite these folks back, several times, as the election process unfolds.

Great choice of guests and topics.

A most-definite thumbs up!!!

David

There are different kinds of negative ads. There’s criticism based on substantive issues, or for inconsistency, or for being a close ally of a hated president (John McSame). I’d like to see as much of this as possible. Then there’s the nasty stuff, which just turns off the public and makes the candidate placing the ad look bad. We don’t need any of that.

It’s simple, really. Bush has an approval rating in the high 20s, maybe even the mid 20s. Tie McCain to Bush all day, every day. Mix it up so we can see all the ways that McCain is exactly the same as Bush. That way, on election day McCain only gets the 30% or so who think Bush wasn’t that bad, plus another 10% who don’t like Bush but like black people even less, and Obama gets the other 60%.

Hi all — lots of new stuff for us technically today. Next week, I’ll have a much closer eye on the comments section, I promise. Big deal for us, frankly, was that the phone worked and we could communicate between studios here at GRITtv.

But that’s all behind the scenes. The conversation was rocking… just as the conversation here….

Agree with JoeBush above that it all depends on what you mean by going negative. Hard-hitting might be the more appropriate adjective. I think Obama’s people are playing this just about right — raising the ante little by little rather than sending out a blast that will lose its force by November. They have plenty of stuff on McCain, and have no doubt communicated a sample of it to his campaign, to keep the Thugs in line.

McCain is losing his ‘base’ in the MSM. Once they start pondering the size of Obama’s victory instead of the ‘if’ of it, the play-by-play narrative will change. The MSM will start handicapping the race, so that a big Obama win won’t look so big. McCain is history in the making at this point, and history by 15 September.

Senator John Kerry lost his election in 2004 because he played it safe and did not attack Bush aggressively when Bush was way down in the polls early on in the election season with ammunition that was very legitimate, the damage that Bush had caused this country since the 2000 election. By not doing so, and allowing Bush to attack him falsely and viciously, he allowed Bush to catch up to him in the polls, subsequently allowing the Republicans to outright steal the election for Bush via corrupt e-voting machines and massive and illegal disenfranchisement of Democratic voters. Unfortunately, Obama is acting exactly the same as Kerry and can very well lose in November as a result. The amount of legitimate ammunition that Obama can directly use against Bush and the Republicans is vast, more so than in any past election that I can remember, and yet he refuses to do so. If he doesn’t, I guarantee that he will lose in November. The Republicans are already in the process of stealing more votes this year than were stolen in the past 3 elections combined, and the Democrats don’t seem to be doing anything to stop it. The Democrats are already at a major disadvantage, thanks to their stupidity and their ignorance. They have allowed George Bush and the Republicans to completely take control of the DOJ through their crony appointees, Alberto Gonzalez and Michael Mukasey, and they allowed Bush and the Republicans to take almost complete ownership of the federal court system with well over 300 lifetime appointees, all Bush ideologues, with their greatest achievement, the take over of the United States Supreme Court itself.

There is no high ground with the Republicans. They lie, and will go as low as they need to in order to maintain power and its been going on unabated since Nixon. Fight their dirty fire with pure fire, and use the truth. There’s no shortage of indictments against the opportunist McCain, who tries ti inoculate this corrupt campaign against the racism and “war hero” falsehoods. It has to be addresses straight on, the way Bobby Kennedy did in 1968. The people in this country need to understand the truth and stop voting against their own interest!

obama go negative? Bill Clinton is a racist, never did a good thing as president, all the bullshit from obama against HRC, the finger, and you ask if obama can go negative? How do you people live with yourselves?

jimbo,
you’re ignorant. George W. Bush has done “good things as president” as far as you’re concerned, right? How can you actually defend your war criminal capitalist compatriots? Wake up to reality, man.

Yes please, Laura! I tuned in live and the stream was great. Wednesdays it is! Really enjoyed the conversation. I’ll think some more about possible “negative” campaign tactics.
-Richard

Jimbo, I LOVE your hair! And what a cute outfit!

Best,

Richard