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Obama Launches First Negative Ad
December 31, 2007 7:06 PM
ABC News' Rick Klein and Teddy Davis Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has launched the first broadcast advertisement of the Democratic race to mention rival candidates by name, with a radio spot that escalates a long-running battle with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and former senator John Edwards, D-N.C., over whose healthcare plan would cover the greatest number of people.
The ad, which is airing in Iowa and New Hampshire, quotes media reports that favorably portray Obama's healthcare plan -- and portray Edwards' and Clinton's plan as ineffective.
An Obama aide said it is response to ads run by independent group -- one that is backing Clinton's candidacy -- that has attacked his healthcare plan as "rewarding the irresponsible who don't get covered."
"Here's the real difference on health care: Senators Edwards and Clinton favor mandates which the Daily Iowan says would, quote, 'force those who can not afford health insurance to buy it, punishing those who don't fall in line,' " a male announcer says in the ad.
A female announcer then chimes in: "Barack Obama believes the solution isn't making it illegal not to have health care. It's making it affordable."
The ad -- coming on the eve of Thursday's caucuses -- seeks to rebut a central critique of Obama's healthcare plan. Edwards and Clinton have argued that Obama would leave as many as 15 million Americans without health insurance.
The key difference between Obama's plan and those of his rivals is that it does not include a so-called "individual mandate," a requirement that all U.S. citizens obtain health insurance.
"His plan would leave 15 million Americans out," Clinton said at a debate last month in Las Vegas. "I have a universal health care plan that covers everyone."
Countered Obama: "The fact of the matter is that I do provide universal health care."
The American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees -- a union that has endorsed Clinton -- has funded a mailing that attacks Obama's healthcare plan by quoting Edwards. The union has also run a radio ad that accuses Obama of not being serious about achieving universal healthcare.
But AFSCME spending is not controlled by any campaign or candidate. Obama's ad, by contrast is being run directly by his campaign.
Some independent experts argue that none of the major candidates' plans are truly universal in the same way that Rep. Dennis Kucinich's, D-Ohio, plan for a single-payer system would guarantee health coverage to all Americans.
But economists generally agree that a plan with an individual mandate -- such as Clinton's or Edwards' -- would cover more of those who are currently uninsured that a plan that lacks such a feature, such as Obama's.
UPDATE: ABC News' Sunlen Miller, traveling with the Obama campaign, reports that the ad has been running for approximately 10 days, according to the campaign. Asked why the campaign did not send out a media advisory about the ad, one aide said that there typically is not much media interest in radio advertising -- and kept a straight face.
The campaign did put out a press release for a radio ad in October, to announce Obama's endorsement by Duffy Lyon, the sculptor of the famed "butter cow" at the Iowa State Fair.
Full text of the ad:
MALE ANNCR: Barack Obama's health plan.
FEMALE ANNCR: Here's what the experts say. President Clinton's own Labor Secretary Robert Reich says, quote, "I've compared the plans in detail. Obama's plan would ensure more people than the others." The Pioneer Press confirms Obama guarantees coverage for all Americans.
MALE ANNCR: But here's the real difference on health care. Senators Edwards and Clinton favor mandates which the Daily Iowan says would, quote, "force those who can not afford health insurance to buy it, punishing those who don’t fall in line."
FEMALE ANNCR: Barack Obama believes the solution isn't making it illegal not to have health care. It's making it affordable.
MALE ANNCR: And that's why his plan cuts costs for a typical family by twenty five hundred dollars.
FEMALE ANNCR: As the Concord Monitor says, when it comes to honesty about health care, Obama has the edge. Check the facts, at Iowa dot Barack Obama dot com.
MALE ANNCR: And caucus on January third for change we can believe in.
FEMALE ANNCR: Paid for by Obama for America.
Read all the latest from the campaign trail -- from Iowa to the ABC News/Facebook/WMUR debates to the New Hampshire primaries and beyond -- in The Note every day.
December 31, 2007 in Bush, George W., Huckabee, Mike, Tancredo, Tom | Permalink | User Comments (84)
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Hillary will put the best plan in, and we will all have Health care.. She's our best choice for President, and she will win.. Get some experience Qbama, and then run for President.. maybe 8 years as V.P. .. Then I'll consider voting for you..
Hillary in 09..
Posted by: J.Murphy, CA. | Dec 31, 2007 7:39:04 PM
Does anyone know what happened to Obama's campaign of hope? Lately, all he's doing is whining and going negative complaining about everything! It seems clear the celebrity campaign is running out of luck once the people started focusing in the real issues and demanding real answer not just slogans and hyped words!
Obama has not chance to win the nomination and not matter how much money they get from the big pocked corporations, Hollywood celebrities at the end is the candidate who has to answer those question. The Obamarama days are numbered! Yikes!
Posted by: Pete | Dec 31, 2007 7:40:37 PM
There is Nothing Negative About This Ad!
Pointing out the differences between
Obama's healthcare plan and the healthcare plans of Edwards and Clinton
is Not Negative! It is Factual!
