Comments on: Political Ads: Should Obama Go Negative?

By: reechard

reechard — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:01:58 +0000

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

Best,

Richard

By: reechard

reechard — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 07:52:30 +0000

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

By: mela

mela — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:09:59 +0000

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.

By: jimbo

jimbo — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:03:44 +0000

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?

By: mela

mela — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:41:47 +0000

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!

By: mencherh44

mencherh44 — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:55:39 +0000

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.

By: Knut

Knut — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:46:31 +0000

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.

By: Laura Flanders

Laura Flanders — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:11:47 +0000

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

By: Laura Flanders

Laura Flanders — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:11:02 +0000

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.

By: JoeBuck

JoeBuck — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 18:05:44 +0000

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%.