Obama’s and Axelrod’s chief strategy is risky, but if it’s done right and it works, it’s damn near invincible.

The fact is, people say they don’t like negative campaigning, but obviously negative campaigning still works, and I think the Obama strategem is essentially a process that is put forth to make sure it doesn’t work.

We’ve seen it in action time and again; first you refute the claime, and then you attack the attacker for playing dirty politics.

Very simple, but effective, and you can use it just about anytime and in any way you want to. If you really press the issue, you can paint an opponent as a negative campaigner even if they really aren’t campaigning that negatively.

The true brilliance of it, though, is simply that you tie up your opponent. You take away their weapons, which means that they are left to keep looking for new weapons that you also take away.

Just dropping a negative ad doesn’t work, you see, but persisting with a negative narrative is what is necessary. If you pound the same point over and over again, it will eventually hit home, but what Obama’s strategy does is force the opponent to keep changing the narrative, and when you keep changing the narrative, you lose message cohesion and get mired in dissonance.

Meanwhile, Obama continues to reinforce his own core message everytime an attack is launched.

The risk, of course, is if any of the attacks actually land and stick, but one thing I think that has been made clear is that Obama has been effective at not letting them stick.

Hell, he may have perfected it. Nobody on the Dem side in recent memory has been so effective and timely in responding to smears.

Give it two months after the primaries, and McCain will be making charges that Obama is really a Martian sent to conquer Earth - because by that time, O and Axelrod will have gutted the tried-and-true GOP smears like so many fish.