IF nominated, Obama will be forced to play "Gotcha" whether he likes it or not!
Submitted by Mitch Dworkin on April 21, 2008 - 9:00am.
Rapid Response
Hello Everyone:
Right below is an Obama campaign e mail from April 17 (right after the debate last week) titled "Gotcha" which says "You can send a message that politics doesn't have to be played this way."
Barack Obama did NOT seem to like the questions that were asked to him in the Democratic debate last week which even Chris Matthews documented in this Hardball video:
April 17: Obama takes issue with debate
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24189405#24189405 (04:14)
Here is the transcript of the relevant portion of this video with Obama's complaints over the questions he did not like that were asked to him in the debate:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24201643/
'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Thursday, April 17
Read the transcript to the Thursday show
"As we discussed earlier, Barack Obama took a beating at last night‘s presidential debate. And, on more than one occasion, he took pretty clear umbrage with the questions. He didn‘t like being asked some of these questions.
Let‘s listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: This is the kind of manufactured issue that our politics has become obsessed with.
But, Charlie, I have discussed this extensively.
But that was on something entirely different, Charlie. That was on a different statement.
You know, George, look, if it‘s not this, then it would be something else.
I think what‘s important is to make sure that we don‘t get so obsessed with gaffes.
For us to be obsessed with this—these kinds of errors, I think, is a mistake.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: I wonder what we make of that.
Anyway, how many times did Barack Obama take issue with the questions that were given to him? At least seven times last night on that ABC debate, seven expressions of disapprove with the very questions being put to him. That‘s tonight‘s “Big Number...”
I do not like to have to give bad news but people definitely need to hear the truth as opposed to what feels good for the moment but is not true and will hurt in the long run!
Bill and Hillary Clinton are absolutely right in my opinion about Barack Obama's lack of toughness IF he is the nominee:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0804/18/ldt.01.html
LOU DOBBS TONIGHT
Democrats Can't Decide who is More Electable; McCain Releases Tax Information; White House Defends NAFTA Amid Democratic Criticism
Aired April 18, 2008 - 19:00 ET
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: "Much of the first 45 minutes were questions about Obama's patriotism, his controversial pastor, and his characterization of small-town Pennsylvanians as bitter. Clinton is trying to paint Obama's criticism about the substance of the debate as evidence he's not tough enough for the top job.
H. CLINTON: Having been in the White House for eight years and seeing what happens in terms of the pressures and the stresses on a president, that was nothing.
MALVEAUX: Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, added this.
WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: But you know, this is a contact sport. If you don't want to play, keep your uniform off..."
IF Barack Obama is the nominee (hopefully he will NOT be), then he will definitely be forced to play "Gotcha" politics by the other side whether he likes it or not. That is just a fact because this is how the GOP attack machine operates as their standard operating procedure in their efforts to try and win elections!
Here is the Hardball video link from Friday, April 18 where Republican strategist Todd Harris bluntly promised that the GOP would bring up in the general election all of the issues that Obama does not want to talk about right now IF he is the nominee:
April 18: How to run against Obama?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24205655#24205655 (05:39)
Todd Harris did not try to soften anything and he was very direct about how the GOP attack machine plans to attack Obama IF he is the nominee!
Republican strategist Roger Stone made many of the same points that Todd Harris did IF Obama is the nominee:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/14821
VIDEO: Republican strategist Roger Stone discusses GOP strategy against Obama!
Submitted by Mitch Dworkin on February 24, 2008 - 4:27am.
The fact of the matter is that Barack Obama has absolutely no clue, no concept, and no understanding of the kind of swiftboating that he will be in for from the other side IF he is the nominee as I have credibly documented:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/15161
Mark Halperin explains what Obama does NOT understand about being swiftboated!
Submitted by Mitch Dworkin on March 31, 2008 - 11:59pm.
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/14337
Obama showed in the Jan. 5 debate that he does NOT understand enemy attacks!
Submitted by Mitch Dworkin on January 7, 2008 - 4:32am.
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/13578
ANALYSIS: Why Rush Limbaugh is so powerful & what many media pundits do not get!
Submitted by Mitch Dworkin on October 10, 2007 - 1:47am.
Obama will also NOT be able to cry foul or unfair to anyone like how he is doing right now in the Democratic primary when these attacks hit him very hard in the general election IF he is the nominee:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/15195
Mitt Romney is right that Obama "can't be calling foul or unfair" IF nominated!
