More Obama vs. Kerry Analogies

by Chris Bowers [courtesy of Open Left - Front Page]

In the comments to the post just below this one, where I compared Obama's current general election positioning to Kerry's four years ago, leshrac55 makes an astute observation:

What's clear from that graph is that Kerry received very little bounce from his "Don't attack Bush" convention (July 26-29) and that Bush received a massive bounce from his "Let's only bash Kerry" convention (Aug 30-Sept 2) that couldn't quite be overcome in time for November.  Who knows, maybe if Kerry had had a good convention, Bush's massive bounce would've been overcome in the end.

The lesson?  BASH THE OPPOSING CANDIDATE AT YOUR CONVENTION.

Let us hope that the Democrats don't fall for this again.

Indeed, according to that graph, the election seems to have been decided not by swiftboating, but instead by the different bounces that Kerry and Bush received as a result of their conventions. While Bush went up by about 5%, Kerry stayed flat. In an election decided by about 2.5%, that was the entire difference. If the bounces had been even, then Kerry would have won by the same amount Bush ended up winning by.

Leshrac55's observation is backed up by a comparison between how Kerry and Obama is handled taking over the DNC and attacking McCain:

A Democrat with knowledge of the Obama campaign's rapid takeover of the Democratic National Committee today points out to me that this is partly about ensuring that the Illinois Senator avoids the fate of John Kerry, whose 2004 presidential campaign was hampered by behind-the-scenes battles with the DNC.

You may recall that the DNC chair in 2004 was one Terry McAuliffe, and in his book, McAuliffe wrote about the back-stage infighting between the DNC and Kerry camps. McAuliffe said that Kerry's aides had wanted to oust him; that relations were chilly throughout the campaign; and that the Kerry camp muzzled him when he wanted to assail George W. Bush's military record.

The Obama campaign is clearly obsessed with maintaining a tight, top-down organizational and message structure. So far, as TPM Election central notes, the Obama campaign has been "famously devoid of (publicly visible) infighting and/or leaking." Last month, they put the clamps on progressive 527's, and now they are taking over the DNC. Virtually the entire general election messaging will run through the senior leadership of the Obama campaign, and no one else. This makes the Obama campaign something of a living paradox, as it sports the largest grassroots corps in electoral history, combined with the tightest top-down message structure in recent Democratic presidential election history.

Let's hope that this top-down messaging includes a willingness to really attack McCain during the Democratic convention (and, of course, before and after the convention as well). Kerry's focus on positive messaging back in 2004 was one of the reasons he was left vulnerable to the Republican Noise Machine. While the campaign launched a "fight the smears" operation yesterday, pushing back isn't enough. As the old saying does, one of the best defenses is a good offense. If Obama can put McCain even more on the defensive than he already is, then he has the opportunity to build a truly substantial lead over the summer.