Oh Boy Obama!

Thanks for the post.

Run negative ads against legislators in their home districts when they oppose stimulus plans. Point out they are unpatriotic if they oppose rebuilding america. This will give them an incentive to cooperate. The 2010 elections are not far away.

I agree completely. Obama cannot allow McCain to get away with this kind of crap. Undecided and independent voters want to see a person that is forceful and stands up for himself. I think that they ask themselves - how can he be the leader of our country and face up to aggressive world leaders if he can't stand up to McCain.
They call it a campaign because it's a WAR.

I do think Obama would need to be very careful as to how "trivial" is defined. What's trivial to one person might not be to another. Sadly, for many people, race is still an issue even though it shouldn't be, for example. To the converted, and to those already predisposed to be liberal in their thinking (and by liberal I mean according to the dictionary as opposed to the political meaning), this will have the right effect. To the borderline cases of right-wing brainwashing, however, it could just lose votes. To put this clearly, think of someone who really needs reassuring that Obama is 'truly American' and that he has 'America's interests at heart' rather than just the issues of minorities. Someone who is still suspicious that Obama sympathizes with extremist muslims, despite this being another Republican smear. This person is probably still hung up on Obama's name, and isn't focusing on the 'real issues' as much as Democrat supporters are. If McCain makes reference in some way to Obama not being as patriotic as himself, and Obama shouts this down as trivial, that person would feel that Obama has dodged an important issue. The same is true of any number of 'trivial' issues. Obama shouldn't dwell on them, but they need to be shot down - people need to know that they are trivial, and they need to know why. Not an easy task (not dwelling on it, but still getting that message across).

Obama has to be careful bringing up age as an issue because the McCain campaign could then charge ageism and try, once again, to focus away from the real issues. I think focusing on his age as more of a health issue, rather than just age would be more beneficial.

Use "Old" a lot and any word meaning old when refering to McCain. He is clearly at the just pre-frail stage of life. Unlikely to complete the first term. There are already fundamentalist groups praying for his death (I am not kidding about this).