McCain and Obama's Presidential Campaign Strategies, 2008

With only a matter of time before Hillary Clinton steps out of the democratic race on her own terms, Senator Barack Obama will be the democratic nominee, set to go to work against Senator John McCain, the Republican Party nominee. The presidential campaigns are about to get down, dirty and nasty, and here's how they are going to do it:

John McCain strategies: McCain's campaign is looking to continue to portray Obama as inexperienced and not ready for the job as president of the United States. In addition, McCain will be looking to portray Obama as a very liberal Democrat who will be unable to reach along party lines to unite the country. McCain's camp will be portraying John McCain as the candidate who can in fact unite the country because of his "maverick reputation."

Obama's stance of the war will surely be targeted as well, especially by the swift boat veterans group, a Political Action Committee that sunk John Kerry's chances of winning the presidency against Bush. The swift boat veterans group portrayed Kerry as dodging the Vietnam War, and weak on national security. The attack ads put out against the Kerry campaign greatly hurt his chances of winning the presidency and the swift boat veterans group is gearing up to attack Obama's stance against the Iraq War and the withdrawal of troops that Obama is pushing for.

Finally, McCain and the GOP will be portraying Obama as being out of touch with the average, working American and being "elitist." There have been concerns from the Obama campaign about being able to connect to white working Americans, a demographic that has supported Hillary Clinton in the past few Democratic primaries.

Barack Obama campaign strategies: The Obama campaign will insist that they are trying to run a positive campaign but that won't stop the campaign from linking John McCain to President Bush who has very low approval ratings among the American public. Obama will portray a McCain presidency as a third Bush term with more of the same old negative ways of doing things.

In addition, the Obama campaign will subtly portray McCain's age as a negative that could hurt the country. Obama's camp has been showing Barack Obama play basketball and be youthful and energetic; an image that the American people like seeing. The Obama campaign will portray McCain as looking old and tired and make issue of his old age. Often Obama thanks McCain for his "half century of service to the country" as a way of showing how old McCain really is.

Theh 2008 election will be all the more interesting because of the huge surge in voter turnout which is expected and the new battleground states that will be in play like New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina and possibly California.