Sarah McNobody

if Obama doesn't win in a landslide, the Democratic party needs to shutter their doors and windows and head off into the sunset with head hanging low.  that said, it's very possible he won't win, which is to say that it's very possible, even likely, that 50% + 1 of voters who go to the polls are mouthbreathing idiots.  whether it's Gore, Kerry, Obama, Dukakis, Clinton, etc., the Democrat always seems to be playing an away game at a very hostile opponent's stadium, where the crowd always seems to work the refs and all of the bounces seem to go the Republicans' way.  the most apparent instance of this phenomenon came when the brilliant techies at the McCain camp flashed a green screen behind McCain during his acceptance speech which, from afar, was shown to be a picture of a random Hollywood Middle School named Walter Reed, and not, as intended, a picture of the military hospital of the same name.  aside from persistent murmurs and guffaws from Josh Marshall and a few others, this story didn't really seem to break into the MSM.  can you imagine had the tables been turned, had Obama's camp used the picture of a random hollywood middle school when trying to make a point about military veterans, how this would've definitively proven how out of touch and elitist Obama is and how he wouldn't know a military family if one hit him upside the head.  the school gaffe would be splayed across drudge, politico, etc., soon seeping into MSNBC, FOX, etc., and it would reinforce what everyone already knows, that, sadly, the Democrats are hapless and unserious when it comes to military affairs and national security.  

you may have played in an athletic event before where you sensed the refs were unjustifiably giving the other team all of the calls and the other team is cheating like rats.  well, if this were the fifth or sixth game in a row where this was happening, and it became obvious that the other team was getting away with murder, well, then I would think bending the rules or, rather, employing the other team's novel rules of engagement in return, would be a no-brainer in terms of response, strategy going forward.  So, instead of these feckless and pedantic ads breathlessly debunking McCain's maverick brand and preening about the equation "McCain = Bush" ad nauseam (b/c, by the way, "anybody but Bush" worked so well in '04 and essentially reprising the same theme for '08 would seem to me to be a sound strategy--NOT!!, FACE!!!), they should hit back and start aggressively pressing the story about how McCain publicly dressed down his wife by calling her a "trollop" (and who, by the way, uses that term who wasn't born in the 19th century??) and a "cunt."  to boot, the Obama camp, through surrogates, should begin directly questioning McCain's temperament, drawing upon the numerous examples of his verbal and physical abuse of colleagues and underlings.  they should highlight the recent court document that has surfaced re: Palin where a judge says the Palins' behavior viz. her sister's ex-husband "amounts to child abuse."  a good ad would juxtapose McCain's pattern of verbal and physical abuse and Palin's alleged child abuse.  (btw, any notion that Palin's family is off-limits is laughable.  can we imagine the outrage and tut-tutting and concerned murmuring and self-satisfied racism that would've become endemic to the MSM had a seventeen-year-old daughter of Barack and Michele got knocked up by her thuggish boyfriend?)  so maybe instead of these inane "original mavericks" spoof ads, the Obama camp (or better yet, a 527) could begin airing an ad that makes the following points: 

John McCain--thinks Obama/Biden are making sexist attacks against Palin etc.  Who's the sexist: McCain called his wife a trollop and a c* * t in public in front of press; openly joked about how ugly Chelsea Clinton was, laughed when one of his supporters called Hillary Clinton a bitch, and made some lame joke about gorilla rape.  there's more than enough material out there.  with Palin, they should mock her claim about being a "hockey mom," saying she can't have her cake and eat it too.  like all else, the hockey mom tag is just a false image she wants the public to buy into so we don't need to look farther.  an ad saying she's against abortion even in cases of rape and incest, her church thinks Jews should be converted to Christianity (run this in Florida), is associated with a group that wants AK to secede from the US, and even though her family is evidently falling apart (with a pregnant seventeen year old), believes she should be telling your family how to live.  not your average hockey mom.  but then again, how is the public expected to known about who John mcCain would have as president when she's too scared to talk to the press and the public?  how arrogant and foolish is this woman, and what in God's green earth makes her think she's qualified to be vice president of the US who likely won't live through his full two terms.  and on this last longevity bit, they should just fudge.  yeah, he has a 30% chance of dying within 8 years, but he's also a cancer survivor (two times over), so that's gotta count for something.  find some random study that shows that that increases risk to mortality by 20% or more and bam, you've got a probability of President Sarah McNobody in a few years.  

i have to admit though, part of me basks in the schedenfreude of watching so many liberals, like Josh Marshall, Booman, et al., frantically coaching the Obama campaign on what to do, how to respond, like so many little league dads along the side of the field.  (of course, this is precisely the sort of thing i just did above, so i can see the allure).  

. . . adding, Marc Ambinder gives a pretty succinct distillation of the points I was trying to make above.