When is ABC(All Bout Clinton) going to
Stop Schilling for Hillary Clinton and start doing some Unbiased Reporting?
Posted by: reaganfan | Dec 31, 2007 7:41:25 PM
Could someone tell me what is "NEGATIVE" in Obama's message? Sounds like a straightforward correction. What is wrong with that?
Posted by: DCH | Dec 31, 2007 7:56:49 PM
How is that negative ad? Have we become so overly-sensitized that plainly pointing out differences in policy or position is considered a "negative" attack?
Posted by: Eyzwidopn | Dec 31, 2007 8:00:38 PM
This add simply is not Negative! Shame on you ABC for going with such a biased headline.
Posted by: BenjThall | Dec 31, 2007 8:07:10 PM
Let's face it fellas, Obama is a wimp. A campaign based in slogans and hype. He cries out loud for everything and about everything. Michelle is the one wearing the pants in that house it's obvious!!!
Posted by: Ron | Dec 31, 2007 8:08:58 PM
What is it with you Obumites & your shift keys.
It's not about black or white - but rather, about 'fluff' and substance.
Obuma gives great speeches - why not elect Denzel Wahington? He is better looking...and I'm sure his wife doesn't wear the pants in the family.
Get a jumbo size Kleenex - you'll need it when he loses.
Posted by: JasonB | Dec 31, 2007 8:52:41 PM
Political Radar, what is negative about the ad. Come on guys, where is your decency? We are not fools.
Posted by: Diogu | Dec 31, 2007 9:04:20 PM
It's the first negative ad by democratic candidate in New Hampshire. You can easily tell its a negative ad because the Obama camp didn't nofity the media about it and its a radio ad which is less circulated than a TV ad.
Face it Obama numbers are sinking like a Rock!
Posted by: Newshawk | Dec 31, 2007 9:24:21 PM
How is this negative? Those 527s are running ads basically misrepresenting obama's healthcare plan; How is a response ad going negative?!
Posted by: Lisa | Dec 31, 2007 9:50:09 PM
It is a shame to modern day journalism. How is correcting misinformation going negative?
Just say you want to sink the campaign of a Black man who is running for President in a majority white country.
I am white and i am sick of this injustice in this country. All men are entitled to that throne.
Posted by: Emana | Dec 31, 2007 9:55:45 PM
You and the sensational media, you guy's participated in sending us in irak
and now pushing candidates down our throat.
What is negative about that?
Clinton went negative a long time ago but none ever point it out.
I am a student in Utah and i can barely afford
Posted by: demos | Dec 31, 2007 9:57:20 PM
Obama is wrong on health care, wrong in the way he attacks his fellow democrats, wrong on his hypocrisy and on his own flip-flopping positions on Iran, lobbyists, and big money, on running a positive campaign...
It's bad that Obama's inexperienced, but it's inexcusable that he's a hypocrite and a self-serving, over-ambitious party-divider.
This isn't about race. In the future I see possibilities for Harold Ford Jr., Jesse Jackson Jr. - there are many potentially great African-American political leaders, Obama is not the only one who might break the race barrier. Let's look to deserving candidates and not reward this egomaniac's premature and dubious power-grab.
Hillary is the one! Though Edwards has my vote too if he gets the nod. Obama: no way, I'll write-in someone else before I vote for the whining Chicago fraud.
Posted by: Chris Corbell | Jan 1, 2008 12:11:01 AM
It's the first negative ad by democratic candidate in New Hampshire. You can easily tell its a negative ad because the Obama camp didn't nofity the media about it and its a radio ad which is less circulated than a TV ad.
Face it Obama numbers are sinking like a Rock!
Dude or Dudette look at the lastest poll, Obama is surging pass Hillary. Obama-Edwards or Obama-Biden 08!
Posted by: Ayyub | Jan 1, 2008 12:16:06 AM
It's not a "negative ad" to defend yourself from the unrelenting unfounded claims from your opponents!
It's about time Obama addressed this!
Not only has she been purposefully misrepresenting Obama's plan, Hillary has totally mislead everyone into thinking that her plan is a single payer plan like Kucinich's when it's actually just a law to force everyone to buy insurance. At least Edwards has been honest enough to say he'd garnish people's wages if they didn't buy it on their own.
By the way, Obama has just been shown leading in Iowa by 7 points, in the most respected des moines register poll.
Obama also does the best against the republicans.
(Hilary loses to everyone but Romney)
Posted by: jds | Jan 1, 2008 1:13:24 AM
ABCNEWS have just invented the new meaning of -ve ad 'HEADINGS'. Any Obama ad with Hillary name they will say is -ve. If you cant beat Obama, why not join the winning 'FIRED UP, READY TO GO' team? Go Obama, no matter what they say this is your time.
Posted by: baba | Jan 1, 2008 1:39:29 AM
Folks...ponder this, please
Despite the Barack Obama zeal, I believe Clinton will prevail. And if she is the nominee, I believe she is the most electable and least vulnerable Democratic candidate to face the Republicans.
