From TPM Reader JT …

Obama has a frustrating problem. He has arguably run one of the best branded websites and campaigns of any in American history. He’s consistent on tone and graphic design. But that’s where his branding advantage ends. While he has done an okay job at branding himself, he has failed dismally at branding John McCain.

You mentioned several ways that Obama can improve his messaging, but I’m skeptical any of these will be effective. Your suggestions focus on Bush’s policies, and by proxy McCain’s. But the arguments are all intellectual appeals to reflect on policy points having very little to do with John McCain, the man. Obama needs to own the branding of John McCain, the man. That’s why Karl Rove’s assessment about Obama at the country club works. It’s a prototypical branding schema from which the entire message of John McCain’s campaign is based. It’s simple, and it speaks to the heart, not the mind.

To that end, I think the essence of Obama’s campaign needs to be “John McCain will do anything to get elected.” He will exploit his time as a POW and make up stories about his military “experience.” He will flip-flop on any given number of issues — Afghanistan, immigration, torture, tax cuts, etc. He will use racist appeals and attack Obama’s patriotism to get elected.

“McCain. The candidate who will say anything to get elected.”
This is short. And it’s easy to remember. And it counters McCain’s own branding of himself as a Maverick.

I confess I don’t know why this point hasn’t been hit harder or hasn’t caught on more even irrespective of the campaign. Because here you’ve got a guy who’s literally abandoned everything he supposedly used to believe in, all to be president. There really is nothing he wouldn’t do.

TPM Reader CD, meanwhile, is very downcast …

Just read your latest blog post, and am afraid to admit that I feel the same way as you. The only thing that has given me comfort recently –and I’m not able to find the quote exactly, so I’m paraphrasing — was Plouffe saying “people need to understand much of the electorate decides very late in the game. In other words, I’m not concerned with
polls.” That makes me think they’re hedging their bets, biding their time, etc. until the convention. That’s my hope.

But my feeling is far less enthusiastic now. What’s really bothered me has been McCain’s celebrity ads, or rather, Obama’s lack of vigilance in refuting the claims in these ads. The ads are working. How do I know? Because they’re working on me. I’m a huge Obama supporter, and he’s the first candidate I’ve given significant money to, and his lack of push back on the celebrity issue has planted the seed in my mind: “is he really so arrogant to think he doesn’t need to refute these claims?” I’d like to see some conviction, some insult taken by Obama at these attacks. He is the outsider, he is the change candidate, and he does have more work to do to introduce himself to the voters.
Letting this celebrity-line-of-attack go so unchallenged, to me, is the worst way to go about doing that. He’s letting McCain introduce Obama.

However, when he has taken the opportunity to respond to attacks, specifically Corsi’s book, his responses have been so long-winded that I myself get bored of them. There is no sound bite, no decisiveness, no energy to the responses. A 42 page response to the book? While I’m sure it was exhaustive, how do you expect news media to cover that?
Where is the quick fatal blow in 42 pages? Supreme Court decisions are shorter.

Maybe it was the timing of his vacation. Hopefully he actually starts to saturate the country at/after the convention. But where is this money advantage? Where is this expert campaign that guided him through a rather monumental upset in the primaries? He coasted out the last remaining primary contests against Clinton, while she “found her
voice.” It certainly feels, at least right now, that McCain picked up right where Clinton left off, and Obama is still coasting.

I’m a big believer in Obama’s message. I think Bush is a criminal. I think our nation is in a truly perilous state. But for the first time since his campaign started, I’m truly worried and disappointed by him. He looks outclassed, outgunned, and outspun.

I’m an average American, I would say, and I believe I want what most Americans want: a fighter. I don’t like to see, nor do I think the country likes to see, someone who isn’t up for a fight, and right now Obama just doesn’t appear up for a fight. This doesn’t just worry me in terms of the political race, it worries me in terms of his ability to actually be President. Me, a progressive mind if there ever was one. That I have this perception should scare the bejesus out of the Obama campaign, because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, I am not unique in these matters.

But then again, I’m not the expert, and Obama and Co. have knocked it out of the park before, so I wait and see.

TPM Reader MR disagrees …

I think we’ll look back on August as when Obama won the election.

August was when John McCain had the chance to define Obama and so cement a negative view of him that he could never recover. Now his time is almost up, the conventions are about to begin and we get into the full swing of the campaign.

And what did McCain get out of his month? The Gallup tracking poll barely budged; most polls show Obama still with a modest lead, only slightly less than where he started a month or so ago. Obama’s negatives are up somewhat — no surprise after the pummeling he took — but hardly up to critical levels. Unlike with Kerry, no single message has stuck — he’s a flipflopper! No, he’s a scary leftist! No he’s an empty celebrity! With no single negative image, the effect is likely to diffuse over time, especially with a successful Democratic convention.

