"The right knows Obama is unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun, and a third party would come in then anyway," – Mark Penn, in a Clinton campaign memo.
Read the whole memo. Then watch the McCain campaign. The same smears, the same attempt not to engage Obama’s ideas but to stamp him as a cultural alien. Money quote:
I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.
He told the people of NH yesterday he has a Kansas accent because his mother was from there. His mother lived in many states as far as we can tell—but this is an example of the nonsense he uses to cover this up.
How we could give some life to this contrast without turning negative:
Every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century.
And talk about the basic bargain as about the deeply American values you grew up with, learned as a child and that drive you today. Values of fairness, compassion, responsibility, giving back.
Let’s explicitly own ‘American’ in our programs, the speeches and the values. He doesn’t. Make this a new American Century, the American Strategic Energy Fund. Let’s use our logo to make some flags we can give out. Let’s add flag symbols to the backgrounds.
The Dish 