Does negative campaigning work?

What are your thoughts?

The consensus was that it does work, but to a lesser extent this year because there are so many sources now for voters to get information.

of it.But there are of course situations where negative campagning has worked.

And how many did they win before that using negative campaigning?

Of course it works.

Polls always show that voters claim to despise it, yet the person who does it the most generally wins his elections.

I dont have a problem with DEMS following suit in certain situations, as long as we dont make anything up and keep our facts straight.

Negative campaigning has the potential to backfire, but often - as in 2004 - it works very well.

how the speech he prepared for the 2004 Democratic convention had to be checked before he could deliver it, and when he got it back, all references to W had been deleted because they didn’t want to “go negative”. Then the Republican convention was held, and they had no problem with bashing Kerry. Flip-flop shoes with John Kerry’s name on them were sold on the street near the convention. Many of those attending wore purple bandaids to mock John Kerry’s Purple Heart, and by extension his service to this country.
(Note the purple heart bandaid on this guy's right cheek. Outrageous)

It hurt Kerry!

Rovian tactics work very well when the Dems try to focus on their own strengths instead of attacking the weakness of the Republicans. So all the Republican smear machine has to do is attack the the Dems strengths and gulable voters fall for the bullshit.

Therefore, in order to win, Democrats have to pay in kind and make McCain's image bleed at the democratic convention. People know enough about Obama so Obama needs to use his speech to define McCain and scare Americans about the prospect of having McCain at the helm making things even worse.

population observing the campaigning. I believe that 'murcans are mostly stupid, not by a large fraction but large enough (e.g.,to have voted for Bush**). This stupidity can compensated for by registering a lot more voters who are not stupid and have them show up on election day.

PA now has 29 offices staffed for Obama. We can overcome stupidity.

I clearly works with 1)certain target audiences against (2)certain candidates if done is a (3)certain way as to avoid a negative implication on the attacker.

Unfortunately, this year the circumstances go against OBAMA ---

1. Many less educated are also inclined to believe the negative about him (proven in the primaries)
2. Obama is the less well known of the candidates so the smear can "define" him but the respsonse will not define McCain who already has a well defined image.
3. The "having fun" and "making fun of Obama" strategy avoids backsplash on he attacker because the smear is done by insinuation and subliminal effect rather that a direct verbal attack by McCain.

Which is why the GOP has been so successful with it in the past.

because they understand politics isn't about scoring intellectual points.

unfortunately ...

Dems are very much "in the head" and Rs are very much "in the gut' ...

Makes Dems better at actually running government most ofte, but makes Rs better at getting hired for the job ...

as the peddle the McCain ads loop-D-Looped providing him free advertising as though they are his PR firm.

If the media said that Negative advertising didn't work, then it wouldn't.

If the media reminded the public that this is the old time politics that Obama wants to change from, it would create a backlash against McCain. But of course, that would only happen if our media wasn't corporate and bought and paid for by the GOP.

sure does.

what a silly question

But I don't think it works. Come debate time this shit might come back to bite McCain in the ass.

and McCain probably lost SC in the 2000 primary because of the disgusting racist push polling.

Too many people make too much money on this crap. If it didn't work, then it wouldn't be done.

because sometimes that's the only campaign messages that some people see. Most Americans are too lazy to do any investigative work by themselves so they just believe everything they see or read.

If you mean simply to get votes, to have a better chance of election, then yes, as others on this thread have pointed out. The "low information voters" (read: morons) are easily scared into voting against their and everyone's interests by evil political hard-ballers.

However, if I understand what Obama's all about, negative campaigning will surely NOT work in establishing an elected official into office who seeks to always appeal to people's higher nature in governing as well as in campaigning.

and can make every talk show repeat your ads for free as if they were "news".

"About Negative Advertising" by Kurt_and_Hunter:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x6573004

This is one of the best posts I have ever seen here. I urge everyone to read it.

"They have no idea who is winning a debate on points, but they can sense who is on the defensive."