Well, I just donated to the Obama campaign and watched this as I was doing so. It's good.

I donated just now too. Btw, that would be an awesome ad.. No voice over or fancy Madison Avenue PR firm ad is necessary ... Obama in his own words is powerful enough.

I don't know if the negative ads from McCain are supposed to pull people from Obama to McCain or simply rile up the base. Right now, for the non-extreme right, it's McCain (yawn) vs Obama (meh). It needs to be McCain (hoorah!) vs Obama (BOOOOO!). These ads may be a vehicle to try and push that.

However, either way, I think that the first :58 of this clip would make for a perfect ad (with :02 for "I'm Barack Obama and I approve this message"). No fancy graphics. No cutting to cheezy stock footage. Just one candidate, at a podium, tearing his opponent to oratorical shreds.

A one-minute ad is a little bit unusual and more expensive, but McCain has proved that all you need to do is show the ad a couple of times and the media will cover it for the rest of the news cycle. Buys in Florida, Michigan and other major battlegrounds, you've got local news coverage with the people you want to target anyways.

It will produce a predictable GOP press release immediately thereafter: McCain challenged Obama to 10 town-hall debates immediately blah blah blah. Counter-punch equally predictable: just because we're not in an organized forum doesn't mean you have to go negative, we could still talk about the issues and so on and so forth.

I think the important thing is that Obama immediately follow an ad like this with substantive ads, attacking McCain's attacks on Obama. Offshore drilling, tax cuts, being liberal, etc. etc. Show why your position is correct and McCain's isn't.

After chastising your opponent for being negative and not talking about the issues, you have to talk about the issues. If they refuse to come up to your level, you have the high ground and can hammer mercilessly. If they come up, you have issues on your side. Win-win-win-win-win.

awesome rebuttle they should definitely make it into an ad.

[off topic, mydd has digressed once again. how sad]

I am sort of amazed how quickly some in the media are openly distressed by McCain's tactics. Andrea Mitchell probably knows him very well and she is pretty appalled these days.

Obama is very defensive about attacks on his race and has been fully expecting them, though I've never thought it was the message taken from the ads. The emails, yes, but not the opposing campaign. He needs to regroup.

But... I don't think that Mccain was any less offensive, nor should he be sympathized with. This is what happens when someone with integrity casts it aside. They become a thousand times more evil because they have no integrity to discover. And to be completely frank, McCain is no better than a mangy dog right now. The hell with his experience. He's a bitter, angry old man who can't even remember his own platform. Obama deserves to slap him in the face for what he's said.

Agree run this as an ad. It's enormously powerful makes Obama look grown up but vvery real.

Obama is a very good counterpuncher.  He should be able to make mincemeat of McCain's attacks now that he is back in the same time zone as Angry John.

Patrick's campaign - there was a point when he made an ad that was Duval Patrick talking into the camera basically saying that he was going to be smeared but don't believe the smears, they aren't true.

It was very effective...just a thought.

I'm going to email this to all of my associates who email me jokes for stupid, old conservatives (I am a smart, old dyed-in-the-wool liberal), and their gigantic joke email lists. Please let me know if you have any enhancement suggestions:

Roll over the DOJ seal, and say the USA DOJ Pledge of Allegiance (unless you're a traitor, that is).

http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/analysis/too ns/2008/07/30/mitchell/index.html#

I could not agree more.  This should be an ad, and their response to McCain's attack.

And there should be an ad (if there isn't already) hitting McCain on getting that oil money when he switched his position to call for offshore drilling.