What Obama's Message On The Gas Tax Should Be: "HRC is in the Tank For Big Oil."

This ad is _ok_:


However, Obama could be getting a lot more mileage out of the gas tax if he used it to destroy Clinton's image as a middle class fighter. How should he do that? By painting Clinton as someone who is in the tank for big oil companies. His message to voters should be:

"You're the ones hurting at the pump. What's Senator Clinton's solution? She and John McCain want to cut taxes for big oil companies, and then trust them to pass the savings onto you. Well, I don't trust the oil companies to do anything other than make windfall profits."

That is the type of message that could make Obama's opposition to cutting the gas tax the type of weapon that John Chait thinks it is.

Matt Leveck: MySpace looks like a digital Lord of the Flies
Ori: nice final quote. I'm sure Piggy would appreciate the props :)
Matt Leveck: yeah... actually it is basically like Lord of the Flies after they kill Piggy.
Matt Leveck: nobody cares if they have the conch, and thus they have proceeded to post as many lewd animated gifs, and inebriated photos as they like

It's not Obama. It's the audience.

Michael Crowley thinks Obama is lucky that the "clinging quote" from his SF fundraiser was not caught on video. Maybe so, but I actually think the existing video is worse:



It would be hard for any particular words to offend blue collar voters as much as the visual presented here. In a caught on spycam moment, Obama makes a joke about blue collar voters struggling to accept any message from "46 year old black guy" and elicits a hearty, knowing, cackle from group of wealthy San Franciscans. The message is clear: when you're not around, Obama and his rich SF friends are laughing about how backwards you are.

I can only take solace in the fact that almost nobody will ever see the attendees' Flickr pages (via Ben Smith). I also still doubt that this flap will doom Obama. But then again, I'm an Obama supporting San Franciscan.

Me to Friends: Sign Up for Twitter!

A big part of the reason I'm launching this blog* is that I'd like to do a better job of staying in touch with my friends. So, hopefully now I'll have a place where I can post new photos, my reading lists, and interesting thoughts (on the off chance that I have any).

However, I think that the twitter feed at the top would accomplish this goal better... if it weren't just a feed. Posting "At dinner," is lame. Posting "Who wants to get dinner?" is more useful. That's the sort of thing you can do if all your friends are receiving, and able to respond to your twitter updates.

So sign up for twitter! You don't have to turn on SMS updates if the idea of racking up a slew of $0.20 charges makes you queasy. You can have updates sent to your IM client instead.

* My travel blog has been moved to http://mlevecktravel.blogspot.com