The McCain campaign couldn't wait a couple of days before unveiling a new "elitism" attack? Did it not occur to these guys that their latest spot would look pretty silly today?

It's standard Rovian politics. Project your own weaknesses onto your opponent.

Not gonna work this time, though.

But McCain was a POW!!

Okay, but not as good as yesterday's ad. Felt a little less well focused and mostly an excuse to use the golf cart footage. Yesterday's ad made you laugh and made McCain look ridiculous. Today's was a little more "class-warfare-ish" - not that they don't deserve it, but it's still playing into their meme a bit.

How did Obama get us into this quagmire in Iraq? And look what Obama did by encouraging the Russians to invade Georgia! Banks are failing because they're scared of HUSSEIN Obama! People are losing their homes because of him! Florida is flooded! What's next? WHAT'S NEXT?? Is there no end to these outrages?

That's rich. McCain is dramatically underestimating the damage he's done to his campaign.

Honestly, I can't wait for the ad rebutting Obama's:

Movie guy voiceover: Obama says McCain owns seven houses. But McCain really own 16 houses spread across 9 estates. Can we really trust a celebrity who can't even count McCain's house? I don't think so.

Crotchety, old voiceover: I'm John McCain, and I'll have to consult my staff to see if I approve this message.

Awesome use of the golf cart footage.

The quarter-million on staff is the one that's going to stick. It's slowly moving into the center of the discussion. You know it's going to land and won't be brushed away.

What's better about this ad is the handy new catchphrase "country club economics". I hope, and expect, we'll be hearing that over and over.

Seven homes? A quarter million on staff? And Cindy McCain in Vanity Fair saying her one home in Coronado was getting two crowded with family, so she bought another? Those kind of expenses add up! You'd be worried about your home budget too. Obviously, the scale is different, but I'm sure Ma and Pa Heartland with their jobs on the line and their home in foreclosure can relate.

LOL yeah Doubtful, they'll factcheck Obama's count of McCain's houses!

Obama wisely lowballs the number of McCain houses. If it were reversed McCain would have claimed Obamaa had hundreds of house.

And Cindy said, "No Johnnie I'm not giving you 84 million dollars to run for President, use that public financing thingie."

Dale

Thanks for the text of the voiceover. I'm one of those who can't watch videos from work, yet I'm fascinated by the judo tactics being used in the presidential campaigns. :)

Great content, great visuals, terrible music.

Listen, if Obama is ahead in the polls come mid-October, look for the worst possible TV ads from the Republicans and their shills (including below-the-radar stuff from the KKK and other white supremacist groups):

His image will be used alongside shots of Mugabe and Idi Amin to suggest that he would be a genocidal Marxist African dictator; images of white people in Africa having their land taken away; images of crack-smoking black gang members in America alongside images of a teenage Obama; footage of gangsta rappers and welfare queens with 10 kids and Chicago corruption (why not throw in Al Capone for good measure?); footage of OJ Simpson perhaps? It's going to get very ugly.

With all that household staff, there's got to be a few undocumented workers. Okay, MSM, get out there and find that illegal!

The fun part is that no one has a good handle on the exact number of McCain homes, because all those kids have houses and you might/might not count investment properties. All that mud in the water makes the quest for a simple answer more challenging, and the media love to see anyone fight about anything, so the McCain people swinging wildly are just red meat for the media morons who will just as quickly start obsessing about Obama's (insert trivia here).

I really think we need to get a ton of bumperstickers made asking "I know how many homes I own". The people who hate "class warfare" hate it because this is EXACTLY the kind of question that makes it perfectly clear who's been getting the goldmine and who's been getting the shaft.

I hope the media asks McCain how much he stands to gain if his tax policies are enacted. THAT would be a golden number.

I like this ad better than yesterday's. I think there's a subtext in the line "McCain says he can't remember any more." The idea is that he's out of it, doddering, even senile, perhaps. Anyone else picking up on this?

Dale, that's a great idea. Sleazy, but great.

Speed - Its not the tv ads that worry me. If it looks like Obama will win in Nov., I worry for his physical safety.

I just have to say that I'm suprised Steve was invited to write for this site. I glanced at it Thursday (the day before he left TCR) and noticed a John McCain ad in the banner. That kind of amuses me, considering Steve usually posts negative stuff about him, not that I can blame him.

I think this is the second ad where they've used the "seven houses" thing. Anyone else get the impression Obama's ad people are purposely misstating the actual number just for grins? Like, we know it's ten houses (or twelve, or whatever the hell it is), but we're saying seven just to piss off the old man. The campaign equivalent of George Costanza's gym teacher repeatedly referring to him as Cantstandya on Seinfeld.

