The Attack Ads John McCain Never Ran

Call me pollyannaish, but perhaps one day we’ll have no need for guys like Davis. Could America possibly become that civilized?

Davis was an EPIC FAIL and don’t forget to point out that he also did ads for losers Sununu and Dole. Its funny that he still created ads that supposedly were banned from ever being used. I wonder if any of them ever ended up in “independent” hands. I guess we will never know since the interviewer didn’t seem to ask the interviewee. By the way on the matter of race did you happen to ask him why he put Franklin Raines in attack ads with Obama even though he wasn’t a part of Obama’s campaign? Did you ask about the pictures of Obama in the kindergarten sex ad? By the way Obama’s ads had pictures of McCain smiling in them plenty of times…..when he was standing right next to Dubya or hugging him lol

There is a way to run ads and not appear racist or sexist. All you have to do is be as honest and truthful as you can. Just as you can run an honorable campaign.

Oh another thought. If an ad wasn’t run because it might have been percieved as bigoted, its probably because the ad was in fact bigoted. Its kinda like my coach used to tell me, “If you are thinking about doing something but you are worried about how it will look if somebody finds out then you probably shouldn’t be doing it in the first place”

One list that was not as long as the list of reasons he wasn’t able to do his job?
His list of ways to run a good campaign.

If an ad wasn’t run because it might have been perceived as bigoted, its probably because the ad was in fact bigoted.
.
Ya think?
.
Could be, anyway.

They were heroes on the campaign. They just were horribly disadvantages running against a black man. Black men are a cinch for president.

Oh,and thanks MS, for reminding us what a mavericky and honorable guy McCain really is.
.
Snark aside, I have a serious question.
.
One of the centerpieces of Bush’s campaigns, both for office and for his programs, has been focus grouping everything. There was so much stuff McCain did that was wrongfooted–just the opposite of No Child Left Behind or The Clear Skies Initiative. Did they not focus group their messages? If not, why not? If so, why were the focus groups so useless in tailoring a message.
.
Also, did Davis not notice that the stuff he was allowed to use was backfiring? That if they’d gone with a more racist attack profile, all evidence is that it would have hurt rather than helped McCain? It might have turned that patch in the NYT electoral map redder, but it also would have shrunk it still more.

It’s hard to convey derisive, mocking laughter over the internet, but I will try anyway:
Fred Davis III, the advertising mastermind behind John McCain’s presidential run
.
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
.
Maybe he could have mentioned that John McCain was a POW. I bet that would have helped!
BWAAAA HA HA HA HA HA!

I guess this answers the question “What could McCain have done differently to win?”
.
The answer being “nothing.”

They just were horribly disadvantages running against a black man. Black men are a cinch for president.
.
Motherf. You put ‘em up, and it’s a wrap. All over but the cryin’.
.
I understand that Davis has to blame the candidate. That’s what you do when you lose. Blame the horse. When you win, it was steady jockey navigation.
.
(That’s another bit of Obama good news. This doesn’t seem to be happening.)

It’s hard to convey derisive, mocking laughter over the internet, but I will try anyway
.
If it’s any comfort, I did that myself when I read this post. Dog looked up, confused.

The problem for a guy like Davis is that the GOP has jumped the shark with all this stuff.
.
We’ve seen to much already to know that the GOP couldn’t care less about honorable service, hellholes, etc. Long before the world knew of Bush or John Kerry one of them escaped combat by getting into the national guard, got grounded, and quit. The other was wounded multiple times after volunteering for one of the most dangerous assignments in the Navy. The GOP’s response? Purple band-aids.
.
I know that the media found it impolite to point out the crassness of the GOP’s embracing of war-dodgers Bush and Cheney while mocking Kerry’s service, but it wasn’t lost on the American people.

Another astonishgly short list belonging to Davis III: How to not be a complete tool

“Also, did Davis not notice that the stuff he was allowed to use was backfiring? ”
.
Exactly. This is an odd definition of “hands were tied”.
.
A D.C. “advertising mastermind” complaining that he wasn’t allowed to run ads that wouldn’t have worked. That’s pretty stupid. Are you sure he isn’t a Democrat?

