Journalist "VCube" on Senator Barack Obama

From VCube: 

"Hey folks. Let's chill and discuss a bit, eh? Save this for a
contemplative, long read.

Seems like Hillary is holding her lead, or gaining in some areas, and
the MSM is extremely lax at pointing out just why that is. That's
frustrating as hell, but that's why we're here. To make Obama look
good 'cause he IS good, not to make his opponents look bad except in
direct but broad comparison.

Simply stating that all his opponents are still taking PAC and K
Street money makes them look bad these days, to average people, who
are our target audience. State that generally and move on. If you love
digging for details on specific candidates and working PR, see if they
need vols for the campaign's opponent-research-group - it's already
formed and working and could use help, no doubt. It has also gotten
into big trouble for attacking Hillary and her donors, and won't be
taking that tactic again soon. Details later [again].

Let's recap Group's goals. We need good press for Obama. We need to
counter his opponents very broadly and generally when they attack him,
spending much more time on Obama's positive qualities and actions than
on the opponents' faults. Why not take them head on? Because they have
PACs and lobbyists that manipulate the media much more expertly than
we can. Every specific donor/PAC/lobby we attack is one that already
can't buy Obama, so they want to hit him hard, and they've got the
high-paid PR flaks to do it. Don't give them the opening unless the
Campaign has! Who has the Campaign aimed for? Pharmaceutical and
energy and insurance lobbyists - fair game, everyone hates them.

We need to correct factual errors and counter obviously hostile op eds
by, again, focusing on Obama's positive points. That's a lot to do
already in the Response department, and it covers blogs as well as
MSM. In all we do, the attitude must be to take on politics-as-usual
generally, not our opponent personally. The opponent, whoever it is,
is politics-as-usual, meaning paid-for by lobbyists and PACs; Obama is
the people's candidate.

Research on opponents is done by the campaign, by all campaigns.
Nothing any opponent has ever received/done is not on file at the
campaign office. If we want to support the campaign for Obama, rather
than a campaign against any other Dem candidate (remember, the Dem
Party voters who will take offense at our tearing apart the one who
might be elected instead of Obama?), we should follow the campaign's
lead on picking our fights and venues. We can reinvent the wheel, or
trust in the campaign's jet propulsion laboratory. Yes, they made a
mistake already; if we don't learn from it, it will become exponential
because they're waiting for our mistakes.

Donors are fair game because it's a question of influence and ethics,
a major campaign issue. Of course, it has to be done carefully. Case
in Point: The Campaign itself now has problems with the Indian
American community (thanks to lobbyist and PAC-prodded MSM) for
stating facts, dug out of public records by the Campaign's
opponent-research staff, about the Indian PACs, because the Indian
community is not the only one that has PACs influencing Hillary, but
the memo in question only singled out that community. They
sarcastically used the same stereotypical language Hillary did, but it
boomeranged and was attributed to them instead of her! That opens the
campaign up to charges of discrimination and stereotyping.

This is a mistake the pros at the campaign's opponent-research group
made. Fact is that the only reason the memo got out is because someone
took it from Obama's campaign office directly to Hillary's! She then
took it to the NYT. The Indian PAC that's raised at least a million
for her this year and other Indian fundraisers wrote letters to claim
the entire Indian American community's offended, to much MSM play. I
personally don't feel qualified to risk trying any attack-tactic that
could backfire so badly on Obama. The opponents are playing for keeps.

Lesson learned:  The Campaign reiterates it wants no dirty pool. This
means all personal attacks are off the table, including criticisms of
people's religion, the candidates' families, and political attacks on
donors based on their ethnicity/race/religion, as Gretchen points out,
and of course their gender and sexual preference.

