They’re Off & Running! A Baker’s Dozen Observations On The Obama-McCain Race

Obama must continue to keep things simple, something that he did to great and historic effect during a grueling, bullet-dodging primary campaign, while reminding voters at every turn that a McCain presidency would be the Bush III edition of Nightmare on Elm Street.

Obama’s strategy of campaigning hard early in red states while trying to heal intra-party wounds and selecting a running mate who is a counterbalance to his relative lack of experience makes sense.

While McCain’s life story is salutatory, Obama’s rags-to-success tale also is inspiring. It is important that he help voters try to get beyond his skin color and the fact that he’s really really not a Muslim through bio-based TV commercials.

McCain’s best hope of winning is to succeed in convincing enough voters that he is indeed a maverick by blurring his impeccable conservative bona fides and running hard from the fact he shamelessly voted the Bush line 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent of the time so far this year.

While McCain’s advisors hold Obama in open contempt, Obama must continue to frame McCain as an honorable man but not be afraid to play hardball and get under his notoriously thin skin.

McCain is hopelessly uncharismatic, but he desperately needs a crash course in public speaking after his speech last Tuesday night, which was an unmitigated disaster in contrast to Obama’s primary-ending stem winder of an address.

While Obama is blessed with a powerful speaking style and ability to connect with audiences, as well as get them to open their wallets, he must leaven the pretty talk with a detailed blueprint of how he will take back America without driving it deeper into hock.

There is no reason for Obama to defend fist bumping or the fact that he hung with a guy who did some bad stuff 40 years ago in order to silence right-wing yammerers, but he also cannot abide below-the-belt pushbacks against McCain by wannabe surrogates.

Obama must spend quality time in Iraq while threading the eye of a needle: Extolling the troops while explaining why the Surge’s “success” is illusory and phased troop withdrawals will commence as soon as he takes office.

Obama must address Iran and the Middle East in the context of the Iraq war being the biggest reason for regional instability while discrediting the Bush-McCain policy of bombing first and asking questions later without appearing to be soft on national security.

Obama needs to exploit the wedge issue of Social Security as a way to court elderly and white-collar voters by hammering home the point that McCain would destroy Social Security as we know it through the discredited concept of private savings accounts.

Saddled with a tractor-trailer load of Republican lemons, McCain will have to try to make lemonade. One way to do that is to try to exploit the fact that Democrats will control Congress and as president he would be a counterbalance to their “tax and spend” mentality.

If the campaign plays out as I expect, Obama will squeak by in the popular vote and win the Electoral College by a hair’s breadth, but all bets are off if the economy continues to crap out. In that case you can expect an Obama landslide.