Team Obama Needs To Start General Election Message Now

by Steve Soto

The Obama campaign has shown itself to be remarkably nimble in dishing out attacks and then watching the Clinton campaign overreact, to the point that Hillary has now soiled herself and her legacy after this campaign with her recent tone and counterattacks against the Obama campaign’s message and tactics. Many Clinton supporters will disagree with me, but her counterpunches over the weekend are too late, and given the mistakes of her campaign and its strategy, these efforts to go strongly negative now are too easily dismissed as the last gasp of a terribly mismanaged and now backbiting campaign that has no consistent message and strategy to justify its continued existence. Therefore, it isn’t surprising to see Chris Dodd endorse Obama today.

But at least Team Obama is getting an early preview of the smear campaign the GOP and its friends in the media have waiting for Obama from this point on. The RNC is already polling to see how far they can go with a racist argument against Obama before they lose independent and swing voters. Of course, none of this will be packaged as overtly racist except by right wing talk radio in parts of the country that are already receptive to such arguments. Yet in more mainstream venues there are stories out there already about how the GOP can smear Obama on his name, his wife, his alleged lack of patriotism, and his alleged sympathies to Islamic extremism as simple ways for the GOP and John McCain to indirectly run a racist campaign in a post 9/11 world. And Team Obama needs to be ready for it now and start counterpunching against the GOP and their media friends to prevent a narrative from setting in.

Having a clear, short, and hard-hitting counterpunch against these critics both in the GOP and the media will be essential.