After sleeping on it, I thought the Obamamercial was beautiful and touching, but will not move the undecided’s one point. Money would have been better spent:

1. Directly and clearly addressing the RNC/McCain attacks e.g. “Obama will let the government take over health care.” “Joe the plumber’s taxes will increase.” Etc.
2. Having surrogates like Colin Powell, Les Clark, Warren Buffet address the experience issue.  Even Newt Gingrich said the Powell endorsement took “the experience question off the table.”

Although I have not seen the data, I have heard several pundits claim the undecideds are mostly uninvolved people. If true this would support the theory that the polls are moving to McCain because they are responding to things like the RNC terrorist direct mail or some email about Michelle Obama spending $400 on lobster. No way they would watch a 30 minute infomercial.

Let me explain.  When I reviewed our TV advertising for AIR MILES, the agency knew it had to pass what I called the “Ray Charles” and “Beethoven” tests.  I realized that real people (e.g. customers. voters) would most likely not focus on our ads with the lazer like focus that our marketing and agency partners did (e.g. “Craig, make sure you look at the guy in the hat on the right side of the screen. We had him raise his eyebrows skeptically at the end of the spot!.”) Many would be doing something else while the ad was playing, so it had to deliver the main point with both the sound off (Beethoven) and if someone was not looking at the screen and only hearing the audio (Ray Charles.)

Less effective than it could have been, IMHO.

“I thought last night we had reached the limits of absurdity by talking yet one more time about the topic of Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, but today they went even higher with Joe the Plumber with John McCain offering views about Israel.”

Here’s the video of Joe the Plumber:

I cannot get over how different the two campaigns are in the final week of the race.

Look at Obama: he is re-articulating the main points and themes of his entire campaign. The “Are you better off/will you be better off?” ad. He appears composed, confident but not cocky.

And McCain? Hard to tell what he’s saying because most of the noise from the GOP side of the field is stemming from infighting within the party. The off-script controversy involving Palin could not be coming at a worse time. And maybe, just maybe, it would have flown a bit more under the radar had McCain campaign officials not thrown coals on the fire by giving anonymous quotes to the press confirming that there was indeed bad blood within the campaign between McCain’s people and Palin’s people.

By confirming the fued, McCain’s people have projected two of the worst images a campaign can have: a lack of leadership and a lack of organization. The fact that this is all going down eight days before the vote makes it even worse.

At the end of last week with Obama off the trail for a couple of days, I thought McCain had a golden opportunity to make up a lot of ground. He was the only game in town. Obama surrogates were still carrying out his message, but the lack of visibility for Obama himself gave McCain a couple of days to increase his presence, so to speak. By the end of the weekend, though, the stories of in-fighting had come out. McCain’s opportunity was lost.

IMO, the McCain campaign has 2-3 days to put out these fires. If, by the end of this week, we are still hearing as much about the cost of Palin’s wardrobe as we are the cost of McCain’s economic plan, I don’t think there is enough time to recover.

I have been a fan of David Gergen since he joined the Clinton administration, not because I was a fan of Clinton (because at the time I wasn’t), but because I admired his bi-partisan commitment to serve the presidency. I now find him by far the most balanced (maybe in a set of one) and insightful of all the talking heads on CNN.

Last night, he made an excellent point about Obama missing the most obvious rebuttal to McCain’s socialist charges. To paraphrase Gergen:

Giving money to low income wage earners is nothing new. The program where if you work, but do not make enough money to pay taxes and the government gives you money, is called the “earned income tax credit,” and it was started by Ronald Reagan.

Again, where’s the ad?

Obama is  doing 3x as well as Kerry among millennials. Also winning every other major subgroup. This has been way over for weeks now.

John has over 20 years experience in polling and marketing research and has been running the IOP’s poll of 18-24 year olds for the past 8 years. The IOP just released their Fall 2008 Youth Survey on Politics and Public Service last Wednesday. Click here to read John’s power point presentation. Here’s a sample of what you’ll find:

Obama 313
McCain 160
Tossup 65

This is one of those days where there is just too much to report on. Before leaving for church, I saw this great article in politico.com about West Virginia Democratic leaders taking on racism straight up; then on my way home from Myles baseball game, I learn that Powell endorsed Obama on Meet the Press and finally, I look at The Caucus and see that Obama raised $150MM, yes $150 MILLION in September.

Before you all start talking about a landslide, I still want to look carefully at the raw numbers for the swing states and read the NYT magazine article Can Obama Close the Deal With Those White Guys.

1. McCain played well to the base in last night’s debates, but did nothing to reach out to independents
2. Obama reached out to independents and red state voters with comments about “charter schools,” and his response to the abortion question.
3. Big news yesterday was that the Republican Party has now pulled their spending from Wisconsin, although McCain is still on air. They also pulled out of Maine.
4. That means the only “2004 blue state” that is being contested is now Pennsylvania.

All this gives support to the “other view” of the polls – that they are almost all under-forecasting minority and youth vote. McCain and RNC polls and analysis may have Obama lead much greater than what is being reported.

Here’s the video: