Twister

Talk about twists and turns. John McCain announced he was suspending his campaign on Thursday, and asked that Friday's debate be postponed, while he went to Washington to work on the bail-out bill. As Barney Frank says, this is the longest Hail Mary pass in the history of football, or Marys.

I've gone through the day and the prospects for the bail-out bill at Dreaming Up Daily. Here I'll stick mostly to the politics. Several progressive bloggers at first thought McCain's move was pretty shrewd--it seized the story, deflected from the coverage of bad poll numbers and his campaign manager's ties to Freddie Mac, and made him look like a bipartisan leader on the economic crisis. It was also a gamble to get Obama to follow him to DC and cancel the debate.

By day's end, none of it seemed to work. Neither Obama nor the debate commission agreed to cancel the debate. (Obama got in a good dig about presidents needing to be able to deal with more than one thing at a time.) Although Bush provided cover for McCain by giving him something to do in Washington (since he's not on the relevant committees, he had no real meetings to go to), he also mitigated any problem for Obama by inviting him as well, so by the time this news catches up to people, Obama will also be in the photo op in Washington.

A Survey USA flash poll strongly suggests McCain's gambit didn't work with the public--only 10% agreed that the debate should be cancelled. And at least one of those bloggers recanted. Now McCain really has a problem. If the deal isn't done by Friday, what does he do? Does he become the first candidate in history to duck a debate? Or does he murmur something about satisfactory progress and go? Incidentally, unprepared.

Also, many respondents in that poll thought the debate and the rest of the campaign should be focused on the economy. And indeed the Obama campaign said that the debate commission told them that there will be questions on the economic crisis at the debate--and they told them this several days ago.

Meanwhile, the poll numbers continue to look good for Obama, although the national ones are all over the place. Post/ABC has Obama up 10 points among registered, NBC up just 2 points, and Fox up 6 points. But there is a pattern, and it is being reflected in the state polls. As Mike Allen in Politico writes, "This is the first time that one of the candidates has dominated state polls in the most closely contested battlegrounds."

Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric also seemed to be a failure, with at least one major gaffe, but even this is not quite drowning out the continuing bad news for her from Alaska.

But the McCain campaign keeps trying to shake things up, so there's no telling what Thursday and Friday are going to be like. There are some signs that this erratic behavior is itself hurting McCain-Palin, as well it should.

What continues to amaze me is how thoroughly they are alienating the media--no longer just the eastern print media they like to run against, but everybody. When McCain threatened to kill the debate, that's a big revenue loss for television as well as a blow to democracy. McCain even alienated David Letterman, by cancelling his appearance at the last minute to go back to Washington--and then he was not only still in New York, but he was recording an interview with Katie Couric at the same time Letterman was taping his show: which wasn't lost on Letterman, who castigated him on the air.

Thunder

That clap of thunder you just heard is the new Washington Post/ABC poll that shows Barack Obama leading John McCain 52% to 43% among likely voters. That's nine points. And Obama is above 50%, which this late in the race is magic. Among registered voters in the poll, Obama leads by 10 points, 52-42%.

The last Post/ABC poll was Sept. 9, when Obama was ahead 47-46%.

There is nothing but good news in this poll. Though it measures who "leans" one way or another, the percentage of people who are sure who they are voting for has increased to 83% from 79% last time. On the internals, Ambinder isolates these: Voters, by 14 points more than McCain, trust Obama to handle the economy; his messaging that McCain is "out of touch" is bearing results, as 57% of Americans think that Obama better understands the complexities of the system. And when asked an open ended question about who'd best handle a crisis of any sort, half pick Obama, up significantly.

More good news for Obama: he's gaining back white women who defected to the McCain ticket; the Democrats have a 25 point enthusiasm advantage over Republicans, and concerns about McCain's age are rising. And here's an interesting nugget: Sarah Palin's biggest favorability rating drop has taken place among white Catholics."

This poll was taken Sept. 19-22, which means it began before the Monday Meltdown but includes that day. It has a margin of error of 3 points.

