Whirled News - Obama Urged to Revamp Campaign Strategy

Alarmed by the latest polls showing that John McCain has pulled even or slightly ahead, Obama campaign officials rushed to reassure supporters that the campaign is unfolding according to plan.

“We’re doing the same successful thing we did in Senator Obama’s senatorial campaign,” insisted chief strategist David Axelrod, “We were running against an arch-conservative crazy guy then too, and we felt that it made sense to jettison every trace of Barack’s progressive background and run toward the middle.”

When reporters pointed out that Obama’s poll numbers against Alan Keyes consistently indicated over a 20-point lead, while his poll numbers against McCain have sunk from a 7-point lead to negative numbers, Axelrod conceded that the dynamics of this race were “somewhat different."

"Keyes was a crazy Black conservative, and McCain is White. Perhaps this time White voters feel they’ve got a choice between candidates. We’re looking at that.”

Suggesting that the reassessment has not yet produced change the voters can believe in, the Obama campaign’s latest ads have replaced their campaign slogan “Change you can believe in,” with “Vote for Obama. He’s not as bad as McCain.”

Explaining the slight shift, Axelrod pointed out, “Having inspired millions in the early primary days with moderately progressive ideas and Kennedy-esque rhetoric, we’re understandably wary of letting that particular genie out of the bottle again. But everything Barack Obama does and says now will hammer home the point that in some ways he’s a little different and a little better than McCain.”

Asked why Obama has not pointed out that McCain has confused Georgia with Russia, Shiites with Sunnis, Iraq with Iran, Pakistan’s border with Iran’s, and his millionaire wife with a raunchy, topless biker chick, Axelrod cautioned that he did not want to alienate the millions of Americans with relatives who are descending into dementia. But many Obama supporters insist that’s exactly what the Obama campaign should be doing.

“McCain has distracted everyone’s attention from the real issue about his fitness to be President from his diminishing mental acuity to his melanoma,” said one frustrated supporter, “But we should have pointed out that when he showed his latest medical report to reporters, he was holding it upside down.”