The Democrats have chosen to run the same campaign against McCain as they would have run against Romney or Huckabee. This will turn out to be a strategic mistake. Why? Because they ignore the new media reality that no amount of points on television can overturn a narrative backed up by the free media. The left’s “McSame” campaign is an example of the particularly crude communications tactic of countermessaging. Countermessaging consists solely of challenging a prevailing public narrative. The media is not liberal. There was no housing bubble. Global warming is a myth… In many ways, the Bush 2004 definition of Kerry provides a useful contrast. It was a textbook example of a more nuanced message offensive that the base wouldn’t have chosen. It would have been easy to run a classic Kerry as Massachusetts liberal campaign. Instead, they tagged Kerry as a flip-flopper, with the goal of maximizing contrasts with a decisive wartime President. In that year, juxtaposition and the perception of incoherence mattered more than one’s current or past positioning.
The Democratic base is deeply invested in opposition to Bush, and it’s already clear that they’ve had a hard time shifting gears and focusing on a candidate with no real connection to him. On a broad swath of domestic issues, McCain’s divisions from the president are well recognized. Even on Iraq, McCain has worked hard to distinguish his views, by criticizing Rumsfeld early over troop levels. The fundamentals this year are so strongly for change that it’s possible the Democrats could win even with an ineffective message, but McCain is helped if they leave their best arrows in the quiver.
