Obama's infomercial (updated)

Any news here? No, but it was very professional, it hit his main themes, it demonstrated that he gets what people are going through, and it showed some of the people to whom he wants to redistribute wealth (not that he put it that way). It also retold his own story in a way that made it blend with the families on whom the program focused.



After watching portions of the program a second time, I was impressed by the subtlety of how it rebutted the claims that Obama is really offering a return to welfare: it did so by putting a face on the people that he's targeting with his tax plan. After seeing these people and hearing their stories, I'm betting it will be harder for many viewers to see this as 'welfare,' with all of its accumulated negative connotations of handouts to the undeserving. Now most people who got welfare, prior to 'welfare reform,' didn't fit that stereotype, but the stereotype was more powerful than the reality for many people. That's clearly what the McCain camp is wanting to evoke on the stump and in a new ad (that I'll post later). Elsewhere, Eric Alterman and others have pointed out the hypocrisy of McCain calling this welfare when he's offering a similarly refundable tax credit as the centerpiece of his health care plan.