How Obama Gets Down

[alcibiades_mystery]

Make no mistake: the $150,000 shopping spree issue comes straight from the Obama campaign, and it has been directly deployed to stiff-arm the charge that Obama has "too much money." It is an inoculation move, and a brilliant one.

During the primaries, we heard a lot from Clinton surrogates about how the Obama campaign feeds stories to the press while managing to keep its hands clean. I think that is what you're seeing here. The initial $150,000 shopping spree story came out of Politico. If you read it, you see that the story is largely derived from a fairly detailed reading of the financials submitted on Sunday by the McCain campaign, which detail spending in September. Here's what I think happened: Obama had a team on the McCain financials the moment they came out, and they picked through it with a fine tooth comb, likely looking for spending on robocalls or something like that which would have fed the narrative of the weekend. Boy, did they get a gift. They spotted the clothing expenditures and fed the story to Politico.

Why? Very obviously, the Nieman Marcus and Saks expenditures put a crimp in the hockey mom stories, as so many have mentioned. Interestingly, they do so by putting a wedge into precisely the Wall Street/Walmart coalition that has fed the GOP for years.

But more import6antly, we've seen a narrative coming out of the McCain camp and media surrogates over the last week or so, and certain to explode after the mammoth fund-raising announcement on Sunday, that Obama is trying to "buy the election." Needless to say, nobody was saying anything of the sort when the GOPers had a cash advantage, so it was clearly GOP rhetoric. Campbell Brown's lament about the homeless was pure Rove/Senor tripe. But Obama's crew got right in front of it with this Palin shopping spree story. Now nobody can bring up money spent on the campaign without mentioning Palin's $150,000 shopping spree. It is a locked in element of any money narrative.

I don't say this as a negative, but as a positive. Many "concerned" DUers and the usual Worry Brigade was moaning and wailing in September about how Obama 'won't fight." How utterly, utterly wrong they've been. The Obama team counters everything, sometimes on the stump, sometimes in commercials, sometimes with campaign surrogates, and sometimes - like this time - under the table with a sly grin. It's one of the reasons the GOPers are pulling their hair out in frustration: every angle they try to go with gets smacked down double hard. I was expecting, on Sunday, that the money narrative already building toward the end of last week would be the theme for this week. It is, but not in the way the GOP would have liked. For that, you have the Obama political team to thank.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. The Obama campaign will be one studied for years to come

on how he organized and ran it.

[ecstatic]

2. you're probably right. What about the Palin kids traveling story? nt

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. I think that's just AP pretending to be reporters

The Palin shopping spree fits a narrative that the Obama campaign needs to put forth. The Palin "kids traveling" issue is a media narrative.

[unpossibles]

3. well said

And I agree. I think Obama's campaign has been brilliantly run, which goes to show the possibilities for the next 8 years, as long as we don't let them steal too many votes. I think that is one reason the GOP is freaking out; because they can't really counter. They claim that they are on the offensive, but in reality they are just offensive and swinging wildly. It's great, and it's also great how calmly Obama's camp has shut them down consistently and with tact and grace.

YAY!

[RichGirl]

4. No need for extended discussion on this matter.

I can answer if quite simply: Obama got his money exactly the way Tinklenberg. One nasty interview by his hateful apponent got him a million dollars in just a few days. Obama has had constant hateful, nasty comments from McCain/Palin for weeks. The money he has collected is representative the people having had ENOUGH of the nastiness.