Obama Gets His Perot Moment
Dem Has Upper Hand on Taxes, Could Get Snagged by Deficit
October 28, 2008— -- Sixteen years after Ross Perot bought air-time to talk to the nation about "deep voodoo, chicken feathers, and the American dream," Barack Obama is planning a 30-minute pitch that will be more like a television show than a speech.
Malia "Don't Mess with My TV" Obama was recently assured by her father that he did not buy time on Disney or Nick.
But the well-heeled Obama campaign seems to have bought time just about everywhere else.
Obama's ad, which runs from 8:00 -- 8:30 pm ET on Wednesday, is slated to be the lead-in to the World Series on Fox. It will also air on NBC, CBS, and MSNBC.
BET and TV One, two stations geared towards African Americans, as well as Univision, the Spanish language television network, are also carrying the ad.
The infomercial comes at a time when John McCain has stepped up his tax argument, labeling his Democratic opponent the "redistributionist-in-chief."
The McCain campaign currently finds itself in an uncomfortable position on taxes.
According to the latest polling by ABC News, Obama currently maintains a 10-point lead over McCain on an issue which Republicans typically own.
The last Democratic candidate for president to have that kind of lead was Bill Clinton in 1992.
As George Stephanopoulos noted on the Tuesday edition of "World News with Charles Gibson," "When Democrats win on taxes, they tend to win elections."
So how did Obama get the upper hand?
For starters, he went beyond the targeted tax cut approach of Democrats Al Gore and John Kerry and hammered home the message that his plan would cut taxes for "95 percent of Americans."
The key to this promise is his sweeping proposal to offer a rebate for payroll taxes of $500 for individuals and $1,000 for couples which starts to phase out for couples at $150,000 or for non-joint filers at $75,000 per year.
Second, he promised individuals making less than $200,000 and couples making less than $250,000 that they will not see their taxes go up.
Third, when McCain and RNC began pounding Obama for backing a budget blueprint which envisioned higher taxes on Americans making as little as $42,000 per year, the Obama campaign circulated reports by FactCheck.org saying: "No taxes were increased, and the vote that the McCain campaign refers to could not by itself have resulted increase on anybody."
And finally, Obama had the good fortune of running against a GOP opponent who could be portrayed as favoring a new broad-based tax on the middle class.
Non-partisan experts say that the refundable heath-care tax credit proposed by McCain would (at least initially) result in a lower tax bill for most Americans.
Obama understood, however, that voters are more attuned to what they stand to lose than what they stand to gain. With that in mind, Obama ran a series of ads which eviscerated McCain for wanting to end the income tax deduction for employer-provided health care.
All four of these points have helped Obama gain the upper hand in the debate over taxes.
He even looks good relative to McCain on the issue of the deficit: according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, over a ten-year period, McCain's tax policies would lead to $1.6 trillion more in debt than Obama.
(Obama's tax policies would add $3.5 trillion to the debt; McCain's tax policies would add $5.1 trillion to the debt over ten years).
While Obama appears to have outmaneuvered McCain on taxes, some of the Illinois Democrat's own backers are wondering if he will face a situation similar to Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president who followed a Bush into the White House on the promise of a middle-class tax cut (and who happens to be joining Obama at Wednesday's Orlando rally).
Harvard Prof. John White, an Obama supporter who wrote Ross Perot's '92 balanced budget plan before endorsing Clinton, thinks the Democratic nominee is going to find himself in a tough spot between keeping his promises on taxes and spending while also grappling with the deficit.
"He is going to be told that the deficit is too high," White told ABC News. "I think he is in a real box."
The Kicker:
"Are you going to interrupt my TV?"
--Malia Obama, 10, on her father's plans to air a 30-minute infomercial on Wednesday
On the campaign front. . .
JOHN McCAIN
-- 10:15 am ET: Holds Rally in Miami, FL.
-- 1:15 pm ET: Conducts roundtable Tampa, FL.
-- 5:15 pm ET: Holds Rally in Palm Beach, FL.
SARAH PALIN
-- 11:15 am ET: Holds Rally in Bowling Green, OH.
-- 3:30 pm ET: Holds Rally in Chillicothe, OH.
-- 7:30 pm ET: Holds Rally in Jeffersonville, IN.
BARACK OBAMA
-- 12:00 am ET: Holds Rally in Raleigh, NC.
-- 7:30 pm ET: Holds Rally in Sunrise, FL.
-- 11:00 pm ET: Holds Rally in Kissimmee, FL.
JOE BIDEN
-- 10:45 am ET: Holds Rally in Jupiter, FL.
-- 7:30 pm ET: Holds Rally in Sunrise, FL.
MICHELLE OBAMA
-- 12:00 pm ET (Doors): Delivers Address in Fayetteville, NC.
-- 3:30 pm ET (Doors): Holds Rally in Rocky Mount, NC.
At the White House. . .
PRESIDENT BUSH
-- 1:15 pm ET: Meets with the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic.
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