Submitted by Mitch Dworkin on April 5, 2008 - 5:46am.
The bottom line about this is that IF Obama is the nominee, then he will be just like a lone student in a school yard full of hardened bullies where there are no teachers and there are no parents for him to run to for protection.
If Obama cannot handle it, then he will definitely get beaten up very badly by these bullies. That is exactly what happened to John Kerry in 2004, Al Gore in 2000, and to Michael Dukakis in 1988!
What in the world does Obama think that he can do in 2008 that Kerry, Gore, and Dukakis could not do before him? Being able to give good speeches will NOT be able to save him from the hardened bullies on the other side. These bullies will pick fights with him no matter how much he begs them not to and whether or not he fights back because they are very desperate to hold on to the White House and keep power!
These GOP bullies on the other side (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and company) operate under the exact same principles that the Terminator operated in the 1984 movie. They cannot be reasoned with or bargained with, they feel no pity, and they will absolutely NOT stop attacking him until he is defeated!
Barack Obama can no more ask the other side to play nice than Elizabeth Edwards did when she asked hardened bully Ann Coulter to play nice and when she got a blunt "No" as her answer:
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/12576
ANALYSIS: John & Elizabeth Edwards did NOT "fight back" against Ann Coulter!
Submitted by Mitch Dworkin on July 5, 2007 - 2:45am.
Edwards to Coulter: Stop personal attacks
June 26: Elizabeth Edwards phones into Hardball to “politely” ask Ann Coutler to stop the personal attacks on her family.
Watch video
Obama refusing more debates with Hillary because he did not like the questions is a joke. What is he going to do in the general election if he is debating McCain and if he does not like the questions in the first debate? Is he going to refuse to participate in the next two debates because he did not like the questions?
Hillary Clinton understands all of this because she has already been through it. She and Bill Clinton have proven that they are tough enough to effectively fight back against the attacks that will come from the other side!
Change is only change when you can get elected and Obama probably cannot get elected if he is making the exact same mistakes that others in the past made by not understanding how to fight back against the GOP attack machine. Hillary is the true "change candidate" because she can get elected and implement the changes that are needed while Obama probably cannot!
This is what all Democratic primary voters and superdelegates must understand BEFORE this primary is over!
Mitch Dworkin
http://www.securingamerica.com/
http://securingamerica.com/ccn/node/10756
StopIranWar.com: "War is not the answer"
Submitted by Wes Clark on February 21, 2007 - 11:40am.
http://www.securingamerica.com/ccn/node/7191
Listen to Gen. Wes Clark fight for Dems on Sean Hannity's radio program: An excellent example for all of us to follow and what we all need to be doing to help fight back against extreme right wing Neocon smear propaganda!
--------------------
Subj: Gotcha
Date: 4/17/2008 1:07:06 PM Central Daylight Time
From:
Sent from the Internet (Details)
Mitch --
Did you see the debate last night?
If you did, you saw more gotcha politics and distractions than questions about the pressing issues affecting our country.
In fact, it took more than 45 minutes before Barack was asked about the economy, health care, or foreign policy.
Regrettably, Senator Clinton seemed all too comfortable with that type of debate. She's running a 100% negative campaign in Pennsylvania, taking every opportunity to make personal and discredited attacks against Senator Obama.
You can send a message that politics doesn't have to be played this way.
Make your first donation today, and someone who's already given will match whatever amount you decide to give. You can double your impact, and you'll even get to see the name and town of the fellow supporter matching your first online gift.
Will you make a $25 donation now?
https://donate.barackobama.com/match
Senator Clinton's false, negative attacks are exactly the kind of say-anything, do-anything politics that the American people are tired of.
That's why polls show that the majority of Americans think she's running the most negative campaign, and 58% of voters do not find her honest or trustworthy.
Barack Obama wants to end the politics of division and distraction in Washington so we can bring about real change for ordinary Americans.
The stakes are too high to play the same old games. More than 1.3 million supporters have responded to Barack's message of change, and with your help we can reach 1.5 million by May 6th.
Make a donation of any amount today, and it will be matched by a previous donor who has pledged to double your impact:
http://my.barackobama.com/match
Thank you for your support,
David
David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America
Paid for by Obama for America
documentary about responding quickly and fighting back against enemy attacks to negatively define you as a candidate!
