You guys are on fire. Interesting stuff.

In other words, hit Obama with a bunch of shit and constantly attack his character, and eventually, people will start to get a negative view of him and his policies. Wow. Shocker. Even more shocking, the idea that this might be a foreign concept to the people running the convention in Denver. Any chance Democratic strategists read this site? Any chance they paid attention to the convention(s) in 2004?

In many of the ads, media analysts have obsessed over the celebrity accusation, ignoring the more troubling mendacious taxation message. This has especially been the case with the Spanish language ads. The political media seem to have overlooked this, and the Obama campaign's response has been limited.

Team Obama needs to engage in a little softening up of their own. This why we have to continue to hit McCain on the houses, out-of-touchness, and the lobbyist connections. And, the Bush-hug photos need to run non-stop. responding to McCain ads here and there just won't cut it.

I think it might be useful to put this focus group into some context. From Thomas Edsall in HuffPost:

The focus group was run by Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, and sponsored by the AARP. There was no emphasis on issues of particular concern to the elderly -- the purpose was rather to probe the views of uncommitted voters in the Denver metropolitan region.

Seventeen of the participants were willing to reveal their 2004 vote. Of them, 12 backed George W. Bush and 5 supported John Kerry.

A little over a quarter of the group, despite their claims of neutrality, voiced opinions suggesting that they are virtually certain to vote for John McCain. A slightly smaller number of the participants appeared to be in Obama's camp.

Hmmmm. "Virtually certain to vote for John McCain" is continually repeated as "undecided voters".

So the setting up of the negative component of the ad, described as "so depressing" by Joe Klein might have produced results that could have been predicted based on the makeup of the "undecideds".

In other words, the crowd scene worked perhaps for people already inclined to react negatively.

Or maybe not. But it seems to be a bit premature to draw conclusions about the impact of the celebrity ad.

Makes u feel proud to be an American when we analyze the sheer stupidity of voters. Barack Obama is still the favorite in the general election, but i'll say this, if this is the kind juvenile thinking among these undecided voters then we are in for a long election night.

Off topic. Anyone has a link to Michelle Obama speech in full?

Also, I know there is a BO video blogspot,can't recall the URL, anyone?

Maybe he should call Harold
Tell him

"My inclination is you have to be careful about attacking McCain" because his life's story buys him deference, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen said in an Associated Press interview. The Republican presidential hopeful was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for more than five years.

I have to sort of disagree. The way to attack McCain isn't through his anger. Unless you're going to be able to show him getting mad, that isn't going to work.

I think the way to him is to call him "confused". Not old... that'll take care of itself, too - its self-evident, if you will. Just every time you say anything about McCain - he's confused. He was confused on how many houses he owns. He was confused on with Czechoslovakia is a country still. He's confusing the Sunni's with the Shi'as. Even Ayers - McCain is confused that Obama could have anything to do with the guy when Obama was only 8 years old!

I think the Bush-McCain pictures aren't helping as much as we think. People want to believe that McCain isn't like Bush. Showing them together - that's not going to do much. Tie him to Republican's, though .... that's a brand in serious need of attacking. Tie the Republican brand around Bush's neck, then attack it relentlessly as dangerous to our country, splash McCain with it full-bore. At the same time, the DNC puts up full-blown optimistic messages about the Democratic brand. Bush is a good target - but it's the Republicans that will still be there when Bush is gone, and they're still going to screw up our country.

Very interesting. What I have observed is that there are many (white) people who find "something unsettling" about Obama, though they can't articulate it. I think, at least for some of these people, it is subliminal racial prejudice at work. The McCain celebrity nonsense works because gives these people an articulable reason not to like Obama. It's a problem Obama will have to overcome and it won't be easy.

BTW: I heard somebody yesterday say that it is quite ironic that Republicans bash Obama for his star-power when their modern hero, Ronald Regan, was an actor known by his political admirers as the Great Communicator.

"Very interesting. What I have observed is that there are many (white) people who find "something unsettling" about Obama, though they can't articulate it."

The word for that is racial prejudice. They can't articulate it either because they are embarassed to, or it is subconscious.

The excuse makers basically are dancing around the elephant in the room. Anyone go overseas lately? Ask anyone anywhere. The whole world knows why Obama has trouble in America. "America is a racist country". Only in America, is it taboo to tell the truth.

Land of the free, home of the brave....

Klein's focus group was spearheaded by Frank Luntz.

I emailed Klein myself about this focus group and his article myself a few minutes ago.

