BARACK's D-Day ...



Preparing to unleash a multiple-launch barrage of devastating attacks
on John "90-Percent" McCain and his hollow-sculled running mate Sarah
"Trig's Mine" Falin, BARACK OBAMA is confident his latest and most
biting set of TV ads will disarm and unmask the empty-but-scurrilous
campaign of his odious opponents.

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"Obama Campaign Begins Counterattack"

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 13, 2008; A03


CONCORD, N.H., Sept. 12 -- Sen. Barack Obama and his campaign launched
a promised counterpunch against Sen. John McCain on Friday, portraying
him as an aging, out-of-touch politician who would cater to "fat-cat"
lobbyists and continue President Bush's economic policies.

With two new television advertisements, a campaign memo to supporters
and a two-day trip through New Hampshire, Obama sought to regain his
footing amid faltering poll numbers, a continuing assault by his
Republican presidential rival and rising worries among Democrats about
his campaign.

"They've been talking about lipstick and they've been talking about
pigs and they've been talking about Paris and Britney," Obama told a
boisterous crowd of 1,500 packed into a gym at a technical college
here. "They will spend any amount of money and use any tactic out
there in order to avoid talking about how we're going to move America
forward to the future."

Attempting to shift the focus away from Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and to
McCain, Obama quoted his opponent saying Thursday night that "it's
easy for me to go to Washington and, frankly, be somewhat divorced
from the day-to-day challenges people have."

"So from where he and George Bush sit, maybe they just can't see," the
Democrat told supporters and some self-identified undecided voters
earlier in the day in Dover. "Maybe they are just that out of touch.
But you know the truth, and so do I. . . . We just can't afford four
more years of what John McCain and George Bush consider progress."

If Democrats were expecting a dramatic change in words, tone or
temperament, they did not get it. While McCain attacked him as a
pampered, fading celebrity, a sexist and a desperate bully, Obama
stuck to familiar themes linking the senator from Arizona to Bush and
Washington lobbyists.

Even after being prodded by the audience in Dover, Obama appeared
reluctant to get too aggressive. Glenn Grasso, 39, a doctoral student,
pleaded: "When and how are you going to start fighting back?"

Obama responded by calling McCain's ads "just fabricated" and "just
made up," an answer that spurred some to shout out: "Lies."

"Lies, that's the word," Obama said.

Not everyone was reassured. "Truth be told, I'm extremely worried"
about Obama's dip in the polls and McCain's attacks, said Jaimee
Rudman, 30.

Obama's use of McCain's words from a forum Thursday on volunteerism
invited a biting response. McCain had suggested that he was out of
touch as a way to defend Palin's record as a small-town mayor. But
Obama also came to her defense at the forum, saying mayors fill
potholes, trim trees and make sure the garbage is collected, while
senators "yak."

"It's a shame that Barack Obama is using a discussion of service on
September 11th as the basis for a distorted political attack.
Especially when you consider that during the same event, Barack Obama
reduced his own service in the U.S. Senate to mindless yakking,"
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds responded in a statement.

The ads from the Obama campaign took different approaches: One
attacked McCain directly, the other tried to reinforce Obama's message
of change with the candidate talking to the camera.

The attack was direct, accusing McCain of being out of touch after 26
years in Washington. Using jaunty, humorous music, a picture of a
younger McCain with shaggy hair and the hint of sideburns, and images
of massive, antiquated cellphones and a Rubik's Cube, the ad is the
clearest evocation yet of McCain's age. The Republican turned 72 late
last month.

"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send e-
mail. Still doesn't understand the economy, and favors $200 billion in
new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle
class. . . . After one president who was out of touch," it concludes,
"we just can't afford more of the same." The Obama campaign said the
ad would be aired nationally on cable and on other outlets in swing
states.

In a memo to supporters, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said:
"In recent weeks, John McCain has shown that he is willing to go into
the gutter to win this election. His campaign has become nothing but a
series of smears, lies and cynical attempts to distract from the
issues that matter to the American people."

Plouffe assured supporters that "we will respond with speed and
ferocity to John McCain's attacks and we will take the fight to him,
but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American
people."

Obama got something of an assist from the hosts of "The View," who
challenged McCain on the integrity and honesty of his campaign. Joy
Behar questioned two ads he is running against the Democrat -- one
accusing him of supporting "comprehensive" sex education for
kindergartners, the other saying he called Palin a pig when he used
the saying "lipstick on a pig" in reference to McCain's claims to be
an agent of change.

"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

When McCain defended them, Barbara Walters noted that McCain had made
the same lipstick on a pig comment about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's
health-care proposal.

"About health care," McCain said. Obama "chooses his words very
carefully. He shouldn't have said it."

McCain has portrayed Palin as a reformer unwilling to accept pork from
Washington, but Walters and Behar pressed. "She also took some
earmarks," Walters said.

"No, not as governor she didn't," McCain responded, inaccurately.

The Obama campaign quickly produced newspaper articles about Palin
seeking various earmarks as governor. In February, her office sent
Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) a 70-page memo outlining almost $200
million worth of funding requests for her state.

The McCain campaign also kept up its attacks on Friday, releasing an
ad titled "Disrespectful" [See Ad Watch, A8] that kept up its
celebrity attack on Obama even as it continued to play the victim card
with Palin. The spot says "they" dismissed her as "good looking," said
she was just doing "what she was told" and called her a liar.

"He was the world's biggest celebrity, but his star is fading," the ad
intones.

The independent FactCheck.org weighed in quickly, saying the ad --
already airing in Denver -- continues a pattern of distortion, taking
quotes out of context and twisting meaning. "The new McCain-Palin
ad . . . goes down new paths of deception," the Web site concluded.

On the stump, Obama focused on his tax plan, which offers sizable
breaks to middle-income families, while raising taxes on families
earning more than $250,000. He said McCain has been "simply dishonest"
about that plan, asserting repeatedly that an Obama administration
would raise everyone's taxes.

"I will make a firm pledge: I pledge under my plan, no one making less
than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase, not income
tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of taxes," Obama said.

And he slammed McCain's proposal to tax the value of employer-based
health-care plans as income and use that to help finance tax credits
to buy health insurance. The senator from Illinois called that "a $3.6
trillion tax increase" on working families.

Convinced that McCain's message on taxes is doing serious harm to
Obama, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell (D) sent a memo on Friday
to every elected Democrat in his state to get the word out that
Obama's plan would cut taxes for the middle class far more than
McCain's would.

In an interview, Rendell said the Obama campaign is beginning to push
back successfully on McCain's character attacks, but the Republican's
charge that Obama would raise middle-class taxes may be more damaging.
The McCain ads are "just despicable, but nowhere are they lying more
clearly than on the tax issue," he said.

[Staff writer Robert Barnes in Washington contributed to this report.]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...091201259.html