Campbell Brown did an excellent job with this documentary in my opinion and she gave Democrats like Obama a very fair warning of what will happen to them if they do not understand this point:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0711/28/se.02.html
CNN LIVE EVENT/SPECIAL
Campaign Killers: Why Do Negative Ads Work?
Aired November 28, 2007 - 23:00 ET
"(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I served with John Kerry.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I served with John Kerry.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam.
CAMPBELL BROWN, HOST (voice-over): It was a minor ad buy in just seven inexpensive media markets.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Swift boat. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Swift boat.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: That swift boat...
BROWN: But it became the dominant news story of the 2004 campaign.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry lied.
BROWN: The attack didn't come from a campaign but rather a group of Vietnam vets attacking the candidate who had billed himself as a war hero.
STEPHANIE CUTTER, KERRY '04 COMMUNICATIONS DIR.: When I first saw the ads, I thought, this is crazy. There's no way that these accusations are going to hold up.
BROWN: Stephanie Cutter was John Kerry's communications director.
CUTTER: The old rule of crisis communications is that you don't respond to an attack, otherwise you elevate it.
BROWN: It took two weeks for Kerry to speak out.
SEN. JOHN KERRY (D-MA), 2004 PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: They're not telling the truth. They're a front for a Bush campaign.
BROWN: But by then the damage was done. CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider.
WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: People figured, well, if he's not answering the ads, the charges, they must be true.
BROWN: What was especially troubling to some was that Naval records and eyewitness accounts by other sailors contradicted just about every claim the swift boat vets made. But it didn't seem to matter.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The ad was misleading.
BROWN: John Gere (ph) is a political scientist from Vanderbilt University.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The real problem with the swift boat ad isn't the content of the ad, per se, it's the fact -- the attention the news media gave it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They served their country.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It actually got more attention than the Iraq War. That strikes me as a problem because the Iraq War was the big issue in 2004. Swift boat wasn't.
BROWN: Yet the swift boat ad may well have been the lethal blow to Kerry's campaign. The attack has even added a new term to the political lexicon, swift-boating a candidate. It also demonstrated the power of independent groups, the damage they can do while allowing the candidate they support to claim innocence...
BROWN: Experts say Dukakis ignored the basic rules of campaign combat. When attacked, attack back. Don't let them turn a positive, for example, his environmental record, into a negative. And always, always remember any picture can come back to haunt you. Tried and true strategies that have been used for centuries...
BROWN: Fast forward now to 2004, when technology once again changed the battlefield.
JOHN EDWARDS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you have any question about what John Kerry's made of --
BROWN: Swift Boat's power was magnified by the nonstop play it got on the Internet, blogs and 24-hour cable news.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- for that injury.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: John Kerry lied to get his bronze star. I know. I was there. I saw what happened.
BROWN: There was plenty of evidence to contradict the ad, but it didn't matter. The charges seemed to stick.
MCKINNON: I knew it was going to have a huge impact, and the only surprise was that the Kerry campaign didn't respond quicker.
STEPHANIE CUTTER, KERRY CAMPAIGN COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: In retrospect, we probably should have had him respond earlier. And there was much debate about that in the campaign.
BROWN: Stephanie Cutter, Kerry's communications director --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Navy documented John Kerry's heroism --
BROWN: Says the campaign did put out a response to the attack.
VANESSA KERRY, KERRY-EDWARDS 2004: Which wound do you want to see? Which scar do you need to see to prove --
BROWN: But that they underestimated the power of the new media environment.
CUTTER: We didn't understand at that point the power of right wing blogs, how that seeps over to Fox News, gets covered by the mainstream media, and seeps out into the general public. By the time you're responding to an attack like that, the damage is already done.
DUKAKIS: When something like that happens, you've got to put responsibility for it squarely in the lap of your opponent.
We go through these cycles over and over again.
BROWN: From the man who made his share of mistakes, some words of advice for surviving the attacks to come.
DUKAKIS: Any candidate who is running for the presidency of the United States, particularly on the Democratic side, has got to expect them. They're going to be coming. They already are...
BROWN: With the 2008 presidential election now less than a year away, there are more viral attack videos being uploaded every day. Search Youtube, and you can find Rudy Giuliani dressed in drag and John Edwards combing his hair.
