Obama's Curious Strategy

Barack Obama has been attacking John McCain's relationships with lobbyists, trying to paint him as a Washington insider and beholden to special interests. Soccer Dad has a great post that indirectly summarizes why Obama's assertions are exactly counter to reality.

As the general campaign is unfolding, I have to say I do not understand Obama's strategy. Between claiming the McCain is in the clutches of lobbyists and floundering on al-Qaeda in Iraq, Obama is making charges that aren't even remotely backed up by fact. There's only so long that those can work before they are torn down. If you're going to attack a candidate, I would think that you'd want some meat behind your assertions. Attacking someone's strengths seems to be a pretty poor idea.

There have been several articles linked at Real Clear Politics that describe how McCain needs to learn from Hillary's failed strategy to beat Obama, but I can't recall any going in the opposite direction. It's like everyone thinks Obama has it all together and he doesn't need to change a thing to compete. I would venture to say that the Republican primaries have been a lot more difficult than the Democratic ones because the Republicans had significant policy differences. The Democratic primaries have been mostly about style since all of the major candidates agreed on almost everything. The general is going to be very different for Obama and no one seems to notice this.

Update: Soccer Dad wrote to recommend this link discussing St. Obama's Ascension in politics.

At each of the two major steps forward in Obama's political career -- becoming an Illinois state senator and a United States senator -- he has advanced not by winning a vote against a tough opponent, but by default, after those tough opponents were forced off the ballot.

Update 2: A commenter has left this link to a George Will article questioning John McCain for similar reasons. It's more McCain-Feingold mumbo jumbo. I'm still not sure I see the problem. Money will get into politics one way or another. And as I noted in a previous post about Ralph Nader, in most cases, money doesn't even need to get into the election in order for the incumbent to win.