I am going to say this but i won’t defend it too strenuously because its all moot now, but Obama won the popular vote by 2 pts. In key battle ground states that margin was about the same. He did all this with the absolute dumbest most polarizing blithering idiot who got convicted of abusing her office in the middle of the campaign for a VP pick. I think picking Romney would have made it a definite nailbiter without taking experience off the table. And in my heart of hearts I think Romney would have won it for him precisely because of the financial crisis. Ill bet Scherer would have been pumping out pro McCain propaganda non stop in light of his full throated endorsement of Romney’s idiotic Big 3 plan. Again there is no way for me to prove it nor is there no way for it to be disproved but I definitely believe it

Nine percent of the country thought the country was on the right track.

Davis can stop whining and relax. McCain could have run the sleaziest campaign imaginable; he still would have gotten his behind kicked.

MS, interesting post.
–
The McCain campaign never fully committed to running an unrestrained race-baiting campaign or to running a legitimate, honest campaign. Instead they tried to do subtly racist ads, but it’s difficult to be both subtle and effective when race-baiting. (It’s way easier with sexism and anti-Muslim smears) They didn’t succeed: We could all see the Celebrity ad, for example, was racist. And other ads, like the Middle East oil one with the chanting, were too subtle. Maybe the Wright ad would have been effective, although once McCain responded so bizarrely to the economic crisis, they had lost.
–
Race-baiting is like anything else: it doesn’t work if it’s done badly. I still think that if McCain had been reasonably disciplined, and the reincarnation of Lee Atwater ran his campaign, he could have won. It’s like Schmidt thought all he had to do was broadly hint, and the racism would just magically influence voters to support McCain. Fortunately, McCain’s campaign was Kerry-like in its incompetence.
–
jayackroyd, apparently the Kerry people obsessively focused grouped. Didn’t work well for them. I wonder if focus groups are more effective on selling policies than selling attacks. And since the McCain campaign didn’t do much of the former… I also wonder about Schmidt’s difficulties with math affecting the campaign. Apparently he can’t comprehend a column of numbers, which seems like a pretty big problem for his job.

Of course, once the Reverend Wright ads had run, it would have been become widespread knowledge that Reverend Wright was a Marine Corps and Navy veteran and received recognition for his service on President Johnson’s surgery team.
.
It would have been evident, once again, that McCain’s campaign team never did any research, whether it be on the lobbying backgrounds of his staff (Rick Davis/Fannie Mae), Czechoslovakia, the prevailing wage for picking lettuce, Joe the Plumber, or for that matter, Sarah Palin.
.
If McCain wants to restore his good name after the campaign he ran, why doesn’t he just apologize instead of sending out surrogates to tell stories?

The contradiction in this article is staggering. How can you assert that Davis’ ad campaign failed because he wasn’t allowed to use his more provocative ads (a euphemism for race baiting diatribes), but at the same time he lost because it was just Obama’;s time — the stars aligned for him? Seems to me that Davis isn’t the only tool here.

Actually, it was possible for McCain to run non-racist ads that were perceived as racist. That is because the GOP has spent the past 40 years systematically running against scary black people. They have further spend the past 25 years or so, carefully crafting messages that tap into voters’ subconsciouses. They no longer get the benefit of the doubt.
.
Too bad for McCain.

Hey, here’s some horrible financial news (or a horrible take on financial news, whatever works for you):
.
http://daggatt.blogspot.com/2008/11/meltdown.html
.
As of Thursday, $8.3 trillion in stock market wealth had been erased in the US in just the past 13 months. If the year ended on Thursday, the S&P 500 would have been down 49% for the year, the worst annual decline in its 80-year history. (The Dow has been around longer – since 1896. In that time it has had ONE year with a bigger decline – that was its 52% decline in 1931.)
.
The two-year breakeven rate (the difference in yields between inflation-linked bonds and nominal bonds) was minus 4.09%, suggesting that traders are betting that the US economy will face deflation over the next two years….Once you get into a deflationary environment, it gets REALLY hard to turn things around. No one wants to invest now to generate lower cash returns in the future. Consumers hold off as long as possible on purchases to take advantage of falling prices. And the Fed loses its ability to stimulate the economy through interest rate cuts when rates go negative. That is what economists refer to as a “liquidity trap.” When Japan fell into a liquidity trap in the early ‘90’s, it took a couple of decades for that country’s economy to climb back out.

