August 5, 2008

More on Obama and the Blown Town Hall Opportunity

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A commenter at the Plank has another reason why dismissing John McCain’s town hall idea was a missed opportunity for Barack Obama (we discussed this yesterday): it would have distracted attention away from all the attacks that conventional wisdom says are dragging down Obama’s poll numbers.

Here’s jobeek2:

In 2004, the Republicans used the summer lull of non-news to ceaselessly hammer out the trivia of character assassination, and it worked. They’re trying it again now… If Obama had agreed to a series of townhall debates, those encounters would have sucked up all the attention, and we wouldnt have had the news vacuum in which rumours and slander thrive…

I thought Obama should have agreed to the townhall debates even if it *had* been strategically disadvantageous, just because it would have been good for political culture and discourse, for the country basically. But even on a strategic level, participation would have escaped Obama the sordid mess he’s confronting now.

Agreed.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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