Changing the change campaign

Joe Trippi:

The hunger for change was that powerful. The hunger for a different kind of post-partisan politics that would shake up Washington was overpowering “experience” and “more of the same.”

Now it seems so obvious. It is amazing that so few (including the Obama campaign) saw it coming.

John McCain and his team had to make a decision. Run as the more experienced ticket, and run smack into Barack Obama’s trap of change vs. more of the same just as Clinton had. Or pick Sarah Palin and run as the original mavericks that really will shake up Washington.

If you are an advisor to McCain, faced with that choice, you urge McCain to pick Palin.

But now it’s the Obama campaign's turn to learn the lesson of the Clinton campaign. The Obama campaign looks at all its polling data and research and in a race between change and four more years of George Bush, change wins big. So it keeps trying to frame the race as four more years of George Bush and more of the same vs. change and cannot understand why it isn’t pulling away.

It’s not just Palin.

The brilliance of the McCain strategy and messaging is that it includes a trap for Obama. To push back on the McCain claim of “country first” and “the original mavericks who will shake up Washington,” the Obama campaign’s attack of “four more years of George Bush” becomes a problem. In a country that yearns for post-partisan change the Obama campaign risks sounding too partisan and like more of the same.

It would not surprise me if in one of the debates Obama or Biden uses the “you voted with George Bush and supported him 93% of the time,” and it’s John McCain that retorts “that’s the kind of partisan attack the American people are sick of….”.

What worked for Obama is now working for McCain. The important lesson for the Obama campaign is that the Clinton campaign kept looking at its research, kept stressing experience and did not adjust until it was too late. The McCain campaign has not only adjusted to the Obama message, they have changed the terrain.

Now the Obama campaign and its allies need to understand that in arguing that John McCain represents a third term of George Bush and the GOP agenda it is the Obama campaign that risks sounding partisan in a country that yearns for the post-partisanship of “country first” and “shaking things up in Washington.”

...

While this is a little too much of inside baseball, it does give a smart Democrat's perspective on how the ground has changed under Obama's campaign. But there is another element that should not be overlooked.

Beyond the Palin pick, the energy debate has decisively turned against the Democrats. That is another reason that the congressional races are showing the Republicans more competitive and in some cases leading in the likely voter category. It is the reasons that Democrats are showing some flexibility finally on offshore drilling.

But McCain started coming up in the polls before the Palin pick because of the energy issue which is the most important element of the debate on the economy. If Democrats focus on "change" and don't change their policy of strangling energy production they deserve to lose.

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