“Davis described an environment of overwhelming caution at McCain campaign headquarters.”
.
This is so asinine on so many levels that further comment would be superfluous.

sgw:

I agree with you thesis re Romney. But the problem with counterfactuals is that there is a reason why they are not reality.

McCain picked Palin because he is McCain. He is the kind of guy who would pick a blithering incompetent just because she’s hot for a 40+ politician and the wingnut base loves her. He’s the kind of guy who would pick her, virtually unvetted. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t care that she wass completely uninformed.
.
IOW, had McCain been the kind of guy who would pick Romney, he’d also be the kind of guy who would not pause his campaign. He’d be the kind of guy who would not change his bailout message every 5 minutes. He’d be the kind of guy who would not propose blanket spending freezes or hold up earmark reform as being key to balancing the budget.

SG- my old friend. Hate to break it to you but your assessment of the battle ground states is misleading. I’m glad to hear the following…
.
“I am going to say this but i won’t defend it too strenuously”
.
The truth of the matter is that Obama won all of the original battleground states by sizable margins. The closer races were all solidly red states in the last two presidential elections. What’s even more interesting is the vast number of previously solidly fed states where Obama increased Democratic performance substantially despite losing by only a few points. I don’t think Romney or anyone else could have helped McCain once the economic meltdown took place — can you imagine the corporate raider ads the Obama campaign would have done on Romney– breaking up companies, sending jobs overseas.

Not able to use the drums, huh? Couldn’t run against Jeremiah Wright, huh? Couldn’t use bad photos, huh? That’s his list?? And its not that he couldn’t use them because it was wrong to do (or petty and stupid to do), but because they knew it would not be effective. Good!
.
Is on that list anywhere the fact that he was saddled with a very poor candidate who was tied by a 90% voting record to the worst president ever and who proved time and again that he was simply not the man most of the country wanted at this point in time?

While Davis is patting himself on the back, he might want to imagine what it would’ve been like if instead of running against an honorable guy like Barack they were actually against some cutthroat operator. Then, maybe when they brought up McCain suffering in his hellhole for 5 years, the cutthroat operator would bring up that McCain used his status as the son of the commander of the Pacific forces to get preferential treatment; that McCain actually “confessed” repudiating his own country (he was under extreme pain at the time); and made several attempts at suicide. The cutthroat operator would exploit that McCain cheated on his first wife and children on a regular basis abandoned her after she was disfigured in an auto accident, and was still married at the time he met his second wife, who was decades his junior. Or that both Reagan and Goldwater, McCain’s supposed heroes, hated McCain’s guts.
.
Lucky for Davis that the Dem candidate wasn’t a complete a-hole like Bush 1 (Willie Horton) or Bush 2 (illegitimate black child). He might like to think about that while he’s patting himself on the back for his restraint.

Lousy candidate, lousy speeches, lousy rallies, lousy staff, lousy ads, lousy VP pick, lousy themes and lousy decisions. Most certainly the black guy prevent McCain/Palin from failing up.

The douche bag Davis says they dropped the drums from attack ads for fear of being percieved as racist but I notice they didnt drop the eerie middle eastern music they used in the attack ad that had Ahmadenijhad in it. I wonder why

advertising “mastermind”??? Are you kidding me?
.
I’d say he’s a mastermind the way Bush is an intellectual. Sheesh.

“My favorite ad of the campaign was as simple as it could be,” Davis said.
.
What an a**hole.

Now eerie middle eastern music is something I can rally behind — I much prefer it when we are on the same side.

Dee
.
Florida Obama wins 51-49
.
NC Obama wins 50-49
.
IN Obama wins 50-49
.
VA Obama wins 53-47

McSameAsItEverWas:

Only Florida was one of the original 18 battle ground states. Yes Obama said he was going to play in VA but it hadn’t been done before and most Democrats thought it wouldn’t happen. In any even the previous election it was solidly Red so what I’m saying is that except for Florida what we are not considering battle ground now was actually solidly red in 2004 and 2000.

Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, has partnered with VelocityStore.com to help you with the transition from Analog-to-Digital television. Check back often for new videos from Joe where he’ll not only show you how to set up your DTV converter, but he’ll also explain the public safety benefits the transition provides to all Americans.
.
You guys and gals do the jokes. My brain is bleeding all over the carpet.
.

http://www.velocitystore.com/?page=media

“Most importantly, the campaign never went close to Rev. Jeremiah Wright, on orders from McCain himself”
.
And that, son, is why Satan made the RNC. There is no way I saw the last Anti-Obama.Wright ad fewer than 20 times the last 24 hours of the campaign.

I read this without noting the byline and thought, “When did Halperin start writing for Swampland?”

sg, the religious right held their noses and voted for McCain, would they have done the same for Willard?

To follow up on what nibblybits said, the GOP is just lucky that the Dems are not unmitigated a-holes.
.
It’s not just Obama. Dem candidates don’t want to go there and their base doesn’t want them to go there.
.
The past 4 GOP candidates have all had military experiences that, had the shoe been on the other foot, the GOP would have centered their campaigns around attacking. George H.W. Bush bailed out of a plane that he was piloting with crew members still in it. Bob Dole injured himself with his own grenade. George W. Bush used preferential treatment to get into the National Guard and then dropped out. And McCain “confessed” as a POW.
.
None of the above were attacked by Democrats during their political campaings. And, with the exception of W being attacked for his desertion from TANG, none have had significant attacks made against them by the base of the party. And this is good. I don’t want to turn political campaigns into some combination of Cold Case, Rashomon, Born on the Fourth of July, and Courage Under Fire.

PNNTO — you must live in the wrong battle ground state because it that anti-Obama wright ad ran every 8 minutes in the VA media market it was ridiculous.

Other Davis quotes not used for this article:
.
“We wanted to use the word ‘ni**er,’ but McCain was too much of a pu**y to let us.”
.
“I made one ad that had an animated, cartoon Obama with a bone through his nose chasing white women. McCain nixed it.”
.
“Okay, I’ll admit the lynching ad was in bad taste, but it could have swung the election, no pun intended. Again, McCain was too much of a loser to allow it.”

“you must live in the wrong battle ground state because it that anti-Obama wright ad ran every 8 minutes in the VA media market it was ridiculous.”
.
Bingo. McCain’s campaign never had to run a Wright attack ad, because if the outside groups were not running the MSM and talking heads were falling all over themselves to talk about Wright.

Ha Dee, but if you say is true then Davis (and clearly MS) would be using a deceitful premise. Unpossible!
.
More seriously this is Davis throwing his candidate under the bus. Does that make him more or less likely to be hired in the future? And how does MS feel about being used this way?

I’m struggling with the idea that this guy is complaining about not being able to use tribal drums in ads. I mean, seriously?

Mittens freaked out the base. The funny thing is that he was 1 cycle too late. The base has warmed to the mormon church after they spent so much on Prop 8.
.
It seems that MS has switched his crush to Mittens. I still can’t believe that MS worked at Salon. Well, Jake Tapper did too. Does Joan Walsh have an undisclosed drinking problem?

Speaking as an advertising mastermind – well, I write ads for a living anyway – Fred Davis is the dumbest advertising mastermind I’ve ever come across.
.
Start with the target audience. (We like. Short sentences. In advertising.) Swing voters obviously. You could conjecture that a lot of these would have been white and blue collar, getting squeezed financially in the downturn.
.
Next, define the proposition. Davis’s analysis supposes that there is a latent racism in this demographic, who would respond to defining Obama as ‘the other’. Problem is, he was wrong. People in the election were concerned primarily with their wallets. Obama knew this and stayed relentlessly on a message of tax cuts for the middle class. Davis could have successfully communicated that Obama was a green-skinned Hindu and it wouldn’t have mattered. Had his hands been completely untied, he would have been free simply to roam wild, promulgating the wrong message. The voters he wanted, wanted to hear who could best get them out of a financial fix. Period.
.
Finally, look at the trends. Appealing to white, working class voters is a necessity, but not enough any more to create a winning margin. I haven’t seen a definitive breakdown of the final voting patterns, but I’m guessing that McCain lost big among Latinos, women and probably Catholics (Catholics are value voters, but are as much concerned these days with social justice as with gay marriage or abortion.)
.
Davis’s razor-sharp intellect identified a plan based on animating the evangelical base (which didn’t happen and now isn’t enough in any event) and would have alienated pretty much all the rapidly growing minority groups. Davis’s main handicap appears to have been that he’s as dumb as a rock.

