Keeping Your Voice

On the flip side I would say that the obama campaign really needs to get off the experience angle.

Last week they were winning on an argument that judgement matters more than experience. Then McCain gave them a gift with his selection of someone who seems to be a pathological liar, bitter partisan, and has a whole bunch of ideas most of this country thinks are terrible. But because of the surprise factor the only angle at that moment was her inexperience. And she may be, but experience was never Obama's message.

I also think that the McCain campaign isn't out to steal the 'change' mantle but rather to trivialize it. The one intelligent observation from the CNN crew last night was that this convention marks a resurgence of the culture war along urban-rural lines. And it was reinforced in the new media strategy by the McCain campaign of only talking to People (who's the celebrity now) and small outlets, where that audience gets most of its news. Message penetration is expensive per person in those markets, but cheap per electoral vote. That seems to indicate that they will completely cede about 250 ec worth of blue states then make a run for 51% in the rest.