This caps a day in which state polls show Obama with slim to pretty good leads in battleground states, with one poll showing him slightly ahead in Florida and another tied in Ohio.

Also a new Pew poll confirms one element of the Post poll: more voters trust Obama to handle the financial crisis (47-35), and interestingly, independents alone favor Obama 44-30%. This is even more significant because this poll found a high percentage following these events. (This poll was also conducted Sept. 19-22.) Yet another poll agrees, from LA Times/Bloomberg, in which voters picked Obama to handle the financial crisis, 48% to 35%.

Apart from suggesting a trend, this poll has actual importance right now, because this is when people can start to vote. Early voting began Monday in the critical states of PA, Michigan, Virginia and North Carolina, as well as 7 other states. By October 5, that rises to 23 states allowing some form of early voting.
Obama is already likely to be getting a head start, because of the GOTV effort and the enthusiasm level, but these poll numbers could mean additional votes, even before November.

McCain is off balance, and efforts to regain it may be hampered by continuing bad news, both for him and for his VP candidate Palin. The New York Times earlier this week reported on his campaign manager's lobbying ties to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--hefty monthly payments simply for access to McCain--which ended in 2005. But now both the Times and Newsweek are reporting that this guy, Rick Davis, went back to Freddie Mac and asked to continue the relationship, and his firm has been collecting $15,000 a month (though nobody there did any work for it), right up until last month. Here's how the Times story starts:

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years."

This is not going to help McCain shake off the impression that he's the candidate most tied to the status quo in Washington, especially since this story involves an issue that is bound to be in the news for at least the rest of this week and probably much longer.

There's even a further downside to this crisis for McCain. Bush administration figures keep getting trotted out, including the 19% president and the vice-president who is so reviled that he was rejected by his own party's congressional delegation today. McCain, whose convention hid from the Republican party brand, is now going to be associated with the party and administration that voters would like to believe is already gone. This visibility reminds them it isn't, quite yet.

But for all this good news, there's opportunity for more twists and turns before this is over... And there's the fighting in the trenches. Some of it is pretty disturbing, as in Robert Kennedy's contention that hundreds of thousands of voters--mostly Democrats--are being disenfranchised. There are also the scurrilous ads, push polls and direct marketing pieces that are locally targeted.

But the Obama team is also in the trenches, looking for those seemingly small advantages, like the ad in Michigan that targets McCain for owning 3 foreign made vehicles (among his 13.) TIME's Amy Sullivan explains why this is potentially potent.

Then there are the rarely mentioned constituencies, like American Indians (the tribal endorsements in New Mexico could make the difference for Obama), or animal lovers. We hear a lot about hunters, but the Humane Society is backed by some 10 million members. And that organization has endorsed a presidential candidate for the first time in its history: Barack Obama.

As the TPM story suggests, this is not nothing: for many people, animals are a very emotional issue, and apart from Obama's good record, the reputation of moose-hunting, wolf-shooting and polar bear endangering VP candidate Palin may be very motivating.

Powell: Just Short of an Endorsement?


This is video of the moment I described in the post
below, in which Powell criticizes McCain's rash
statements on Georgia (without mentioning McCain
by name.)

McCain Unfit?

After a week of McCain the liar--which in a way continued today--we have evaluations of McCain, coming apart under pressure and even unfit for the presidency, from (among others) ABC, Bloomberg and most surprising perhaps, George Will in the Washington Post.

Sometimes these hot air purveyors say things on TV that they later soften or even contradict, but in this column Will actually amplified his remarks from ABC yesterday (in the video below.) Will is from the William F. Buckley school of conservatism, and already offended by McCain's infliction of Sarah Palin on the GOPer ticket. Now he's being just about definitive.

Under the headline, McCain Loses His Head, he begins: "Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama." He concludes: "It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?"

This impression makes Friday's debate absolutely crucial for McCain. If he can't stop this then, he's finished. The debate was being discussed a lot today, and it will be for the rest of the week. While some debates have been important, they usually don't move poll numbers much. And let's recall that John Kerry destroyed GW in the first debate last time, and won all three, although the third was a fairly tired effort. Still...Obama believes the debates will seal the deal.

