The Attack Ads John McCain Never Ran

Not able to use the drums, huh? Couldn't run against Jeremiah Wright, huh? Couldn't use bad photos, huh? That's his list?? And its not that he couldn't use them because it was wrong to do (or petty and stupid to do), but because they knew it would not be effective. Good!
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Is on that list anywhere the fact that he was saddled with a very poor candidate who was tied by a 90% voting record to the worst president ever and who proved time and again that he was simply not the man most of the country wanted at this point in time?

While Davis is patting himself on the back, he might want to imagine what it would've been like if instead of running against an honorable guy like Barack they were actually against some cutthroat operator. Then, maybe when they brought up McCain suffering in his hellhole for 5 years, the cutthroat operator would bring up that McCain used his status as the son of the commander of the Pacific forces to get preferential treatment; that McCain actually "confessed" repudiating his own country (he was under extreme pain at the time); and made several attempts at suicide. The cutthroat operator would exploit that McCain cheated on his first wife and children on a regular basis abandoned her after she was disfigured in an auto accident, and was still married at the time he met his second wife, who was decades his junior. Or that both Reagan and Goldwater, McCain's supposed heroes, hated McCain's guts.
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Lucky for Davis that the Dem candidate wasn't a complete a-hole like Bush 1 (Willie Horton) or Bush 2 (illegitimate black child). He might like to think about that while he's patting himself on the back for his restraint.

Lousy candidate, lousy speeches, lousy rallies, lousy staff, lousy ads, lousy VP pick, lousy themes and lousy decisions. Most certainly the black guy prevent McCain/Palin from failing up.

The douche bag Davis says they dropped the drums from attack ads for fear of being percieved as racist but I notice they didnt drop the eerie middle eastern music they used in the attack ad that had Ahmadenijhad in it. I wonder why

advertising "mastermind"??? Are you kidding me?
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I'd say he's a mastermind the way Bush is an intellectual. Sheesh.

"My favorite ad of the campaign was as simple as it could be," Davis said.
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What an a**hole.

Now eerie middle eastern music is something I can rally behind -- I much prefer it when we are on the same side.

Dee
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Florida Obama wins 51-49
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NC Obama wins 50-49
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IN Obama wins 50-49
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VA Obama wins 53-47

McSameAsItEverWas:

Only Florida was one of the original 18 battle ground states. Yes Obama said he was going to play in VA but it hadn't been done before and most Democrats thought it wouldn't happen. In any even the previous election it was solidly Red so what I'm saying is that except for Florida what we are not considering battle ground now was actually solidly red in 2004 and 2000.

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You guys and gals do the jokes. My brain is bleeding all over the carpet.
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"Most importantly, the campaign never went close to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on orders from McCain himself"
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And that, son, is why Satan made the RNC. There is no way I saw the last Anti-Obama.Wright ad fewer than 20 times the last 24 hours of the campaign.

I read this without noting the byline and thought, "When did Halperin start writing for Swampland?"

sg, the religious right held their noses and voted for McCain, would they have done the same for Willard?

To follow up on what nibblybits said, the GOP is just lucky that the Dems are not unmitigated a-holes.
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It's not just Obama. Dem candidates don't want to go there and their base doesn't want them to go there.
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The past 4 GOP candidates have all had military experiences that, had the shoe been on the other foot, the GOP would have centered their campaigns around attacking. George H.W. Bush bailed out of a plane that he was piloting with crew members still in it. Bob Dole injured himself with his own grenade. George W. Bush used preferential treatment to get into the National Guard and then dropped out. And McCain "confessed" as a POW.
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None of the above were attacked by Democrats during their political campaings. And, with the exception of W being attacked for his desertion from TANG, none have had significant attacks made against them by the base of the party. And this is good. I don't want to turn political campaigns into some combination of Cold Case, Rashomon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Courage Under Fire.

PNNTO -- you must live in the wrong battle ground state because it that anti-Obama wright ad ran every 8 minutes in the VA media market it was ridiculous.

Other Davis quotes not used for this article:
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"We wanted to use the word 'ni**er,' but McCain was too much of a pu**y to let us."
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"I made one ad that had an animated, cartoon Obama with a bone through his nose chasing white women. McCain nixed it."
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"Okay, I'll admit the lynching ad was in bad taste, but it could have swung the election, no pun intended. Again, McCain was too much of a loser to allow it."

"you must live in the wrong battle ground state because it that anti-Obama wright ad ran every 8 minutes in the VA media market it was ridiculous."
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Bingo. McCain's campaign never had to run a Wright attack ad, because if the outside groups were not running the MSM and talking heads were falling all over themselves to talk about Wright.

Ha Dee, but if you say is true then Davis (and clearly MS) would be using a deceitful premise. Unpossible!
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More seriously this is Davis throwing his candidate under the bus. Does that make him more or less likely to be hired in the future? And how does MS feel about being used this way?

I'm struggling with the idea that this guy is complaining about not being able to use tribal drums in ads. I mean, seriously?

Mittens freaked out the base. The funny thing is that he was 1 cycle too late. The base has warmed to the mormon church after they spent so much on Prop 8.
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It seems that MS has switched his crush to Mittens. I still can't believe that MS worked at Salon. Well, Jake Tapper did too. Does Joan Walsh have an undisclosed drinking problem?

Speaking as an advertising mastermind - well, I write ads for a living anyway - Fred Davis is the dumbest advertising mastermind I've ever come across.
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Start with the target audience. (We like. Short sentences. In advertising.) Swing voters obviously. You could conjecture that a lot of these would have been white and blue collar, getting squeezed financially in the downturn.
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Next, define the proposition. Davis's analysis supposes that there is a latent racism in this demographic, who would respond to defining Obama as 'the other'. Problem is, he was wrong. People in the election were concerned primarily with their wallets. Obama knew this and stayed relentlessly on a message of tax cuts for the middle class. Davis could have successfully communicated that Obama was a green-skinned Hindu and it wouldn't have mattered. Had his hands been completely untied, he would have been free simply to roam wild, promulgating the wrong message. The voters he wanted, wanted to hear who could best get them out of a financial fix. Period.
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Finally, look at the trends. Appealing to white, working class voters is a necessity, but not enough any more to create a winning margin. I haven't seen a definitive breakdown of the final voting patterns, but I'm guessing that McCain lost big among Latinos, women and probably Catholics (Catholics are value voters, but are as much concerned these days with social justice as with gay marriage or abortion.)
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Davis's razor-sharp intellect identified a plan based on animating the evangelical base (which didn't happen and now isn't enough in any event) and would have alienated pretty much all the rapidly growing minority groups. Davis's main handicap appears to have been that he's as dumb as a rock.

McCain was a POW? Who knew? He should have brought that up during the campaign. Too modest I guess.

Interesting perspective Ted, thanks.
As far as Catholics there is this-
"Nationwide, 54 percent of Catholics supported Obama and 44 percent voted for McCain. Of the total population, 52 percent voted for Obama and 46 percent for McCain."
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0805649.htm

Yeah and the last thing that anyone mentions was the decline in Republican turnout. Moderate Republicans who couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat simply stayed home.