I think Obama’s played this just right so far. Yes, lots of folks are complaining he hasn’t gone after McCain enough but it simply wouldn’t have worked. McCain has not been the story — Obama has been. Unfair, sure, but that’s the way it is. Obama’s the new guy in town and everyone is trying to figure him out. So instead of fecklessly launching attack after attack on McCain only to have them disappear into the ether, he sat back and played rope-a-dope waiting for his moment.

Now his moment is coming. The VP choice, the convention, the post-Labor Day sharpening of people’s attention, the debates and the full onslaught of ads, money, and organization.

Can he blow it? Sure. He’s new to this. He can make the wrong VP choice. He can give an empty, if soaring, acceptance speech (or it could rain!) Hillary and Bill (especially Bill) could add a sour taste to the convention and make that the story. He could fall short of expectations in the debate. But all (or most of those) are under his control.

I would *so* rather be Obama heading toward November than McCain. It’s his for the taking if he just executes it right.

I’m still liking but not hearing this. From Chuck Schumer: “I would answer back hard. What do you mean [Obama’s] not one of us? It’s John McCain who wears $500 shoes, has six houses, and comes from one of the richest families in his state. It’s Barack Obama who climbed up the hard way, and that’s why he wants middle-class tax cuts and better schools for our kids.”

A friend of mine just wrote in arguing, essentially, that the McCain character narrative is unstoppable. You can change the terms of the debate. But there’s no way you’re going to change people’s minds about Mccain, warrior, tough guy, maverick, going to protect your family no matter what. My answer would be, with some people, especially a lot of them in DC but certainly elsewhere too, that’s right. With others I’m not so sure. And that’s why I really wish there was some independent group out there telling the full story of McCain’s life prior to his POW captivity and especially after. $500 shoes. Thinks you’re rich after your making $5 million a year. Has 9 or 10 houses.

It’s not for everyone. But the guy’s pampered. And he changes his beliefs every few years.

From a Republican pal …

You didn’t get this from me, but use it as you will. Is it just me — as a Republican knowing how we’ve played this game before — or should there be genuine puzzlement why Obama isn’t unleashing Democratic veterans (Jim Webb, Jack Reed, John Kerry, BOB Kerrey perhaps, etc. Some Democratic generals, whatever) to go after McCain
on this “cross in the dirt” stuff? I mean, if there was one issue tailor-made
for “Swift-Boat” payback, I can’t think of anything else.

It ain’t bean bag.

From TPM Reader JB …

Although your Republican friend suggests going after McCain for the sand in the cross story, denying this claim is impossible and turns quickly into a he said – she said issue. A surrogate may question its validity, but I think that puts us in shrill Ann Coulter territory and will make some people wonder why we are picking on him for his most vulnerable period when he was a hero.

That said, I think McCain’s cross in the sand story should be used as a point of positive comparison to now. In fact, it can be used to neutralize his POW sainthood. Someone needs to compare working with the Rove proteges to working with the Vietnamese torturers. The construction can go like this: John McCain said that Karl Rove deserves a special place in hell for the false accusations against him in South Carolina. I think this place in hell also holds his Vietnamese torturers and, in fact, anyone who uses tortures. Well, John McCain is now working with Karl Rove’s people to get elected. The very same people who slandered him. I guess he would work with anyone, maybe even his Vietnamese torturers to get elected. We should judge a man by the company he keeps when times are tough. Like John Mcain and the ones who should be in a special place in hell.

I’ve actually had a similar thought. But I came at it a bit differently. McCain is always talking about victory and never surrendering. Andrew Sullivan said a few days ago that McCain has a penchant for underdogs. But I see it a little differently. Bush and Rove gave McCain the biggest political lashing of his life. He was sullen for a while, tried to fight them. But after a while he could it wasn’t going to be easy. So he decided to join up with them.

Bush, Cheney and Lieberman will all speak on the Monday night of the GOP convention.

Zogby’s latest shows Obama trailing McCain nationally by 5 points but even more ominously is the first national poll to give McCain the upper hand on dealing with the economy, which the survey found was voters’ No. 1 issue.

Late Update: A critique of the poll and Zogby’s methods generally.

The federal judge in the trial of Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) overruled the senator’s request for a change of venue to Alaska, but did say that the the trial will be in recess on Fridays so that Stevens can travel from DC back home to campaign for re-election.

David Gregory authoritatively proclaimed on Meet the Press last Sunday that when it comes to addressing the crisis in Georgia, “nuance doesn’t work for Democrats,” and noted Obama’s perceived weakness relative to the Bush administration’s “very tough language against Russia.” Far be it from us to question Gregory’s word, but we figured we would take a look for ourselves at just how tough the administration talk against Russia has really been …

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

As most of you have probably seen by now, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH), the first black congresswoman from Ohio, suffered an inoperable brain aneurysm last evening and is in grave condition in a Cleveland-area hospital.

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer and CNN began reporting about 30 minutes ago that Tubbs Jones had died — which we noted in the news section to the right there — but in a press conference just now at the hospital, a doctor made clear that she remains in critical condition.

A terrible situation made worse by the confusion.