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Chicago’s all-powerful Democratic Party boss, Mayor Richard M. Daley,<\/strong> another longtime Axelrod client<\/a>; and to Exelon\/Com. Ed<\/strong>. , the politically powerful Illinois utility that contracts with Axelrod’s public relations firm and whose employees have been among the largest financial donors in Illinois to the Obama campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\nWhat kind of campaign can we expect from Axelrod in the general election?\u00a0Overtly positive\u00a0themes and public\u00a0posturing \u00a0<\/a>complemented by covertly delievered and mercilessly negative “stiletto” attacks against key people around John McCain<\/strong> that are not directly traceable\u00a0to Axelrod. The model for this strategy is the previous Obama senatorial campaign in Illinois,\u00a0where Obama’s two most formidible, centimillionaire,\u00a0rivals, Democrat Blair Hull<\/a><\/strong> <\/a>and Republican Jack Ryan<\/strong> <\/a>were personally destroyed in the primaries\u00a0when\u00a0salacious details\u00a0from their sealed divorce records were mysteriously leaked to the media, which then pressured for their full\u00a0release,\u00a0notably in the pages of\u00a0the Chicago Tribune.<\/em><\/strong> Thus, ultimately\u00a0permitting Obama to run against an out-of-state, clown candidate, religious conservative firebrand\u00a0Alan Keyes,<\/strong> in the general election.<\/p>\n \u00a0Negative political advertising is reliably effective, something known since the days of Murray Chotiner<\/strong> <\/a>running Richard Nixon’s<\/strong> California races, but the information age imposes “blowback” costs when it is used too openly by a candidate. Axelrod’s long courtship of the media will permit similar “fingerprint free” attacks against the GOP to work\u00a0unless McCain’s campaign is smart enough to start doing social network analysis <\/a>of key media people crossreferenced with Obama Campaign functionaries and Axelrod associates.<\/p>\n It’s also noteworthy of how little escapes Axelrod’s attention. The conservative intellectual and writer, Dr. Stanley Kurtz<\/a><\/strong>, has been digging into the UIC archives <\/a>on\u00a0Senator Obama’s extensive political relationship with Dr<\/strong>. William Ayers<\/a><\/strong>, the 60’s radical\u00a0and unrepentant\u00a0ex-Weatherman terrorist, now a professor of Education at UIC where he is a leading advocate of politicizing teacher certification programs along Leftist lines (Ayers is the son of the late, prominent Chicago business leader,\u00a0Thomas Ayers<\/strong>, former chairman\/CEO of Commonwealth Edison and board member at he Chicago Tribune<\/em><\/strong>). Kurtz was invited to be a guest last night\u00a0<\/a>on Dr. Milt Rosenberg’s<\/strong> <\/a>highbrow\u00a0Extension720 WGN-AM<\/strong> radio show and discuss his research and Rosenberg’s switchboard and email system was instantly flooded and essentially shut down\u00a0by an orchestrated wave of Obama supporters<\/a>\u00a0( here is the Obama Campaign\u00a0action alert<\/a>).\u00a0 While something of a local legend, Rosenberg’s\u00a0radio show\u00a0is, in the national media scheme of things, a fairly obscure program. Sort of a conservative NPR, except a lot smarter and writ small.<\/p>\n I would\u00a0expect the ante be upped against Obama critics to include nuisance suits and worse \u00a0if the fall campaign tightens.<\/p>\n UPDATE:<\/strong><\/p>\n It appears that the Obama-Ayers-Annenberg story, which I expect will soon feature the infamous pic of Ayers trampling a U.S. flag in an alley, is making it on to the MSM radar. Michael Barone<\/strong> <\/a>does a superb job as political anthropologist here, explaining the ” Chicago Way” to Americans in more normal communities:<\/p>\n