Campaigns, though, are fighting back. For example, Hillary Clinton now has an entire website dedicated to rapid responses to issues and attacks that come out of nowhere..."
he is the nominee:
April 15: Mitt Romney on impact of candidate's 'bitter' remarks on presidential race
• Videos: Part 1 | Part 2
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=b01434bd-f0fe-4970-9cd2-bafdf266d930&sMPlaylistID= (07:21)
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=eba4fed7-729a-4bb8-a54c-395d805ab034&sMPlaylistID= (05:34)
April 14, 2008: Former Bush adviser on Rev. Wright's comments about FOX News
• Videos: Part 1 | Part 2
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=5aac1af3-f34f-44cb-99b6-f7b50ad0f767&sMPlaylistID= (07:08)
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=30736055-76d3-408c-a861-eaa6e32cc825&sMPlaylistID= (07:17)
April 9, 2008: Karl Rove dives deeper into Obama's association with an admitted terrorist
• Videos: Part 1 | Part 2
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=a042ad31-c4da-441b-8a95-1909a6e3508b&sMPlaylistID= (06:32)
http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=8d2d8a91-aa8d-4cfd-9908-325e4dcb118e&sMPlaylistID= (01:21)
The time for Democratic primary voters and superdelegates to consider this information about Obama is RIGHT NOW before the primary is over because IF Obama is the nominee, then the GOP attack machine will negatively define him as a candidate with this!
These Posts are so true. Obama will face so many charges (both real and made up) it will make all our heads spin. And I'm just talking about "personal" type attacks - that's not even to mention the simple fact that he is, by any definition in today's politics, and ultra-Liberal politician. To think that of the two prospective nominees Hillary Clinton is the most electable. Way to go Dems! Maybe Iraq will allow you to win by default - but don't bet the sub-prime mortgage on it.
Rick Sloan, communications director of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers outlined a probable scenario titled "What is Rove Up To?" (4/19/08)ABCNews.com Politics) centered on Ayers. Ayers seems like a minimal issue. In the hands of Rove and co. it becomes one of the fast-moving torpedo-laden boats unleashed. How will Mr. Change play this game? Ignore it hoping it will go away? What about Rezco, Khalidi, JW, bittergate and the wimpy performance?
This valuable lesson which James Carville gave to Jamal Simmons about how powerful that the GOP attack machine is from the other side is very important for ALL Democrats to fully understand:
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0803/30/le.01.html
CNN LATE EDITION WITH WOLF BLITZER
Interview With Senators Bill Nelson, Mel Martinez
Aired March 30, 2008 - 11:00 ET
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: "Joining us now to talk about the Clinton/Obama contest and the implications for a prolonged primary fight, two guests, Democratic strategist James Carville, who's a Clinton supporter, and Democratic strategist Jamal Simmons is an Obama supporter. Guys, thanks for coming in...
CARVILLE: You know, I don't think this campaign has been particularly negative. I've probably said the most negative thing in the whole campaign. I think this campaign is, by and large, and particularly these candidates, have sort of conducted themselves affably. But if somehow or another, Senator Obama's campaign thinks that if they get this nomination, that somehow the Hillary attack machine is something, they're crazy.
I know these guys on her Republican side. And I know Charlie Black. I know Rick Davis. They don't care what The New York Times thinks. They don't care what Keith Olbermann thinks. They don't care.
They're going to go out -- this is powder puff stuff compared to the stuff that we're going to see in the general. And as opposed to just this constant whine of how negative the Clinton campaign is and everything, better be getting ready for a whole different ball game, because these guys are not concerned about this kind of stuff.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: A fair point, Jamal.
SIMMONS: Sure.
BLITZER: If Barack Obama can't take the heat from Hillary Clinton and James Carville and their allies, it's going to get a whole lot worse once -- if he gets the nomination...
CARVILLE: But I can understand -- if they -- let me -- I can take them around to right-wing world. These people don't care. They're not intimidated. And they're not interested -- and I think this campaign has by and large been relatively civil. I think it has by and large been way within the parameter of a hard-fought campaign.
What sort of concerns me, and I have said it every juncture, by the way, and Jamal knows this, that if Senator Obama is a nominee, that I would be the first in line to support him. I am just concerned, from what I see coming out of that campaign, that they're not quite aware of what they're getting ready to get hit with..."