For the record, McCain's "Sedona Estate" is in Cornville, Arizona, Sedona's downmarket, rural sibling 10 miles to the southwest.

All the other folks in Cornville live in trailer parks and make moonshine.

This is so stupid. The houses aren't what makes the man...

It's the $520 loafers.

Every voter's crazy 'bout a sharp dressed man

Not totally in love with this one. Too soft and fuzzy, in my opinion. This is the time to hit McCain with clever, edgy and hard-hitting pieces that will make people laugh and at the same time think about how they're getting hosed by the McCainians. Johnny Mac has hung a fat curveball right over the plate, it's time to swing for the fences and knock it right out of the park.

Interesting that McCain would release an ad maligning celebrities when he's announced he's headed to Hollywood to party with Craig T. Nelson. Somebody follow that tool around with a camera and get some shots of him, you know, hob-nobbing with those disgusting celebrities.

And is it just me or are Obama's celebrities, like, a million times cooler than McCain's?

"Obama wisely lowballs the number of McCain houses."

Very wise. Then, they can put out another ad with a correction, apologizing for the error.

I can hear it now:
"We sincerely apologize for the error. McCain owns 8 houses, not 7...again, he owns 8 houses!

Suggestion for a kids book (perhaps a pop-up):

Where in the world are John McCain's houses?

And I assume somebody at the convention will say:

"It's ten o'clock. Does John McCain know where his houses are?"

Wait. Was the super devestating McCantCount response to the Houses ad another "Celebrity" ad?

Yeesh.

Since someone mentioned Seinfeld, George gave us "Serenity now!" McCainiac is giving us "Celebrity, POW!"

"I'm curious, what's this "we" stuff?"

The only problem is that, given his race, Obama would be 'playing the race card' if he responded, "What you mean 'we,' white man?"

Too bad. These jokes write themselves.

Ed

It's funny that the McC*nt campaign complains that Obama didn't buy all of his house.

Apparently, John "Zinger" didn't buy any of his. They are all gifts from his beer-hieress wife.

The Righties had a fit over the $5 Million comment on many blogs, including The Carpetbagger (where I saw several comments implying that Libs should get a sense of humour, the man was only joking, for Christ's sake), insisting it was a joke. I'd just like to remind those commenters how the Right took John Kerry apart for his attempts to joke - using them to paint him as an out-of-touch elitist who looked French and would be no fun at all to go have a beer with.

In politics, if you're joking, you'd better say so before the comment.

Just look at this mess. The candidates--through their hastily constructed TV ads--are calling each other out on basic, day-to-day economic life. This issue has been brewing since before the primaries, so Cindy McCain should be able to help her husband predict what's coming.

He has had ample time and resources to prepare for the obvious questions. The Republicans have McCain at bat. Out at the pitcher's mound, the Democrats have been engaged in a lengthy conference with their pitcher. At McCain waits, he sees them point at him and hears enough to know that these folks think he doesn't understand anything about the middle class. The crowd disperses, the pitcher winds up and here it comes, lumbering straight over the plate: Do you even know the definition of the middle class? McCain swings very high. Strike one. Here comes the next, slow and easy and right over the plate: Do you know how many houses you own? He won't even try. Strike two. What could possibly be coming next? Will McCain strike out? Will he convince the media that the strike was really a ball?

The man has lived almost forever without learning the most basic, independent-living-level features of economic life. He has no business running for president. He has no business walking down the street without supervision. He has no idea how people with less than $5 million live, let alone how the middle class or (God help them, because the Republicans won't) the poor survive at the periphery of the environment McCain and his cronies have created for themselves. Like a certain jackass in Crawford, McCain wants to be president, but he has no interest in learning the ropes or earning the votes.

McCain has proved himself impervious to information about the middle class. I had thought that it was because he won't learn. Now I'm beginning to think he can't learn.

And about that $270K+ for help around the houses: What hourly wages is he paying, how well are the employees treated, and how legal are they. More questions McCain can't answer.

One reason this story is having surprising 'legs' is that it punctures the 'subtext' of the POW story.

When you think POW, what do you think of? "Average Joe," 'guy from Brooklyn in old movies,' maybe 'unlucky guy who probably got drafted' if you remember Vietnam. Most of all 'One of Us.'

(WE know that he was the offsping of Admirals who barely made it through the Academy by dint of family connections, that he was a dumb-ass who got himself shot down by pure stupidity, and that he was, relatively, wealthy growing up, but I'd guess most people don't. This is why we hear so much POW 24/7 and not much about Daddy and Granddad. And I doubt they will get more than a quick flash in his campaign bio, maybe even just that he was 'a third-generation Navyman' -- a completely different image.)

