Dems keep up pressure on McCain housing gaffe

Democrats continued to pressure Republican presidential candidate John McCain on his houses gaffe Friday by rolling out new ads and statements at a furious pace.
 
Rival Barack Obama’s campaign put out its second television ad on the subject since the comment gained attention on Thursday. The ad, titled “Out of Touch,” accuses McCain of only understanding “country club economics,” while playing up Obama’s recent populist message.
 
{mosads}“How many houses does he own?” the ad asks. “John McCain says he can't even remember anymore. Well, it's seven. No wonder McCain just said the fundamentals of our economy are strong, and anyone making less than $5 million a year is middle-class. Maybe McCain thinks this economy is working for folks like him. But how're things goin' for you?”
 
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) did its part by putting out a Web video of DNC staffers ridiculing McCain. The staffers are shown asking pedestrians on the National Mall how many houses they have and if they have ever heard of someone forgetting any of their residences.
 
The video ends with a woman saying, “Well, you can be that wealthy that you don’t know what you have, despite the fact that other people are so poor they don’t have anything.”
 
Even the state parties got in on the action as Virginia Democrats held a news conference outside of McCain’s condominium in Crystal City.
 
The Arizona senator, when asked in a Thursday interview how many homes he owns, said: “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you. It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”
 
The McCain camp has by aggressively working to change the narrative, first by reintroducing the celebrity theme Thursday through a second ad referring to Obama as “the One.” That was followed by another ad reminding voters of the Illinois senator’s connection to convicted land developer Tony Rezko.
 
Friday morning the McCain campaign jumped on a report claiming that in May 2007 Obama chief strategist David Axlerod recommended a Chicago hospital rebrand itself to better appeal to wealthier patients in order to make more money.
 
On a conference call with reporters, McCain economic adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin called Axlerod’s experience “a troubling exercise at a time when so many people are without insurance and insurance is the necessary gateway to affordable and comprehensive care in America,” adding that it is not “an entirely surprising development in the Barack Obama campaign, where there is a consistent pattern of saying one thing and doing another.”
 
Rather than respond to the charge, the Obama campaign continued to push the housing story.
 
“John McCain’s newfound concern for those without healthcare would be touching if he weren’t pushing a plan that would leave millions without insurance and raise taxes on benefits for the first time,” Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said. “But when a man loses track of the number of houses he owns, it's not surprising that he's lost touch with those who fear losing their health coverage.”
 
The timing of McCain’s housing flub has helped turn around a stretch of rough news for the Obama campaign.
 
Since Obama’s return from his trip to the Middle East and Europe, the McCain campaign and new campaign strategist Steve Schmidt have hit Obama hard with aggressive ad buys and messaging. The success of the McCain camp's more aggressive strategy has been reflected in the polls where McCain has closed the deficit in some and passed Obama in others.
 
But the hit McCain will take from the houses flub and Obama’s anticipated announcement of his running mate, along with the positive news coverage typically generated by a political convention, will likely lead to a good for the Illinois Democrat, something the McCain camp conceded in a memo distributed Friday afternoon. The memo predicted a 15 percent bounce for Obama.
 
That memo, too, quickly became fodder for pushing the houses story.
 
“Presidential races are close, and we expect this one to be no different,” Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said. “But they should figure out how to spin the fact that John McCain owns a dozen houses and thinks the fundamentals of our economy are strong before trying to spin our convention.”