I was more uncertain a year ago when she announced her candidacy. Then she had recognizable strengths but at the same time possessed familiar handicaps both political and personal. She was routinely portrayed as contrived, a woman whose high intelligence had an impersonal edge and whose real identity was difficult to locate.
That was then. Today Clinton has forged herself into a formidable political leader. She has undergone a remarkable journey. In the face of unending autopsies on her personal and political past, unrelieved targeting at both Democratic and Republican debates, the punishing demands imposed on a woman candidate, she is still standing unflinchingly in place.
This is the mark of thoroughbred candidates. They take the fire. They survive the wounds. And while voters relish the spectacle of office-seekers squirming under adversity, something else happens at the same moment. If candidates demonstrate they can bear that kind of public barrage with conviction and ready composure -- and Clinton has done that -- they cross a crucial threshold in the public mind. They are viewed as able to compete and win a national election and able thereafter to govern in perilous times.
Why the most electable Democrat? Because after a year of being tightly measured, Clinton has won a public acceptance that she has the intellect and inner confidence to do the job. She has reached beyond her political inheritance and shaped a political presence all her own. Hillary belittlers still abound, to be sure. She is still caricatured as calculating. But the senator has taken on some different markings. Gone is the defensive bite, on hand is a new openness to concede mistakes, often with glints of humor.
If she does capture the nomination, she will see her standing soar overnight. Nomination is a transforming passage. What was viewed by some as calculation becomes smartness, impersonalness becomes thoughtful deliberation.
Once nominated her campaign will undergo another transformation. Her candidacy will take on an historic aura as it confronts an historic question -- can a woman, this woman, be elected president? Americans will be caught up in crossing one of the country's great divides. Voters of both parties, not just proud women, will be favorably disposed to make that crossing. Americans like the good feeling of removing barriers.
This gender phenomenon showed up in the Geraldine Ferraro campaign, which I managed. At every stop, huge crowds turned out, eager to be part of history in the making. By campaign's end, two things seemed clearer to me: there is inherent goodwill for a woman seeking power but a far sterner demand she be up to the challenge. That higher bar asked too much of Ferraro. Clinton has already cleared the bar.
Why the least vulnerable Democrat? The day the Democratic nominee becomes obvious the Republican attack machine will spring to action. Always, the opponent is a target to be eviscerated. If Obama is the Democratic nominee, a man less intimately understood and less defined, Republicans will rush to manufacture their own brutal definition. Can Obama withstand that kind of barrage? Does he have the personal makeup to be as relentless as his opponents? Do past political positions leave him vulnerable? Because the risks are sky-high, these questions need to be reasonably raised and answered beforehand.
Clinton is well past negative redefinition. Unlike John Kerry's 2004 campaign in which veterans opposed to Kerry's candidacy challenged his war record, it will be difficult to ram a Swift Boat into her candidacy. If there is a convict in her political past, as with Willie Horton during the Dukakis 1988 campaign, he will already have been exhumed. Besides, the Clintons are veteran enough to mount a withering counterfire of their own.
The most vulnerable Democrat, Hillary Clinton is not. The most electable, she is. America's political landscape, this time around, looks fertile for the right Democratic candidate. But one day, surely, the country will elect a woman president. I sense that moment - and that woman - Madame President Clinton- has arrived.
Posted by: Roberta | Jan 1, 2008 2:25:43 AM
America should shine their eyes very well. Barrack Hussein Obama with his muslim route will destroy America once he gets access to classified security information. He will sell such information to China, Russia, Iran, Chavez, Castro, North Korea and to all America's enermy. He is just pretending that he is a christain. Come on, American should watch the impossible spy: eli Cohan of Isreal who later became the defence chief of Syria and made sure that he leaks all the war strategies of Syria to Isreal. With such information Syria was contantly defeated by Isreal. Obama wants to be another impossible spy on America. Becoming an impossible spy is a long term project, and that is exactly what Obama is doing now. He has been fooling Americans that he is a christain while his grandmother, uncles, cousins, nephews and so are stunch muslims. If American knows the rigid policy of faithful muslims they will as well understand that whoever calls himself a true muslim doesnot have anything common with the unbeliever/non-muslims. So for his family in Kenya to be muslims and still be at peace with him, he is still a muslim. He had been pretending. Muslims hates America with very great passion. Their daily prayer is for the destruction and fall of America. I weep for America, their empire will soon fall.
Posted by: kingsley | Jan 1, 2008 2:30:37 AM
I hope America has enough time to realize that forcing everybody to buy healthcare coverage at current costs only stacks the pocket books of insurance company CEO's.
Forcing health insurance companies to lower premieums so it becomes affordable ($2500 less per annuam per fammily) really is the only way to cut into the insurance industry's bottom line.
Ask yourself why the major healthcare providers are funnelling money into HRC and Edwards campaigns. Ask why Hillary refuses to stop taking lobbyist money or why she failed to pass her "universal healthcare" in '93.
Clinton = Agent of change.. I don't think so.
Posted by: Ryan | Jan 1, 2008 6:32:48 AM
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