Although foreign policy is the announced topic, commentators today didn't believe that the economic crisis would go unmentioned past the first minute or so. If the moderator doesn't bring it up, one of the candidates will. Now that McCain has the rep of being erratic, any tendency that way will be amplified. Conversely, if he just appears calm and reasonable, he could change the talk that's building.

Obama has gotten sharper on the stump last week, and if he can stay sharp--concise, direct, relating policy to people, and linking McCain with Bush policies--then he could seal the deal. The best essay I've seen on what he should do in the debate is this one.

Now another topic, synthesizing two items concerning Colin Powell today. Tweety was talking about the role of race, and one of his (black) companions mentioned that the most admired black politician among whites who have a hard time voting for an African American is Colin Powell. Presumably as a military leader he transcends the genre of black politicians, like athletes. They'd vote for Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, too. I also read the salon story about Pennsylvania that indicates undecided "hard working" whites there who do have this problem are being pulled towards Obama anyway because of the economy. So...

Colin Powell has said that he may endorse someone for president. He's expressed admiration for Obama and wonder at the possibility of a black man winning the presidency. But he's a GOPer and friends with McCain. On the other hand, I can see him being thrilled with Sarah Palin. Now there's this little bit of new evidence on a foreign policy matter: in a CNN forum with a number of ex-secretaries of state etc., Powell spoke out pretty firmly against McCain's position on Georgia and Russia, without mentioning his name, indicating that his view was too simplistic, perhaps dangerously so. (There's a clip somewhere, but I've lost it.)

So I'm waiting for the moment--and it could be an important one--when Colin Powell stands with Barack Obama to announce his endorsement.

McCain Isn't Ready


The panel on ABC's This Week

Stride

Obama goes into Debate Camp on Tuesday, which is a shame in a way because he's hitting his stride on the stump. He has responded to the ongoing economic crisis--and apparently the reflexive use of that word "crisis" is now way too tame by several orders of magnitude--by showing the country exactly the kind of leader he can be: cool-heated, but passionate; thinking it through, demanding that the plan makes sense; understanding the urgency, but deliberate about coming to a plan that could make things worse if it isn't done right.

On the stump his themes are coalescing: now he's uniting his "change Washington" and "working across party lines to get things done", and "change from the bottom up" new politics, with throwing out the Republicans and their destructive policies and philosophies. And while the economic crisis provides him the case in point, he's demonstrating that this is what he meant--that all these themes and all his arguments apply.

And if the enthusiasm ever left, it is certainly back on the campaign trail: Obama is getting huge, enthusiastic crowds, beyond what local planners were prepared for: in Jacksonville, FLA for example, and today in Charlotte, NC. And think for a moment about those two places: these crowds have to worry the McCain campaign, and they speak to either the confidence or the folly of the Obama campaign. Some observers say NC is out of reach for Obama, and Florida was trending that way. Now at the very least the Obama campaign is forcing McCain to devote resources to defending them, and it seems to me they believe they have a real shot at winning them. Especially Florida.

This is not a conservative game plan. With things as tight as they seem to be in some polls in Michigan, PA and Wisconsin, prudence might suggest spending all your time there. But what may be happening is an effort to reinforce the ground game, the ongoing registration drives. Once registration is closed in all these states, maybe they focus for awhile on must-win states. (Obama goes to Green Bay tomorrow anyway.) I'm surprised however that they aren't in Virginia today, where voting has begun. But I expect they know what they're doing.

Meanwhile McCain got raked over the coals on ABC's This Week, with super-conservative George Will concluding, "John McCain showed his personality this week, and made some of us fearful."

I've been posting on the economic crisis itself over at Dreaming Up Daily. But there does seem to be a lot of push-back on the Paulson plan today. Some of it is coming from people who notice who is getting bailed out and who isn't, like this from comments at HuffPost: Dear Mr. Paulson:I know you are busy bailing out financial institutions but if you have a minute I was wondering if you could loan me $3000.00 I haven't been able to afford health insurance for years and would love to get a mammogram. Best regards.

