Reinvigorating the Obama Campaign
The ace in the Biden hole is family policy.
Sarah Palin put the Obama campaign on the rocks. If anything, vigorous personal attacks against the vice presidential nominee and her family have served to cement attitudes against the attackers. Obama’s ads have gone from inspired early in the primary (like this 1984 ad) to cheesy (like the Still ad). The Obamassiah has become just a young guy with tired old ideas, less experience, and a whole lot of desire to put even more big government even farther up in everybody’s faces. The right has become invigorated, the left stagnant and disillusioned.
The Obama campaign needs a game-changer. At least they need to acknowledge the one they already chose and to quit being so wimpy about it. Joe Biden was a strategic choice, just as important on the left as Sarah Palin is on the right. He compensates for Obama’s freshness by having a very long record as a Senate Democrat. He represents the party and what the ticket stands for. To reinvigorate the Democratic base, he needs to be promoted from his current role as comical side-kick, rising to the occasion to become the standard bearer of the party’s values.
Obama’s rhetorical shift to center ground following the primary caused confusion among his supporters and allowed experience to grow as a more important distinction. Sarah Palin invigorates the right by putting a conservative face on the Republican ticket. Joe Biden needs to assure their base that an Obama victory would take the country farther left and he is just the man for the job.
The ace in the Biden hole is family policy. His Senate record defines the antithesis of traditional conservative values. John McCain and the Republican Platform favor letting states handle family law issues, from now on. Joe Biden has been relentless in his efforts to federalize family law and remove it from the influence of civil rights into democratically controlled social policy. He describes one such effort, the Violence Against Women Act as his proudest achievement.
Nothing has transformed family law more than the federal child support enforcement program. With billions of dollars doled out to states each year, the program managed to infiltrate areas of law and personal life that the Constitution left to the states and to the people. It provided the pivotal event that transformed marriage and family law from civil law to social policy and by doing so set the stage for same-sex marriage and adoption rights.
A family law blogger in Georgia quotes a left-wing advocate saying â€Obama has legislation that speaks directly to our child support priorities, and Sen. McCain does not.†But it goes deeper. Deeper even than Sarah Palin’s reported attempt to exempt child support debt from being automatically garnished from energy rebate checks. It goes so far as a certain ambiguity on family issues and values from Republicans and John McCain’s apparent fear of discussing them.
It’s an opportunity to push the dial on the wimp-o-meter in their favor, but the Obama campaign is blowing it already. Instead of standing up for themselves by putting their most distinctive foot in voters’ faces, the Obama campaign has unveiled a new women’s group to speak for them. Instead of promoting Joe Biden, the plan is apparently to demote Barack Obama from leader to groupie cheer leader. If they’re going to turn things around, the campaign needs to act like they have a pair – Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
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Stumble It!
September 16th, 2008 at 2:56 am
Biden equals more VAWA, more International VAWA and more increased child support leading to enslavement of men. Biden is NOW’s leader in Congress. Biden is woman enough for Obama.
September 16th, 2008 at 2:58 am
But he’s afraid of the other girls.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:34 am
>> “But he’s afraid of the other girls.”
Which is precisely why Palin was such an incredibly good choice for McCain, tactically speaking.
September 16th, 2008 at 6:43 am
After some thought, I don’t think being a woman is the only thing Sarah Palin brought to the party, although I think you’re right that it’s been a problem for Obama / Biden11. (They’re afraid of strong women.)
McCain was suffering because the conservative base wasn’t impressed. He was just too far left on a lot of things. He inspired people to say, “I didn’t leave the Republican Party. The Republican Party left me.”
Sarah Palin brought traditional conservative values into the mix and that’s what made the difference.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Rasmussen Markets data gives McCain a 48.5% chance of victory while expectations for Obama are at 51.7%. These figures are updated on a 24/7 basis by market participants. The situation is now reversed following the Palin bounce.