The Democratic candidate's coffers are far richer than the Republicans, so why is McCain's lie about Obama's taxes to the middle class sticking? Through the Olympics and even during the Democratic convention itself McCain has been running ads linking Obama with new taxes. It's the oldest play in the Republican playbook and actually would have some merit if they were running against McGovern or Mondale.
Obama's plan, however, LOWERS taxes on everyone making less than $250,000 a year. McCain favors continuing the Bush administration's tax breaks to the highest income brackets. Obama has explained this repeatedly in his speeches but he hasn't yet flooded the media with surrogates pounding home this message and he certainly hasn't gotten irate with the McCain campaign and flat out called them liars.
This YouTube video is nice but I guarantee you that only Obama supporters have seen it. Why aren't they getting this message out to the nation as a whole?
"Earth to Republicans: It's 2008 not 1978"
Obama needs to start spending a lot of all that money he's sitting on on ads ridiculing Republican attempts to trick the working electorate into once again voting to have their pockets picked. He needs to paint these efforts as hopelessly old-fashioned and out of touch with reality.
This tax issue reminds me of how Bush-Cheney so successfully linked 9/11 with Iraq that 80% of Republican voters STILL believed that there was a link by they time they voted for him the second time around.
Obama has the resources to push back against the conservative echo chamber, but his campaign needs to start pushing hard as of yesterday.
PART TWO:
The other prong of a successful Obama attack needs to crush this notion that McCain is a "straight talker." YouTube and the The Daily Show sport dozens of videos of McCain contradicting himself. A humorous series of "McCain Vs. McCain" ads (praising Rumsfeld, cheerleading for the Iraq war, voting against the Bush tax cuts twice and now supporting them, etc.) should be running often and everywhere.
Obama's ridiculing McCain as offering only "ten-percent change" since he's voted with Bush 90% of the time is a great, related thread that also needs to be pounded into the MSM until every undecided in the nation can recite it.
These two memes need to be stuck in the craw of the independent electorate well before they enter the voting booth:
Obama will lower my taxes and McCain isn't who he says he is.