Obama Learns Lessons From Democrats Past

June 13, 2008 -- OK class -- what have we learned this first full week of the general?

- This fight could be about taxes.

- It could be about the war.

- Or it could be about the backgrounds of the people who help the candidates explore the backgrounds of the people being considered for vice president.

- It might be determined by the Supreme Court (though probably not THAT way).

- Or by Ron Paul (who won't be the next president, but may still host the most interesting party in Minneapolis-St. Paul).

- Or even Mike Huckabee (true calling found?).

- Also -- Barack Obama has a Roman numeral after his name. (And you thought it was easy to tag him as an elitist before? At least there's is a higher purpose at work here...)

It hasn't been the smoothest of weeks for Sen. Obama -- but we do know he's no longer waiting for himself to be defined in this campaign. On the big (and little) issues above, this first week may have broken little ground, but Obamaland has served notice that he's leading the Democratic Party by playing a different kind of game.

You can read all about it online: "Barack Obama has vanquished the powerful Clinton Democratic machine, but he has not yet been able to beat back those persistent and untrue rumors about him and his wife," ABC's Jake Tapper reported on "Good Morning America" Friday. "So he has taken the unusual step of launching a new Website called fightthesmears.com."

"The Obama team acknowledges the old approach was doing nothing to stem the tide of questionable -- and in several cases demonstrably incorrect -- snippets about Obama's life," Christi Parsons writes in the Chicago Tribune. The new approach is "a far cry from past practice across the political spectrum," she writes.

It all sounds very un-Democratic -- surely not in the vein of Mondale/Dukakis/Gore/Kerry (or, at least, in the collective remembrance of said campaigns).

"Launching the website breaks what has been a conventional mindset in American politics: that giving attention to rumors only dignifies and broadcasts them to more voters," Scott Helman writes in The Boston Globe.

Lesson learned: "Barack Obama is tapping the Internet to try to deflect smears like the devastating Swift Boat attacks that four years ago questioned John Kerry's duty in Vietnam," Ken Bazinet writes in the New York Daily News.

"From now on, rather than try to ignore rumors when they start -- that Obama was a Muslim, did not say the Pledge of Allegiance, was not born in the U.S., etc., the Obama team will activate its millions of followers into an Internet-based truth squad to separate lies from facts, based on information at the anti-smear site," Lynn Sweet writes in the Chicago Sun-Times.

"What the Obama campaign wants to do is basically create a virtual army, with foot soldiers all across the country sending along the e-mails to counter what they consider the unfair, untrue e-mails," ABC's George Stephanopoulos reported on "Good Morning America" Friday.

Obama has played more defense than the Lakers this week -- but Jim Johnson's already well gone, and the campaign is shooting enough to score some baskets.

"Mr. Obama's campaign and its allies have displayed an aggressive streak this week as well, hitting Mr. McCain hard on Wednesday after he replied to a question about when American troops might come home from Iraq by saying it was 'not too important,' then suggesting that what was important was the level of casualties," Julie Bosman and John M. Broder write in The New York Times.

Obama plans to press McCain on Social Security Friday: "John McCain's ideas on Social Security amount to four more years of what was attempted and failed under George Bush," Obama plans to say Friday in Ohio, per excerpts provided by his campaign.

"He said he supports private accounts for Social Security – in his words, 'along the lines that President Bush proposed.' Yesterday he tried to deny that he ever took that position, leaving us wondering if he had a change of heart or a change of politics. Well let me be clear: privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it. It's a bad idea today."

This is, well, inside basketball -- but the kind of move that wins games (better pizza = longer hours = better performance; you could look it up).

"The shift of the DNC's political and field organizing operations to Chicago will consolidate the Democratic presidential campaign apparatus more than in either of the last two cycles, when staffers at DNC headquarters overlapped -- and occasionally competed -- with aides to Al Gore and John Kerry," Politico's Ben Smith and David Paul Kuhn report.

And this: "Moving to harness the grass-roots energy that helped win the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign will deploy 3,600 volunteers in 17 states this weekend, each committed to six consecutive weeks of full-time political work," Peter Slevin writes in The Washington Post. "The project, launched two months before the senator from Illinois became the presumptive nominee, is a measure of his determination to out-organize Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in states that could swing a close election."

Not that the pressure's going anywhere.

On the personal: "Despite a vow to focus on issues, the Republican Party plans to use Barack Obama's relationships with controversial figures to undermine the public's view of his character, according to the chairman of the Republican National Committee," McClatchy's Steven Thomma reports.

"The party will make an issue out of Obama's ties to such people as Chicago developer Antoin Rezko, recently conducted on fraud and money-laundering charges, and '60s radical William Ayers, unrepentant about his role in bombings of government buildings to protest the Vietnam War," GOP Chairman Robert M. "Mike" Duncan said in an interview taped for C-SPAN's "Newsmakers" program.

On policy (no confusing this): "There is nothing confusing about [Obama's] lack of knowledge and experience and judgment on this issue [of the Iraq war], and the fact that he was simply wrong," McCain tells the Union Leader's John DiStaso. "He even still refuses to acknowledge that the surge is winning...Remarkable."

On more policy: "Senator John McCain has stepped up efforts to paint his rival, Senator Barack Obama, as what he calls a traditional Democratic tax-and-spend liberal," Larry Rohter writes in The New York Times. "Economists of various ideological persuasions, however, view Mr. McCain's assessment as inaccurate or exaggerated. Some question whether Mr. Obama's tax plan can even be characterized as an increase."