Obama Attacks McCain

The conventions are history; now the election really begins. John McCain’s tepid acceptance speech comes just at the right time for Democrats.

From the Democrats’ point of view, the bad news couldn’t have come at a better time: agencies reported a 6.1 percent unemployment rate for August on Friday – the highest rate in five years. According to Barack Obama, it’s proof that John McCain “just doesn’t get it.”

At their respective conventions, the Democrats dealt with the ailing economy more exhaustively and in far greater detail than the Republicans did. “McCain missed the target,” according to the New York Times, adding that his “less than inspiring” speech was “one of the least effective and most meaningless acceptance speeches in modern political history.”

Tough words that make clear that the newspaper wasn’t so easily impressed by the massive Republican media scolding concerning their coverage of Sarah Palin. McCain may well have played out the sympathy bonus he doggedly amassed through years of being so available to the media for interviews.

Since the conventions, the tone has become noticeably sharper. After Sarah Palin’s vicious attacks on Barack Obama, her honeymoon as a newcomer on the political stage is apparently over. Until now, Democrats had prudently handled her with kid gloves compared with the media. Now both camps accuse one another of blatantly lying. Squabbling over the internet gossip-factory’s treatment of the Palin family is far from over.

The Democrats believe, however, that the election will be decided by the economy, not by personalities. “You hear a lot about John McCain’s gripping history as a POW. You hear a lot of untruths about me. The only thing they won’t talk about is your concerns,” Obama told a group of factory workers about the Republican campaign. His recipe for those many voters who, “despite lower paychecks are working harder than before”: Tax cuts for 95 percent of the population, “for everyone except the super-rich,” according to Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Biden.

This is to be financed by ending tax breaks for companies that “didn’t need them in the first place,” or for those that exported American jobs overseas. This will amount to over $200 billion, according to the Democrats. McCain originally opposed the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy but changed his position when he became a candidate for President himself.

Now the Republican candidate is advocating keeping those tax cuts in place. He says all Americans should be given a choice between the complicated 67,500 page tax code currently in effect, and a simple two-stage, flat tax system of between 25 and 15 percent. “When the economy is bad, the worst thing we can do is to raise taxes,” McCain is convinced.

Barack Obama is obviously trying, these days, to fill the vacuum left by McCain’s speech with his own facts and figures. But up to now, he has found it difficult to define himself as the more economically competent candidate.

Even his populist calls for “reform” or “change” have meanwhile been co-opted by the Republican party. Since McCain, on the other hand, made no mention in his speech of his often-controversial reforms for campaign financing, immigration and appointments to the federal bench, his claim to the title of reformer is still unclear. “The definition of reform is left up to the public,” criticizes former McCain adviser John Weaver in the Washington Post.

He’s primarily concerned about the all-powerful lobbies, McCain said on Friday in Wisconsin, co-opting another Obama theme. “The influence of lobbyists is finally, finally, finally over,” he swore. But neither candidate is totally convincing on this point: according to the Los Angeles Times, McCain has 42 lobbyists on his closest advisory staff and Obama has 23.

The challenge of the coming 60 days is: both candidates want to woo the political centrists without alienating their traditional supporters. Republican opinion researcher Neil Newhouse calculates, however, that in order to win, McCain has to get 35 percent of his votes either from Democrats or independents. “He will have to run past his party, perhaps even run away from it to win non-Republican votes,” he said in the Washington Post.

“McCain’s road to the finish line is therefore more difficult than Obama’s,” he added.