According to Wikipedia about Frank Luntz (and yes, the information is sourced, so go check it out yourself if you want):

In 1997, he was reprimanded by the American Association for Public Opinion Research for refusing to release poll data to support his claimed results "because of client confidentiality". Diane Colasanto, who was president of the AAPOR when it reprimanded Luntz, said, "It is simply wanting to know, How many people did you question? What were the questions? We understand the need for confidentiality, but once a pollster makes results public, the information needs to be public. People need to be able to evaluate whether it was sound research." In 2000 he was censured by the National Council on Public Polls "for allegedly mischaracterizing on MSNBC the results of focus groups he conducted during the [2000] Republican Convention." In September 2004, MSNBC dropped Luntz from its planned coverage of that year's presidential debate, following a letter from Media Matters that outlined Luntz's GOP ties and questionable polling methodology. In a video piece, entertainers and libertarians Penn & Teller lambasted Luntz for his comment that the key to survey polling is "to ask a question in the way that you get the right answer".

He's KNOWN for mischaracterizing information from focus groups. He's got ties to the GOP. And we're actually listening to this shit and taking it seriously? Greg, I'm sorry, but I can't take this seriously. Not coming from a guy like Frank Luntz.

Personally, I think the Britney-Paris ads were focuses at Obama's strongest electorate, that being young voters. This explains why the ads seemed so ridiculous to most adults.

What do younger people view Paris and Britney as? Especially the younger voter block that is primarily voting for Obama. They were huge when these same voters were kids but not only do their persona's seem like little teeny bopper material, even wanting to be seen or heard listening to either of them would be an embaressment.

Of course this is just a theory and I really don't have the tools to measure this.

If McCain can make a significant dent in Obama's popularity with young voters that could be easily swayed from some teeny bopper celebrity, Obama has little chance of winning, since young voter turnout has been one of Obama's strongest suits, apart from of course the African American vote which I don't think McCain has a chance at.

Yes, Luntz's modus operandi is basically manipulating focus groups to provide whatever results Republicans want. He should not be described as a pollster; he was censured by the pollsters' professional society for ethics violations of this kind.

That was pretty interesting stuff. Seems according to this group that the Dems are responding to the MSM and Washington elite - but not to those in the bubble of their daily Middle America lives. You would hope the Dems would have their own focus groups to respond better respond.

But I also don't trust this focus group for a moment. The guy running it is Frank Luntz, GOP message guru and general Dbag.

http://pufferfish.typepad.com/

Klein says: "Since the focus groupers hadn't really picked up on Paris/Britney, they had no idea what Obama was actually responding to."

Obama camp did the same thing with the 3am ad. They hyped it to their disadvantage. Must stop falling into this trap...

Others here have it exactly right: the celebrity and "The One" messiah complex ads are pre-emptive strikes to neutralze the 80,000 person Mile High Speech.

I guarantee that within 48 hours after barack's convention speech, the GOP will be running on YouTube an ad called something like "The One III: The Sermon At Mile High" mocking Obamaphiles and subliminally suggesting Barack as the Antichrist.

Barack hurt himself in this regard by choosing Berlin as the site of his big European speech. The Victory Column where he spoke was moved to its present location by Adolf. 200,000 adoring Germans is a sight that disturbs many in the over-50 crowd.

truthseeker77,

Actually both interpretations of the ad can be truth depending on the eyes of the beholders.

The focus group was comprised of middle of the road independants. The ad may have spoke to them precisely as suggested above.

Inbred idiots and other knee-jerk, Republican leaning folk may find their hearts stirred by the baser intrepetation. We don't know. The rest of the unwashed masses were not tested. Obviously, the ass-bites in the McInsane campaign felt it important to attempt to tie Senator Obama to trite, mindless celebutards.

Directing anger at/flaming the TPM staff is less than warranted in this case. Hike up the big boy/girl panties and appologize.

Look, we know all about Luntz. That's not the point. Here's the point: they've found a brilliant way of exploiting the way the brain works, making powerful unconscious associations between nauseating images (Hilton, Spears) and Obama's name and policies. I'm a cognitive scientist by profession. This is a very, very clever technique--one which goes back a long way: just read Orwell (the Emanuel Goldstein scenes).

We're up against people smarter and much more ruthless than our campaign "experts". Our sense of ethics amounts to unilateral disarmament.
At this point, we're struggling to respond to one volley after another--Britney, Berlin, Ayers. Maybe we can learn these techniques for 2012.