The Brilliant Obama Campaign

The Obama campaign has not been the best at quickly responding to wildfires in their image, but their positioning/branding vis a vis opposing candidates has been brilliant. (Look how they took Hillary Clinton's inevitability and turned it into institutional insider-ism by embracing the branding of "Change." It took her three months to recast as underdog/fighter and by then she'd lost.)

Now, it looks like they're setting up to expose McCain. Along with the report in the next post, the Obama campaign is also making the relatively unprecedented move of opening all his fundraisers to the press again putting McCain on the spot.

Either McCain has to refuse to match this financial "openness," or have all those pictures of McCain fundraising with Bush and Cheney, or cut them out of fundraising altogether and take that hit, both financial and political.

Think about how these two small steps leverage John McCain on his self-proclaimed strength of being a "reformer." He can match Obama's moves and get hurt financially where he's already much weaker, or not match these steps and take the hit on his core campaign image.

This Obama camp has used their branding brilliantly, and now McCain is seeing how it's done. Roll it out, boys. Roll it out.

(Besides, as Obama already learned, in the days of camera phones, there are no closed fundraisers anymore.)