McCain was a POW? Who knew? He should have brought that up during the campaign. Too modest I guess.

Interesting perspective Ted, thanks.
As far as Catholics there is this-
“Nationwide, 54 percent of Catholics supported Obama and 44 percent voted for McCain. Of the total population, 52 percent voted for Obama and 46 percent for McCain.”
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0805649.htm

Yeah and the last thing that anyone mentions was the decline in Republican turnout. Moderate Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a Democrat simply stayed home.

“No bad pictures of Obama”? What kind of revisionist history is Davis writing? Here are a few bad pictures:
http://whenrepublicansattack.com/2008/10/21/distortions-the-movie/
More bad pics and associations documented elsewhere on the blog.

“Every day for about six months, he put a “John McCain for President” sign in front of his home. And almost every night it would be stolen.”
.
“After the election ended, he participated in a panel discussion before a crowd of Hollywood bigwigs. He was met with disapproving grumbles when he was introduced as the guy who made McCain’s Paris Hilton ad. “It wasn’t a good evening really,” Davis says. As he was trying to leave the hall, former Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander confronted him. “He basically wanted to know how I sleep at night.”
.
Has there ever existed a reporter more gullible than our Mikey?

Did that idiot Scherer really say “read the whole thing”?

“mastermind” “whiz” “mischiefmaker” That’s some fine reporting!
.
This is from the article too-so many treasures!-
“oversaw…the stage production for the Republican National Convention.”
Did you ask him about Walter Reed Middle School?

pnnto,
.
Or the cemetery behind Lindsey Graham.
.
Heckuva’ job, Brownie!

Obama would have won no matter what. It was the McCain campaign that done them in.

palininappropriatelydressed didn’t they finally just give up on having pictures behind McCain some time during his acceptance?

I’m so sad that Barack Obama being a negro prevented Fred Davis III from masterminding him to death. I’m crying over here. Does anyone have one of those tissue with liquid in it? I weep for Fred Davis III.

I bet Fred Davis II is thinking, “Where did I go wrong with this kid?”

Pnnto,
.
It looked like green screen because the only thing a television audience could see was the green of the lawn in front of Walter Reed Middle School. (The lawn took up the entire bottom half of the 30-foot projection backdrop.)
.
Fred “masterminded” that backdrop.

Honestly, that’s the funniest thing ever. Because Obama was born on Blackulus-1, he is immune to Fred Davis III’s Mastermind Advertising Death Ray which normally obliterates any opponent on the planet. He also lacks a drama gene and can bend spoons with his mind. These are just facts.

For those who don’t know him, click here for a picture of Fred Davis III masterminding a campaign through his mastermind ducts.

pourmecoffee,
.
Well, the fact that Obama is a colored coupled with the fact that McCain wouldn’t let Fred unleash his super creative powers like a 30-second ad where the VO (over a scary still of Obama) simply screams, “HE’S COLORED! HE’S A BLACK GUY! HE’S – A – NEGRO!!!!”

thanks palin-that’s where I got mixed up.
.
Good times, good times.
.
One last thing that came up in the story that has been bugging me. The idea that McCain was doing fine until the “economy collapsed in mid September”. He had the predictable post convention bounce. RNC ended 9-4-08 and would have come crashing down no matter what. His debate performances were, what do the kids say?, EPIC FAIL?
.
Party of Personal Responsibility indeed,

pourme
.
I used to LOVE ultraman! What ever happened to that show???

plaininatowel – I think it’s probably safe to say that if you have actually made a list of reasons why everything would be perfect if only people listened to you, then you are not a mastermind, and probably not even in the top two of great Fred Davis’s.

Just reading that is making me develop a tic. Thank goodness the election is over. The Republicans still don’t get it – “We clearly lost because we were too nice.” Yeah, that’s gotta be it. If they think they weren’t nasty enough, I see many happy Democrats over the next several elections!

@sgw – Dude, I LOVED Ultraman. My son has this classic as his desktop background. That is how Ultraman rolled. I have no idea what happened to him.

