46 Days Out: "You Probably Know You're Not Winning the 3:00am Phone Call Challenge on the Economy...

[ProSense]

Jesse Lee

46 Days Out: "You Probably Know You're Not Winning the 3:00am Phone Call Challenge on the Economy When..."

Jesse Lee is the Online Rapid Response Manager for the DNC, this is a daily update on the day's messaging.

In light of Obama's cool and collected full press conference this morning, McCain's "policy speech" this morning certainly was interesting. A speech billed as providing intricate detail on his plans for the economy prompted headlines like "McCain Offers Few Details on Economic Plan," and was filled with attacks McCain knew full well to be false along with hollow attempts to create distance from President Bush. McCain's big claim to big-and-boldness, calling for the firing of SEC Chairman Chris Cox, went soft on Cox, implicitly admitted he can't actually fire him, and managed to get the agency altogether wrong calling it the "FEC."

With that attempt to distance himself from the Bush administration policies he's so fully embraced fizzled out, he then "offered veiled criticism of the Bush administration, suggesting the Treasury Department had not hewed to clear practicies in determining what institutions were worthy of bailouts. McCain promised 'consistent policies in deciding whether to guarantee loans.'" Loyal HuffPo readers will note that this is the very attack excised from the draft of yesterday's McCain release, which made the same point, elaborating that "Taxpayer money was used for Bear Stearns, it was not used for Lehman Brothers and now it is used again for AIG. The American people need to know the thinking and the standards behind using taxpayer's money to support these private sector institutions." That's a rather empty attempt to distance himself from Bush given that McCain supported every one of those decisions, and McCain's own "consistent policies in deciding whether to guarantee loans" was nowhere to be found.

And then there were the hilarious attacks on Obama and lobbyists, which prompted even the New York Daily News to exclaim, "our jaw dropped just now listening to McCain blame lobbyists and Obama advisers. Just consider that McCain advisers (chief among them Phil Gramm) wrote the laws that deregulated these markets and lobbied hard to keep scrutiny to a minimum." For the record, of McCain's 177 lobbyists on his campaign, 83 of them have worked for Wall Street, which to be fair is less than 50% -- maybe that can be his new talking point: "less than half of my hundreds of lobbyists worked for Wall Street!"

McCain's lobbyist-filled, golden-parachuted, o' so much more of the same economic team just happened to be the subject of Obama's new ad incidentally:

(Video: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jesse-lee/46-days-out-rough-flailin_b_127747.html"> "Who Advises" Ad)

So what do you call McCain's increasingly "erratic response"? Some would call it "failing"...

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[Cha]

1. mccain is on his last spindly legs and that means more

work for the corporatemediaWhore$.

[FrenchieCat]

2. McCain campaign is out of step and out of touch totally......

McCain is the worst candidate ever; worse than Bob Dole.