Originally Posted by Imperator

imho its because the folks will put with only so much negativity and when they see what appears to be an unfair fight, they respond and it rebounds.
Like to or not as we are talking partisan sides here, after a while bush was seen as something of a sympathetic figure, after the october arms bunker story and most especially Rathers story. They saw the media piling on and I am SURE this cost Kerry many votes.

In almost exactly the same fashion as the republicans played the game with Clinton, they like the dems didn't realize there is a boundary to this. They crossed it. Clinton by all accounts was a scoundrel, sure, but impeachment and the like was a bridge to far, they saw that as too much angst and Clinton wound up being the sympathetic figure.

The electorate by and large, especially the real swing voters have a sense of fair play.

And that brings me to Obama. I think his constant campaign of attempting to inoculate himself against any and almost all critique because of his unique status is going to back fire. And for the same reasons I stipulated above, but reversed, he will be so far above critique and negative media coverage those same folks will get the idea that, all fairs only when it comes to one side and his being above the fray and he is somehow “special”, folks don’t cotton to untouchables.

The dem 527’s are going to go after McCain, the rep. 527s are going to go after Obama, that’s a given and alls fair, BUT where in Obama is attempting to put himself out of range, or above the fray he may put himself to far out of range.

The money obama has plus the dem 527 will assure there will be a huge disparity in ads, propaganda etc. unlike anything we have ever seen before.

Eventually, this will wear, that sense of fair play will rekindle and even though Obama deserves by virtue of his ability to raise more cash than McCain to submerge him in ads placed etc. the under dog status and what may appear to be bullying coupled with overwhelming positive media coverage will turn folks off. The longer the campaign goes on the less special Obama will appear and this inoculated status he is inventing will wear thin.

Originally Posted by Jason Marcel

But in the last election, the 527 ads practically made it like John Kerry wasn't even there that day. And the public basically bought into it.

It could have been that Kerry hadn't already established a friendly persona with people yet.

Originally Posted by TSGracchus

I think that attack worked for a combination of personal and policy reasons. The personal reason is that Kerry just isn't especially likable. You can admire him for what he did during the war, both his heroic service and his opposition to the war afterwards, but it's hard to empathize with him the way you could with Clinton (or Reagan).

The policy reason, once again, is that there just wasn't much daylight between his proposals and Bush's. This is the consequence of the DLC takeover of the Democratic Party. Since Clinton's victory, and until this year, the Democrats have been a corporatist party virtually indistinguishable from the Republicans except on social issues. Choosing between one bought-and-paid-for corporate shill and another -- on what basis do you do that? If you really care about gay rights or abortion, if it's a hot-button issue for you, then you have an easy choice, but for most people that's not the case. So what's left? Personality, and that's where the smears come in.

Clinton won on personality, too. But he's charismatic enough that that was a decisive advantage. Kerry isn't. Obama probably is, but in this case there are also important issues in play, because he's not a DLC Democrat.