Oh and Dee
.
I forgot to include Ohio which Obama won 51-47
.
You add all that up and you get 86 electoral votes which would leave McCain about 11 points from being PEOTUS. Again I can’t prove this but I think Romney as VP would have had us down to the wire.

pourme
.
The Power Rangers are just poor ultraman knockoffs and they could never have matched his level of asswhuppingness!

Yep, the guy’s a genius. Read this puff piece from Politico from May 1, 2007. (I was shocked to discover that this wasn’t written by onathan Martin):
.
Can McCain’s ads win an Oscar?
.
Seriously…

Jeebus, that’s hysterical. I particularly like the decapitation. You know what Ultraman did to monsters and such? He KILLED them, that’s what. He would sit down with creatures without preconditions … so he could KILL them! Man, I wish I had some kind of ray shooting out of my fists. I hate that I don’t.

I think the fundies would have stayed home in droves if Mitt was there. That is all 20/20 though.

pourme
.
You and me both brother. It broke my heart when Ultraman flew off into the wide blue yonder never to be seen again. I keep wondering when they will get around to doing a remake because you know they have run out of new ideas in hollywood. I know I would pay good money to go see it

trifecta
.
They stayed home in droves this time also. But the undecideds would have fallen a lot more for McCain in my opinion. Besides that Romney would have given the masses the false sense of security that because he had “saved the olympics” and had been this “titan of business” that he would be able to handle the financial crisis. I doubt if there would have been a suspension of McCain’s campaign and also the biggest thing is experience would have been back on the table. Oh and don’t forget that Romney could have put his version of Universal Health Care on the table also. This is my last defense of my premise

Michael Scherer – this is trite. BORING. Can you please do some real reporting on something people might actually care about.

Thank you.

And the point of your post Michael was? McCain was so honorable he wouldn’t let Davis use his best stuff? Oh and Davis is an advertsing mastermind. Reality Check Please!!!!!! You need to stop spending so much quality time sniffing each other’s fumes in the Republican Party and get out more.

We are all waiting for your George W Bush was America’s greatest President post.

” Perhaps the (Davis’s) biggest misstep came in 1998 with a commercial on behalf of Mitch Skandalakis, running for lieutenant governor of Georgia. Mark Taylor, Skandalakis’ Democratic opponent, had acknowledged using cocaine and marijuana in the early 1980s while in his 20s. The attack ad showed the sign in front of the Ridgeview Institute, a Georgia drug rehabilitation center, as an announcer said, “Taylor, of course, has admitted he had problems years ago. And we all wish those problems had been cured.” The ad featured an actor who resembled Taylor dressed in a tattered robe, shuffling down a long hall…
Davis had to admit the source who suggested Taylor’s drug problems continued into the ’90s proved unreliable.
aylor was so enraged over the ad that shortly before Election Day he sued Skandalakis for libel. The rivals ultimately settled the case, with Skandalakis agreeing to pay $50,000 to a charity.”
.
Charming.

Something about Davis, as I read about him, reminds me of Arthur Finkelstein.

This is just like when somebody starts a sentence with “I’m not racist, but…”, and then says something completely offensive and racist. Basically, Davis is saying “I’m not a bigot, but all the ad ideas I had were full of bigotry.”

Yea, they were well-advised not to run that one. So funny how those attack ads were like flies in the face of the movement for change in this country.
http://www.postpartisannews.com/

Why would anyone want to read an article about McCain’s ad man?
-
Why would anyone want that article to be relentlessly complimentary, without any hint of any criticism, despite the campaign being regarded as an erratic, strategy-free flop?
-
Why would anyone give the soft-lens treatment to a dirty trickster’s complaints that he wasn’t as Racist As He Wanna Be?
-
What in God’s name possessed you to write this article? Why did you think you wanted to be a political journalist?

Considering the idiotic trash they DID run with, I’d hate to see the stuff that wasn’t deemed sufficiently seemly.
-
This is the current GOP line, btw. He coulda won! He shoulda won!
-
Whoever was filling in for O’Reilly today actually said that Obama has two consituencies: The far left, and people under the spell of the cult. They literally can’t understand. IT’S THE POLICIES, STUPID.

Also, I remembering hearing from someone during the campaign that the fundamentals of the economy are strong.

