OBAMA RETOOLING AFTER PALIN BOUNCE

Obama: Retooling after the Palin bounce Posted:
Tuesday, September 16, 2008 9:27 AM by Domenico Montanaro


The retooling of the Obama message is the focus of this Washington Post story: "After a string of tactical successes by McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, over the past two weeks, the Obama campaign sought to regain its footing on Monday. The shift followed a series of internal meetings, including a rare Sunday evening session at the campaign's Chicago headquarters that Obama attended. Advisers reinforced the division of labor in the days ahead: Obama will articulate the campaign's broader message of ‘change’ and outline how the Democratic ticket will govern, while Biden will deliver attacks against the GOP ticket, drawing on his 30-year-old relationship with McCain to undercut the Arizona senator's standing, especially among working-class voters."

More: "The Obama campaign is seeking to address a range of festering problems, including the candidate's persistent underperformance among female voters, especially the older ones. It rolled out a women's outreach effort Monday, led by scores of prominent female entrepreneurs, athletes and politicians, including former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright, cosmetics entrepreneur Bobbi Brown and Yahoo! Inc. President Sue Decker.”

“The women will act as surrogates for Obama, advocating his support for issues such as equal pay, expansion of family leave and reduction of health care costs. Prominent women also are flooding the airwaves on Obama's behalf, including Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Govs. Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.), a former Hillary Rodham Clinton backer."

Time's Grunwald looks at the issue of race for Obama -- particularly in the Rust Belt states -- and concludes that he should not listen to those telling him to get angry. "Obama is probably wise to ignore the liberals who keep begging him to drop his air of unflappability and start taking Republican scalps. White America already embraces black celebrities, even ‘flashy’ ones. But it has never really warmed up to an angry one."

While McCain has received a lot of scrutiny for false or misleading ads, the Washington Post argues that Obama’s advertisement hitting McCain for ex-lobbyists working in his campaign is unfair because it says that adviser Charlie Black “lobbies for oil companies,” when he actually LOBBIED for them. “It is fair for the Obama campaign to draw attention to the fact that McCain is surrounded by advisers who ‘have lobbied’ for special interests in the past. (The McCainites point out that some of Obama's advisers are also former lobbyists.) Use of the present tense is out of bounds, however.”