Organized Labor Mounts McCain Smear Campaign

Labor organizations have launched a smear campaign against GOP nominee John McCain. The atttacks paint the Arizona Senator as a "100-Year-in-Iraq" Bush clone, for example, in this "McSame as Bush" ad, from the Campaign to Defend America (via YouTube):

Here's more from the Los Angeles Times:

With two celebrity-class candidates, Democrats have seen their presidential contest draw record voter turnout and an influx of Latinos and younger Americans to the party. But some are becoming concerned that the party now risks losing its hold on a more established set of needed supporters: blue-collar workers.

The fears are strong enough that the AFL-CIO today will announce a multimillion-dollar campaign to discredit Republican candidate John McCain among union households and link him to President Bush's unpopular economic policies.

A separate labor-backed group, the Campaign to Defend America, has launched a television ad portraying McCain as "McSame as Bush" on issues including the Iraq war, economics and energy policy. The spot ends with a picture of the two men embracing.

What explains organized labor's unhinged attacks?

Sheer desperation, as recent election data suggest that McCain has a huge opportunity with moderate Reagan Democrats, folks who are obviously not too thrilled about all of the gender and race politics taking over the Democratic primaries, not to mention the calls for a relentlessly retreatist foreign policy among the antiwar left:

The AFL-CIO became concerned after polls and focus groups found considerable willingness among union members to consider supporting McCain, regardless of which Democrat won the nomination.

Republicans have signaled that they have the Reagan Democrats at the top of their target list. Ken Mehlman, a former GOP national chairman who is informally advising McCain, said the campaign's blue-collar outreach would attract Reagan Democrats for the same reason the former president did: McCain is seen as frank, a good leader, strong on defense and opposed to tax increases.

Some analysts say the threat of defections to McCain will be particularly acute if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee. In many of this year's caucuses and primaries, Obama has lost working-class white voters to rival Hillary Rodham Clinton. Holding on to those voters in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania will be one key to the party's efforts in November against McCain, the presumed GOP nominee.

Look for organized labor and the radical left to become increasingly fanatical in their efforts to discredit McCain.

The Arizona Senator continues to match-up competitively in trial-run dead-heats against either potential Democratic opponent in public opinion surveys.