McCain, Desperation and Ayers.

Pretty much everyone has covered the william ayers story. It is beyond flogging a dead horse. In future campaign cycles people call things ayers stories when they are so tired and so without effect that they should have faded away long ago. Why, when everyone has heard and ignored the ayers story is it coming back from the dead?

No, really why? If i put on the political strategist hat for a second and look at this i cant figure out where the McCain camp thinks this leads. The ayers story is just so weak. The NYT ran a story today revealing that Obama has no ties with ayers.

[T]he two men do not appear to have been close. Nor has Mr. Obama ever expressed sympathy for the radical views and actions of Mr. Ayers, whom he has called "somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8."

The biggest problem with this is not that the link is not true, the McCain campaign has proven they dont particularly care about that, but that it is such a worn issue. McCain and the GOP is sinking millions of dollars into trying to convince people there is something here when no one cares. It has been around so long and so thoroughly debunked that it has no effect. The media will not help promote it in a positive and damaging way to Obama. It just plays into the meta narrative that mccain will lie cheat and steal if it means victory. Not good for mccain.

It is clear that McCain is desperate. He has good reason to be desperate because he is losing and on a pace to lose big. So i have to wonder why they are choosing the route of discredited attacks to go after Obama's character. If you are going to go after his character it needs to be done in a fresh way with things people have not already dismissed as irrelevant. Again truth is irrelevant.

In order for their attacks to succeed they need to undermine Obama's credibility with voters. The ayers thing is too indirect and already discredited. Instead mccain should have been trying to portray obama as a straight up liar manipulating to get what he wants. That is the only narrative that has potential. Using the Rev. Wright footage with the question about how Obama could sit there and listen to that for 20 years is a decent move. Still they need something more.

Obama touts his work with Luger and his work with colburn and brownback and some other conservatives. Why has the mccain campaign avoided undermining this? Get those people out there and have them tell stories about obama not really working on bills but swooping in to take credit. He takes credit for other peoples work, combined with rev wright with a little bit of past drug use and you can build a story. Not a true one but that hardly matters at this point.

McCain cannot hope to win on retread material and he has no problem with lying about anything so why is he sticking to the ayers stuff? I expect to see some more incendiary stuff in the coming weeks that bears no relationship to the truth and probably involving drugs.