Correct (as in Acceptable) Targets:
General statements about big money donors and politics, with nothing
more specific than the industries they represent, and specifics about
Obama's totally different fundraising.
Speeches by the candidates contradicting themselves.
Facts to dispel claims about Obama that are dead wrong, e.g., Obama is
not Muslim at all, but a very devout Christian and member of ***
Church of Christ (I forgot the name right now). The school he attended
was a public school in Indonesia, a Muslim country that's never had
hostilities with the U.S., a public school which did not teach or
enforce any religious doctrine whatsoever (CNN has clip of school
rep).  We could have added: No other candidate was friends with so
many Muslim children, in their own country that's never attacked nor
plans to attack us, and in a public school setting where children were
of all different religions and nationalities. This would've been
appealed to parents who purposely send their kids to
multicultural/multiethnic schools, but again, those aren't the folks
who most need to know Obama's one of us. The savvy folks can see the
facts once the major lie's corrected.

Image is Everything in Politics. Ugly, hypocritical, but fact. We have
to remember that we can make Obama appear ugly, mean, angry, vengeful,
petty, vindictive, just by how we say what we say. Every single
comment we make on any public site can be taken out of context,
plastered all over anti-Obama sites, and picked up on by MSM. Wouldn't
you hate to see your name attached to a thoughtless comment that got
him so much bad press? Think how badly his opponent-research staff
feel for writing something that was never meant to be
publicly-associated with his campaign and having that happen!

One of the most powerful images we can project is one of reasonable,
caring people who want to build bridges, not spit at our opponents
from our side while we burn down the bridge. Setting aside the
political culture of screaming over each other's voices and tearing
down someone's character for playing hardball politics will be a
welcome change in the political landscape. We can show we're grown by
expecting all the nasty funk that goes w/politics, and keeping
ourselves and each other in check so we don't succuumb to a
retaliation-and-tactics-be-damned mentality.

We have to get this campaign on the ground and out of the
political-sports-arena realm. Right now Obama is not strong enough
with women, poor people and people with no college education. These
are the people who need to know what they are losing by letting PACs
and lobbyists speak for them, and what they will gain speaking
directly to Obama. They have to know no PACs or lobbyists will put him
in power, only we can. They have to know he will hire no one from
PACs, or lobbyists, or let anyone in his administration work in the
field they were in before or plan to return to, for at least two years
to close the lobbyist/DC revolving door. What people want is to know
this will be their President, not the special interests'.

A fraction of America blogs itself blurry; the vast majority out there
are working, cooking, cleaning, commuting, kid-rearing folks who want
to know the character of the candidate. They haven't got time to open
20 screens of political-insider info, but we have to get them
registered as Democrats and voting for Obama in the Primaries in less
than 8 months, people. That's who we should keep in mind as our
audience when we respond, not just the political hardball players - as
I have to remind myself constantly. The players will do as they're
paid to, but I have to use my access to the average folk to let them
know it's all about them, not the politics, not the plays.

Summary (sorry I'm so long-winded):
Point out donor facts generally and not as a personal attack, but as
business-as-usual that Obama will stop! People aren't so stupid they
won't make the connection when you simply state: The other candidates
all accept PAC and federal lobbyist contributions, which total
millions of dollars for each candidate, EXCEPT Obama. In Obama's
campaign, if individual donors and/or fundraisers are not as clean as
we'd like and hope, those funds are RETURNED or donated to charities.
No matter how you add it up, those few individual self-serving
fundraisers do not compare to the millions of dollars all the other
candidates EXCEPT Obama are taking, all throughout the primaries, and
that they will continue to take through the final election. All the
millions being raised by K Street lobbyists, PACs and 527s are going
to all the other candidates except Obama, list the facts from
opensecrets.org. Let the public decide which is chicken and egg in the
fact that the biggest recipient is also the frontrunner.

Deborah and all the rest of us who are tempted to go on the attack,
remember that Hillary is already extremely disliked by many more
voters than any other candidate. Remember also that Obama is the most
liked by most voters, and let's work to keep it that way, no matter
how p.o.'d we get. The cleaner we run our campaign, the more it will
make Hillary nuts, and the more she'll alienate voters herself by
sheer comparison to her tactics. Let's not get in the mud with the
lady.

~V"

(written to Obama's supporters as a remainder to stay above the fray and embrace his philosophies.)

(You can read more of VCube's work at:

http://vcubed.newsvine.com/_news/2007/06/22/797323-top-official-at-naders-old-group-sees-obama-as-most-reliable-good-government-ally-tpmcafe )