Reply #6: Well so far swiftboat style attacks haven't worked so well

[dsomuah]

Polling during the primary showed that telling voters about Obama's supposed connections with Ayers, and about the whole Reverend Wright hoopla didn't seem to influence their voting decisions that much, and I think many of the 527s are taking that as a sign that swiftboat-style attacks aren't going to work.

The other thing is that, for a swiftboat style attack to work, you have to be dealing with a poorly funded candidate. One of the reasons swiftboat style attacks worked so well in 2004 is that Kerry wasn't as well funded as George Bush, and didn't have the funds to fight back and defend himself. Not so this year. Obama is much better funded, and will probably go to the airwaves himself to fight back. Donots are pragmatic and aren't going to fund attacks on a candidate who can fight back easily.

The other thing is that this year the dems appear to be preparing for attacks, anticipating attacks, and almost waiting for them to happen and preparing their responses. Obama has already set up a site to respond to attacks. He has also already used snopes.com to dispel a rumor or two, and has also relied on Factcheck.org to dispel rumors as well. It's hard to suprise attack someone who is sitting on their porch with a shotgun accross their lap.

Another thing is that this campaign has shown that attacking a candidate can actually help them in terms of fundraising. When the Clinton campaign was having trouble with fundraising, they raised money by reminding their supporters that people were calling on Clinton to drop out. The emails quoting people calling for Clinton to drop out, angered supporters, especially female supporters, and millions of dollars in donations came in. Now when you are dealing with a candidate who has a support base of 1.5 million supporters, most of whom haven't given the maxiumum amount yet, you don't want to launch some frivolous attack and have the Obama campaign cut and paste that attack into an email and send it to supporters and use it to raise millions of dollars to beat back the attack. Unlike Obama, most of Kerry's supporters were big money donors, and he didn't have the same ability to use attacks on him for fundraising. (He did try tho, I remember getting an email or two from Mary-Beth Cahill).


Plus, this time around, the Repub congressional candidates seem to need it more. The DSCC and DCCC have both raised more money than their republican counterparts and dem congressional candidates will probably be much better funded in this election than they were in 2004 or 2006. The RNC has more money than the DNC, but much of that will have to be used to offset McCain's poor fundraising. The polling numbers are already showing that this will be a terrible year for the republicans in both houses of congress, regardless of presidential election results. The Republican big money donors are being smart and directing their money towards the congressional candidates in a bid to save what few seats they can hold on to in the legislature.

Personally, I expect the swiftboat attacks to come. But I also expect the Obama campaign to be far more prepared for it than Kerry was.