Should Obama and Clinton Go After John McCain
Kevin Sullivan notices that quite some progressive bloggers call on both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to stop attacking each other and to, instead, focus on the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain. “While this may seem like a good idea in a cerebral sort of way,” Kevin writes, “it presents challenges for both Democrats.” In order to know what ‘challenges’ Kevin’s aiming at, I’d say head on over to Independent Liberal. Below follows my take on it.
Again, first read Kevin’s post; I agree with him, but I won’t repeat his points. There’s simply no use in doing so.
But I do have some additional thoughts I wanted to write down: I think that the Democrats should be focused on each other right now. The fact of the matter is that the race isn’t between Obama-Clinton-McCain… for the two Democrats it’s strictly… between them. To them, McCain shouldn’t matter. Not at this point in time. They’ll months to go after John McCain if they win. Now isn’t necessary.
On the other hand, going after McCain would make sense in so far that the Democrat who does so, basically presents him- or herself as the nominee or at least as the frontrunner. As far as I’m concerned, the race for the Democratic nomination is still wide open, but the person who could play the role of the anti-McCain best is Senator Barack Obama; after all, he’s leading in delegates and he has won more states.
O, and – to a degree – he and McCain are going after the same votes.
All in all, though, I agree with Kevin that it’s better for the two Democrats to ignore McCain for now. It also has to be pointed out that as long as they’re talking about themselves and each other McCain isn’t getting a whole lot of press. If they, on the other hand, go after McCain journalists will go to him, ask him questions, he’ll respond and… he’ll get a lot of media attention.
No, it makes more sense for Clinton and Obama to focus on each other for now. McCain… McCain is a Republican, and at this moment they’re not running against the Republican but against each other.
I think the last point about media attention is the biggest reason that strategically, attacking McCain constantly would be bad for both Dem candidates. McCain stands to gain from the prolonged fight for the Dem nomination anyway- but the one way that it can hurt him (or not help) is if he falls off the public radar screen too much. The worst thing for McCain is to get no attention at all, and for the public to increasingly view the Dem primary process as the general election itself- as though we’re choosing between those two to become our next president. If the two of them start using the McCain attacks a lot, then the public will not forget that it’s really one of the two Dems vs. McCain in the general.
Also, I think it would be very wise for McCain to constantly try to bait the two Dems into attacking him. He should constantly be commenting on their positions (politely, of course, though I’m cringing at the number of times he’s likely to use the phrase "my friends" LOL) and showing how his are different- so that they can’t avoid talking about him when they’re forced to respond to that.