Ummm…… I think everyone knew that Obama was black. So, I’m not so sure that any of those valiantly, restrainedly, honorably not-run ads that the McCain campaign didn’t use, pointing out in various ways that Obama was black, would have helped much.
.
What dennisdenuto114 @26.
.
I think McCain is trying to worm his way back into the good graces of his “base” who probably are waiting for him to come back with open arms. All is forgiven!

I guess it goes to show that if a hack reporter spends an entire campaign kissing Republican booty, he’ll develop a few good sources, and get a few good stories out of it.

I’m still waiting for Part III of the Romney For Auto Czar series.

sgwhiteinfla,
Obama won by 2%? More like 6.2%. And those battleground states that you mentioned were irrelevant, since he only needed OH or CO and VA (or even CO and NV, but it would’ve been messy). None of those states were so close. Moreover, he won NM, IA, MI, MN, PA, NH, WI, and ME each by at least 8% (and all except IA by double digits).

Did Davis do the “There is no God” ad for Dole?

I’m kinda curious how they were planning to work the drums into the ads. Too bad someone can’t post that on Youtube.

That was a campaign that Michael with re-live in his feverish mind for ages to come. It was to him much like the Woodstock experience was to some.

Or is he, unlike his good colleague Mike Murphy, just ashamed to drop the promotion dead – after the payments stopped coming?

So it’s late. And MS isn’t looking
.
But consider the alternative category. Ads OBAMA didn’t run.
.
Doddering old dude findin’ a babe in the corner, sayin’ in unison “you betcha, there.”

Joe, I appreciate your work mostly, but I’m gonna have to decent this time.
.
You, Fred, and a bunch of other people need to get over it. They lost. Instead of rehashing it on the national stage, look around. The country is a $@#% sandwich right now and getting moldier by the moment. That’s what Obama is getting passed to him by our current President who seems unwilling or unable to do much about it.
.
The past election basically represented the trend that was already present. The eventual result throughout history of any association that spent more time running “against something” than “for something”. Republicans are always championing against something. That can have short term gains when managed well, but long term that philosophy always fails.
.
Let us move on to the matter at hand. If we don’t redefine the “non-negotiable American way of life” and get our house in order, we won’t have a house. It won’t matter if you are Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. We have been insane a long time, and part of breaking that cycle is to stop looking back at things that simply do not matter while ignoring the things that are paramount to our future.

Did anyone on the McCain campaign ever think for one minute that proposing solutions to problems might be a way to win the election?

Apparently not.

This guy Davis worked for Liddy Dole’s campaign? Was he the mastermind of the “there is no God” commercial? What a piece of excrement. Thanks for providing such a scintillating profile of a worthless piece of humanity MS. Let’s get this off to the Pulitzer committee ASAP.
.
Lee Atwater would be proud of him.
.
MS you have sunken to new low.

The tragedy is that he doesn’t regard simple ethics or decency as his biggest “handcuffs.”

Wait a sec, this guy’s complaining because he couldn’t be as RACIST as he wanted? Real cool Family Values.

“Fred Davis III, the advertising mastermind “
MU HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !
He LOST!! Can’t be a mastermind if you THAT, not once, but THREE times, with Sunu and Godless Dole.

“My favorite ad of the campaign was as simple as it could be,” Davis said. “And it started out something like, ‘Long before the world knew of John McCain or Barack Obama, one of them spent five years in a hellhole because he refused early release to honor his fellow prisoners, while the other one wouldn’t walk out of a church after 20 years of the guy spewing hatred towards America.’

“refused early release”??? My A…!!! McCain, like ALL American POW’s had standing ORDERS to NOT accept early release, if it didn’t include all the POW’s he was locked up with.
And Wright did NOT spew hatred for 20 years. That’s just his feverish, non-mastermind view on things. Rev. Wright rightly addressed something the rest of the world hates about America: it’s behavior towards weaker groups, be it Native Americans, Vietnamese or Chileans defending a democratically elected govt, in 1973.

For that behavior, especially since it claims to be the good guy, while being the bad guy, America SHOULD be damned. By God.

Summing up: his favorite ad would’ve been based on two lies:
1. McCain is a hero (while he was just following orders)
2. Wright said hateful things about America for 20 years, constantly and without letting up once. Wright’s actions, serving as marine and having a granddaughter who is ALSO a MARINE, speak louder than Davis’ lies.