Thursday, August 14, 2008

"A Plan to Put Hard-Working Americans First"   [Rich Lowry]

Here's Obama's latest ad. It's another good one, and continues the emphasis on the middle class, promising to put "the middle class ahead of corporate interests." As Ramesh noted by way of this James Pethokoukis post, Obama is steadily focusing his tax increases more and more on "the rich." That sets up a debate that the Obama campaign can frame as between raising taxes on the rich and cutting them on the middle class on the one hand, and basically just cutting them on the rich on the other. This is a box the McCain people should want to do everything they can to stay out of. I listened to their conference call today where a big part of their message is that Obama is being inconsistent and that McCain, by contrast, will eliminate the deficit. I wonder what hard-pressed families care about less: the consistency of a presidential candidate's tax plans over time (especially when they are being changed to have less bite rather than more) or eliminating the deficit? The call reminded me a little of the ones back when the McCain folks were trying to hit Obama on energy prior to their own candidate flipping on off-shore drilling. They had the right idea, but they were firing blanks until McCain changed on drilling. Same thing here unless McCain can offer more middle-class tax relief. So I'm with Pethokoukis in his last point reacting to the Obama ad:

McCain might want to consider tax relief that directly targets families, such as a massive increase in the child tax credit. I have raised this issue in chats with McCain advisers, but they haven't seemed too interested in going beyond what McCain's already proposed, doubling the dependent exemption.

08/14 05:29 PMShare