Maybe we'll avoid another big step towards oligarchical dictatorship via the Shock Doctrine this time, but it's going to happen pretty fast. Meanwhile, anything to keep my mind off that dismal Steelers game.

Saturday Off

Have you noticed that with these wonderful 24-hour cable news channels, we get less news? CNN used to have something called Headline News that actually did the news every 30 minutes. Currently it's the Caylee station. (If you don't know, don't bother asking, you're better off.) And they all take Saturday and Sunday off, for reruns (your favorite prison shows on MSNBC). So in the midst of an economic crisis that threatens to begin Great Depression II, and when every minute counts in the attempt to craft a solution that doesn't give in to the Shock Doctrine machinations of the Bushites, and incidentally, the presidential election campaign entering its final decisive weeks--everybody, including reporters online, take the weekend off.

So just about all of Saturday's news was the tracking polls, ticking up for Obama, with two hitting the magic 50%. He hit McCain on all the economic issues, including social security today in Florida, with a crowd of 20,000 in Jacksonville, apparently some sort of record. He's going to stay in FLA all next week, preparing for Friday's debate from Tuesday on. The weird thing is that this debate is supposed to be about foreign policy, but it would be extraordinary if newsman Jim Lehrer doesn't bring up the bail out that by then may have passed Congress. There's going to be a lot of news made this week on that subject, although we may not get much of it.

The Seattle Times, which endorsed Bush in 2000, has come out with an early endorsement of Barack Obama:

Obama should be the next president of the United States because he is the most qualified change agent. Obama is a little young, but also brilliant. If he sometimes seems brainy and professorial, that's OK. We need the leader of the free world to think things through, carefully. We have seen the sorry results of shooting from the hip.

Our country is on the wrong track. Average, middle-class citizens have lost confidence that if they work hard, they can improve their lives, afford to send their kids to college and not be tossed out of their homes.

American optimism has been wracked by President George Bush and a previous Republican Congress. If you want change, you do not keep what is essentially the same team in power. You try something different. You vote for the stronger matchup, Obama and Sen. Joseph Biden, a smart and steady hand on foreign policy and other matters."

The editorial compares Obama and McCain on the economy, energy, education and Iraq, and finds Obama with the better positions and solutions. It ends: "On numerous other issues, from media consolidation to health care, Obama has the stronger take. He makes up for a thin résumé with integrity, judgment and fresh ideas. Obama can get America moving forward again."

McBush

The McCain Panic

Will the Surge Work?

Obama is surging in the polls. The folks at 538 figures it's a plus four swing in the past week, with good numbers coming out of state polls, many with data before the Monday financial crisis. They conclude that Obama is in a stronger position now that he was before the conventions. They say he has a structural advantage in the electoral college, but also point to this: as the election gets closer, movement in poll numbers become more important.

They were analyzing numbers announced by 9/19. Chuck Todd said a week or so ago that whoever is leading on Oct. 15 is very likely to win the election. Part of that has to do with early voting--in Virginia (which begins now!) and Ohio, for instance. And that assumes that the polls--or an average of the polls-- are accurate. And we've seen several times this year, and in recent presidential elections, that when the race is so close, it can swing on what voters decide the day before or the day of voting.

So the real point here is that time is running out, and if you're going to establish momentum, this is a real good time to start. McCain's last chance to significantly swing momentum may be the debate on Friday.

Apart from another weird personal attack that sticks, the wild card is the government bailout plan to avoid Great Depression II. Will Barack's bi-partisan leadership Friday appeal to independents, or will McCain's blustery new-found populism strike a chord with voters who are angry at government bailing out the big boys? It may depend on how much of a megaphone the media provides McCain, because Obama is on top of the argument--he's saying that the middle class should not be paying for this. It also depends on whether McCain as well as Palin are scaring more people than they are riling up.