This even covered his marriage to Cindy the Beer Heiress. 'Poor kid makes good' excuses a lot -- until you discover he wasn't poor.

The 'how many houses' thing is getting more and more people looking at that background -- as is his overuse of "I was a POW!" But I think we -- and the Obama campaign -- have to realize that it is necessary to puncture the POW=Average Joe myth.

Oh yeah, orange

Even better, McCain may have some problems with back taxes (FWIW?) on one home.
I got this potential *gem* from comments in the thread http://www2.washingtonmonthly.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?entry_id=14372:

We can try to push it around:

>But wait! There's more!

“As Newsweek reported last month, the McCains didn’t pay their tax bill on the property for four years – even with the ridiculously low perks under California's Proposition 13. Only after a reporter brought it to their attention did they quietly pay the bill – but the treasurer in San Diego still says they have underpaid the county $1,742. Ironically, McCain has cautioned against assistance for foreclosing homeowners because “any assistance must not reward those who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.�

>http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/McCain_Owes_Back_Taxes_on_One_of_His_Seven_Homes__6002.html

Posted by: Nashville_fan on August 22, 2008 at 12:17 PM

How did Obama get us into this quagmire in Iraq? And look what Obama did by encouraging the Russians to invade Georgia! Banks are failing because they're scared of HUSSEIN Obama! People are losing their homes because of him! Florida is flooded! What's next? WHAT'S NEXT?? Is there no end to these outrages?

Posted by: GOPer on August 22, 2008 at 2:31 PM

I hate to tell you, but living and working in AL, you are quite a bit closer to the truth than you may care to laugh off. McCain's ads become the "fact-filled" talking points Republicans are using to justify voting for him. It isn't that they like McCain, it is that his ads provide those precious nuggets of discontent and disgust they can use to dislike Obama more.

Reality has been displaced by 24/7 media breast-feeding anything and everything back to the general public until even the lamest thinkers believe their opinions have merit (right, Rush?). Extreme or unfounded opinions aren't being moderated by rationalism anymore, due to a glut of You Choose options on cable and Internet and reading material, many of which are geared toward a selective audience and don't allow debate.

No matter how weird the opinion, there is someone out there who will validate it. These folks down here validate McCain's ads to each other and believe the nation is following suit.

"That's right, it's 7! I earned every one of those houses as a POW in Vietnam"

"I still don't like to talk about houses or Vietnam"

orange, bitch!

It seems once John McCain focused on his overpowering ambition to become president of the United States at all costs, he abandoned his once cherished principles I once admired and became a man without scruples.

John McCain should be rejected by an overwhelming majority of Americans as unfit to be elected president of United States for his warmongering tendencies, which might very well precipitate the start of World War Three.

I just hope the Obama campaign keeps the pressure on. This is a target rich environment.

Surrogates can explore the fact that the McCains don't own anything personally. They are owned by corporations, presumably for tax purposes. Nice touch.

And $1.8 mil sounds low for the Sedona property. Is this a low ball appraisal to keep their taxes low? And how many houses are there? Does the appraisal account for all of them?

Then there is the Gigolo John theme mined by Limbaugh, Coulter, et al. 4 years ago. It applies to McCain in spades. Carpetbagging McCain found a younger sugar momma and a political career with her money. He is a kept man. McCain signed a pre-nup: if Cindy does not trust John McCain with her money why should we trust him with ours?

"The ad comes a couple of hours after the McCain campaign unveiled a new ad telling voters, 'Celebrities don't have to worry about family budgets, but we sure do.'"

For a future Obama ad:

Replay that part of the McCain ad about family budgets, with images of McCain's numerous homes in the background, then have it cut to a blackscreen with just the sentence "What's this 'we' crap, Senator?"

Oh my lord, my lord.

Robin Leach has leapt to McCain's defense, saying McCain:

“tends to answer questions very rapidly without thinking of the correct answers. … I would call it honest confusion.�

I can see the SHUT UP ROBIN rays shooting out of the RNC from here....

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/08/robin-leach-on.html

The ad comes a couple of hours after the McCain campaign unveiled a new ad telling voters, 'Celebrities don't have to worry about family budgets, but we sure do.'"

Who's the "we" refer to? John McCain's servants?

Okay, even after all these comments, it is still funny that the McC*nt campaign thought they should try to counter-attack the Obama mockery.

And yes indeed, who exactly could be the "We" in the latest McC*nt ad? Certainly not his lobbyist campaign staff.

Orange again.

If only four of McC*nt's wife's houses are 'residencies', then the others are investment properties.

Damn! Cindy McCain is responsible for the Housing Bubble! She's the reason my $600,000 house is now worth $420,000!

Damn home wrecking bitch!

Orange