Study: McCain Getting Burnt By His Attacks On Obama

The PEW Research Center is out with a new study that suggests John McCain's attacks against Barack Obama's character and associations have strongly backfired.

Buried in a study released on Wednesday is this nugget:

"Obama has an advantage in voter assessments of the tone of the campaign. Nearly half (48%) see McCain as too personally critical of Obama. By comparison, just 22 % see Obama as too critical of McCain. Even among McCain's own voters, nearly one in five (19%) think he has been too critical of Obama... Perceptions about the campaign McCain is running are starkly different from what they were in June, when just 26% said he had been too personally critical of Obama. In contrast, the percentage believing that Obama has been too negative is nearly unchanged since June."

The findings, in many ways, are nothing more than a fait accompli for the McCain campaign, which admitted on Wednesday that it has lost the spin war against Obama.

"The truth is they play dirty politics, and maybe we haven't been quick enough. Maybe we don't have enough friends in the media to carry the message," spokesperson Nicole Wallace said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show. "We certainly lost the spin war about his fighting a more negative campaign. The truth is that Barack Obama has spent more money on negative attack ads against John McCain than any politician, Democrat or Republican, in history."

And yet, all indications point to the Republican nominee going back to the well during the debate tonight by bringing up Obama's association with Bill Ayers.

PEW also tested directly the recent attack lines being used by the two campaigns: the Republicans' "Who is Barack Obama" and Democrats' assertions that McCain is "erratic." And the conclusion was, they aren't working.

"Comparable majorities of 57% say they do not worry about Obama's personal character and judgment, or about McCain's age and judgment. (Forty percent say they do worry about McCain's age and judgment and 38 percent worry about Obama's character and judgment.)"

A caveat here: in general, voters instinctively recoil from negative campaigning when they hear attacks though, at the same time, poll numbers move upwards for the attacker. So it is not a terrible surprise to see these survey numbers. However, for McCain, the PEW findings are problematic for another reason. Obama seems to have wrapped up a sizeable portion of the electorate, meaning that McCain's margin for error is growing increasingly narrow.

"Obama has a sizeable advantage among those who express certainty about their choice: 42% of voters are classified as certain to vote for him, compared with 34% certain to vote for McCain... The percentage of voters saying they have definitely decided not to vote for McCain has risen steadily, from 37% in early August to 45% in the current survey."

Comments

[Choicelady]

Differences: questioning your opponent's REAL record is legitimate. Questioning is parentage is not. Discussing voting records accurately is fine. Making up lies about votes is not. Attacking your opponent for recruiting extremists INTO the campaign is legitimate. Making up falsehoods about your opponent's "pals" is not. Negative campaigning has a place when it calls the opponent's record into account. Smearing someone with lies is NEVER OK, and inciting people to violence based on those lies is so off the charts it should probably be prosecuted as a hate crime. There IS a difference, and the American people KNOW it.

[hangdogit]

McCain must know by now that the attacks he's using against Obama are backfiring (because he's dropping even more in the polls) -- yet he trotted out the same old attacks in tonight's debate. He looked manic, desperate and angry. And now McCain/Palin have lost all four debates.

One last try to shake up the campaign may be to dump Palin -- but that will outrage the evangelicals. So he'd have to replace Palin with a competent evangelical (if such a thing can be found) or at least name someone acceptable to them. Where's Huckabee?

[Vikqueen]

The fact that conservatives & republicans are buying into Obama being a terrorist is truly sad. I think we all know that Obama is not a terrorist. However, hypothetically, IF he was, what would that say about our homeland security? A homeland security that has been beefed up and is currently run by the Republicans??? Obama is a US Senator and has been for several years now. IF he was a terrorist, then the Republicans have not been doing their job as far as homeland security is concerned.

[Choicelady]

VERY good point!

[sandrarita]

Palin is starting to look pretty ugly to me. That's because what she has been hiding inside is starting to show - racism, ignorance and hypocrisy - just another Republican sleeze.

[JodyMcg]

Not Repudiated. "Monkey Man" is the new McCain/Palin mascott. "This is little Hussein. He wanted to see truth and good Americans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHrExRHZnm0

[JodyMcg]

Not Repudiated: The "Monkey Man" is the new McCain/Palin mascott. "This is little Hussein. He wanted to see truth and good Americans. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHrExRHZnm0

[bail me out]

the whole free world knows that the Clintons are in the tank for McCainiac

[Choicelady]

I don't. Evidence?

[surfcitysteven]

And what about the Bush family and its ties to the bin Laden family? And what about that Liddy guy? And that Cuban guy who walks freely around the streets of Miami after he blew up a Cuban airliner just because he is in good with the republicans? And McCain is "Palin" around with the biggest international terrorist of all time, George W. Bush.

[terkid]

"Burnt??"

HE SHOULD FRY!

[izAriver]

Like running against god?! WTF! Do these people even understand what they're saying anymore?

[cariintexas]

MSNBC is making me sick. They are ALL sitting there kissing up to Mc Cain unmercifully. chris Matthews just sit there and let Mike Duhaine flog Obama and Matthews didn't have the guts to bring up one of Mc Cains or Palins associations past or present.

[CeciliaBertrand]

It is called pumping up the loose chat, especially these cable stations - stretch this into a saga of insanity - parse the heck out of the parsed -- that is cable news 24/7-foraging from the Huff Post all day into the night...Much easier to just hook up to Huff Post from the start.

[cariintexas]

The republicans have their " whine a day". the problem is not that we don't know Obama. The problem IS, we KNOW John Mc cain.

[surfcitysteven]

There is a good reason that "going negative" isn't working this year. Everything is already negative and we are sick of it. Our bank accounts, negative, our 401ks negative, the economy, negative and most of our baseball teams are not going to win the world series this year so we have to look at McCain and say "Give me one more negative reason to hate your ass, you jerk!" But our blood is boiling with O positve this time around.

[izAriver]

Morning Joe is shameless in its advocacy and mendacity of reality. "The truth is...the truth...the truth..." nicole wallace has some gall claiming she has any grasp of the truth. mccain ads are so negative (and being parroted by other repubs in my state) that it's unpleasant to watch television.

[Rog49Thomas]

"We lost the spin war".

No actually you lost the war on points - substantive points.
Not on how you portrayed your performance or that of your opponent.

I guess though when you live in a delusional world, you really don't need to anchor anything to reality.