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Now, Democrats target McCain

The party's 30-second spot highlights US economic woes.

from the April 25, 2008 edition

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"It is a unique time when you don't have a [primary] opponent," says Brian Rogers, a McCain spokesman. "It's an opportunity that we're trying to take advantage of" by showcasing McCain's life story and visiting Democratic strongholds.

But that may become harder now as the Democrats – with or without a nominee – try to blunt his appeal. The new television ad and other efforts starting this week are an outgrowth of focus groups and polling the DNC conducted in 17 swing states in late March.

The party sought to identify what independents and other voters critical to the general election see as McCain's weaknesses and came away with three main lines of attack: that McCain is a continuation of the Bush era; that he is a Washington insider out of touch with ordinary Americans; and that he is not the "straight-talker" his campaign claims, but an opportunist too ready to shift positions on immigration reform, campaign finance, and the Bush tax cuts.

"The McCain campaign likes to say that the McCain brand is well-known," says Ms. Finney. "What we found is that contrary to that, there's a lot swing voters don't know about McCain."

Mr. Rogers, of the McCain campaign, dismissed the ad and other efforts as "typical political attacks and distortion."

The audience for the Democrats' anti-McCain message is not just swing voters, analysts say. Just as important is a Democratic coalition strained by the push and pull of the nomination fight.

"The Democrats face a pretty serious risk that either African-Americans, younger Americans, or blue-collar men are going to be discouraged when their candidate isn't nominated," says Tom Hollihan, an expert on media and politics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. "There's a strong motivation to communicate that whether you favored Obama or Clinton, you do have a dog in this fight; that a Republican is your real adversary."

The campaigns of the Democratic candidates have invoked McCain, too, but often in the context of which is better equipped to defeat him in November.

In recent days, however, Clinton and Obama appear to be taking more frequent aim at McCain's record. Obama named him no fewer than seven times in his speech conceding Pennsylvania Tuesday night. McCain's economic policy address in Pittsburgh last week occasioned a rare moment of cooperation between the campaigns of the two Democratic candidates. To rebut McCain, the Democratic National Committee convened a conference call for reporters with top economic advisors to both Clinton and Obama.

"That's something the Democratic Party and both of these candidates need to start doing," says Martin Johnson, a political scientist at the University of California, Riverside. "Presumably, they have more in common than they have with McCain and that's got to be a part of their message."

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