Legal Commentary

Does Obama Do Negative Branding?

By Big Tent Democrat

By Big Tent Democrat

Matt Stoller is chock full of ideas for negatively branding John McCain:

I've been doing some calling around to political insiders I know, many of whom are doing serious research on the 2008 election, to figure out how to brand McCain. . . . Everyone I've spoken with believes that the holy grail of branding seems to be associating McCain strongly with Bush. . . . A backdoor way to frame McCain as a Bush-like candidate is to portray him as old, part of the politics of the past, and angry. He's quite vulnerable on his temper and age, and women in particular revolt against his treatment of his first wife (whom he left for a younger wealthy woman after she got into an accident). McCain is definitely open to attack on the economy, and voters are quite willing to believe he is going to continue the Bush economic legacy of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. So old, angry, addicted to war, and part of the past seems to be the consensus narrative on McCain.

This begs the question - does Barack Obama do negative branding? And if so, can he also work on negatively branding the entire GOP?

Full post as published by TalkLeft on February 20, 2008 (boomark / email).