Crossroads in Six Senate Races

Alexander Burns writes at Politico:

The GOP independent spending goliath American Crossroads and its affiliate group Crossroads GPS are launching a new barrage of attack ads in six competitive Senate races, assailing a range of Democratic candidates as big-spending, liberal, ethically challenged and overly close to President Barack Obama.

The ad campaign will total $4.6 million across a half-dozen states, a Crossroads strategist told POLITICO. American Crossroads is targeting the Nebraska, Nevada and Virginia Senate contests, while 501(c)4 group Crossroads GPS is funding the ads in North Dakota, Missouri and Ohio.

Many of the ads follow familiar themes in these races. ( (You can view them all here: Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Nebraska, Nevada, Virginia.) Over and over, the Crossroads groups attempt to take Democrats with fairly strong state-level political profiles and tar them by association with the national party – and the president. The commercial hitting Tim Kaine may be the clearest example of that, asking why the former Virginia governor would have agreed to advocate for Obama’s policies as Democratic National Committee chair.

The American Crossroads ads are express advocacy ads, whereas the Crossroads GPS ads are issue advocacy ads, urging support for the New Majority Agenda.

Dems to Go Negative

At the Huffington Post, Tom Edsall surveys unfavorable trends for the Democrats and reports on a possible response:

So what should Democratic candidates do to survive 2010? A strong consensus has emerged among Democratic operatives, based on a strategy developed under the guidance of pollster Geoff Garin. Garin declined to be interviewed for this story, but other party strategists say the most crucial order of business in each contest is to prevent Republican challengers from turning the race into a referendum on the Democratic candidate, the Democratic Party, President Obama, or all three. Rather, they say, Democrats need to turn the public's attention to the failings of the Republican candidate and the national GOP.

Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says that as soon as her clients know who their opponents will be, her advice is "to get them [the Republican candidates] defined." Democratic candidates, Lake and others say, should pre-empt Republicans seeking to present a positive image to the public. Among the techniques to achieve this goal are floating negative stories in the press, taking full advantage of sympathetic bloggers to create a hostile portrait of the GOP opponent, and actively using "less visible" means of communication such as phone banks, direct mail, and canvassers.

There are a couple of problems with a strategy of going negative.  First, the national GOP does not present a target-rich environment, precisely because it lacks real power.  A few months ago, in fact, the rap against the national party was that it was "leaderless."  Second, a negative strategy contradicts a major premise of Obama's election, namely that he would transcend such approaches.  As he said the night he won the North Carolina primary:

More importantly, because of you, we have seen that it's possible to overcome the politics of division and distraction; that it's possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems. We've seen that the American people aren't looking for more spin or more gimmicks, but honest answers about the challenges we face.