Obama’s “Infomercial” Did Its Job

For $5 million, Senator Barack Obama bought himself 30 minutes of airtime on 7 different TC networks on Wednesday night. His objective was to calm the fears of white working-class voters, make an appeal to the “redneck” vote. In this, he largely succeeded.

The film literally opened with “amber waves of grain,” moved to “common folk” with American flags and a guy with a cowboy hat. It ended with a seamless cut to a live Obama event with a cheering crowd. In between, the senator laid out his plans in reasonable detail, and the video showed him interacting with white voters as well as black and Hispanics. “Fear not” definitely got through. And not once was John McCain or George W. Bush mentioned; it was attack-free.

Will it matter to the 6% or so of voters who are still undecided? And as an aside, who could possibly be undecided at this stage? In all likelihood, the undecideds will break toward Senator McCain, staying with a known quantity. However, Senator Obama doesn’t need all of the undecideds. Just 1% or 2% of that 6% will seal the deal. One expects he got that.

The McCain camp’s response was rather pitiful. It charged that the well shot and beautifully edited piece was paid for with a broken promise. It falsely alleged that Senator Obama had agreed to public funding of his and the Republican campaign. This never happened because it was conditional on reining in the ads of outside entities like PACs and so-called “527 organizations.” The GOP refused. There was no broken promise.

All of which is now rather pointless. Senator McCain’s effort took another body blow yesterday morning when the third quarter GDP figure came out – down 0.3%. This is the last piece of major economic data that will hit before Tuesday’s election. America may be in a recession (two consecutive quarters of economic shrinkage), but it won’t be known until February or so. But for working voters barely squeaking by (and there are more than a year ago), it feels like hard times. And time for a change.

© Copyright 2008 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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