As for the polls this week, the Marist has Obama up 9 in Michigan--we'll see if other polls mirror that. Another poll has Obama up in Iowa by double digits, so it probably joins Oregon as pretty safe. Indiana has tightened in most polls, good for Obama. The polls continue to show a closer race in PA than I'd like to see, but even a small lead may turn into a big one with the enormous number of new Democratic registrations.

Numbers continue to show that VP candidate Palin is not helping generally and is hurting McCain with particular groups and in particular places, like Florida. Further, the chief investigator in the abuse of power investigation in Alaska says that despite the McCain campaign attempt to derail it, he is confident that he will issue a report with a conclusion in early October. Information like this, showing that Palin lied about the reason she fired the public safety chief, indicates that there is enough on the public record and in previously obtained testimony (some in a separate investigation) to reach a conclusion.

Now I'm going to post a minute or so from Obama's campaign speech in Coral Gables, in which he suggests that McCain is showing panic. Panic is a very important word in an economic crisis. In fact, that's what an economic/financial crisis like this one used to be called: "panics." Herbert Hoover tried to get away from the sound of that, so he began calling that little downturn that began in 1929 just a "depression."

I'll also post excerpts from Obama's earlier statement on the economy after his meeting with econ experts (in which he also says that this is not the time for panic), over at Dreaming Up Daily.

The Roll

The first debate will be one week from today. I'm writing in the wee hours before Friday's polls, but I'm willing to bet that Obama will improve on his 6 point lead in the Dkos tracking poll. He's ahead or even in all the tracking polls now, and in the new Pew survey. Update: Yes--Obama is up 7 in Dkos, but because McCain-Palin is down 1 point.

The state polls: good news in Oregon--a ten point Obama lead threatens to put the state out of reach for McCain. Another set of midwestern polls show virtual ties in ten states, including Ohio, although Obama is leading marginally in 8 of them. With the Obama ground game hopefully overwhelming GOPer cheating, a tie is a likely win.

On the stump, Obama looks like he's on a roll, taking advantage of opportunity. He's pretty much mocking McCain. I can't help thinking that Obama probably hoped to conduct this campaign on the issues, and on letting voters get to know him. But McCain's people went after him with personal attacks and lies that Obama had to fight back and try to destroy McCain's credibility.

That credibility may or may not be shredded with voters just yet, but it clearly is gone from the media. The latest big name to recant is Elizabeth Drew, who wrote a book praising McCain in 2002, but who now writes:

When Bush, issued a “signing statement” in 2006 on McCain’s hard-fought legislation placing prohibitions on torture, saying he would interpret the measure as he chose, McCain barely uttered a peep. And then, in 2006, in one of his most disheartening acts, McCain supported a “compromise” with the administration on trials of Guantanamo detainees, yielding too much of what the administration wanted, and accepted provisions he had originally opposed on principle. Among other things, the bill sharply limited the rights of detainees in military trials, stripped habeas corpus rights from a broad swath of people “suspected” of cooperating with terrorists, and loosened restrictions on the administration’s use of torture. (The Supreme Court later ruled portions of this measure unconstitutional.)

McCain’s caving in to this “compromise” did it for me. This was further evidence that the former free-spirited, supposedly principled, maverick was morphing into just another panderer – to Bush and the Republican Party’s conservative base.

Drew also writes: Other aspects of McCain, including his temperament, began to trouble me. He seemed disturbingly bellicose...McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man. In fact, it’s not clear who he is."

I've been reading Elizabeth Drew since her excellent reporting on Watergate. She remains one of the best political journalists around. What is probably unprecedented about her current view is that her 2002 book, Citizen McCain, is now being issued as a paperback. I assume this comes from the new introduction.

Barack Does Vegas


Jed Report's compilation of local Vegas TV coverage and
a few choice words from Barack: 2 min. 20 sec.

Line of the Day (and Maybe the Campaign)

The Turning?

CNN is just now announcing its results of battleground states polling: Obama gaining. Obama ahead in Ohio, tied in Florida in head to head, but when third party candidates are figured in, he's 4 points ahead of McCain.

Later--the CNN poll link is here. The CBS/New York Times poll is even better--a five point lead--and the internals are encouraging: McCain's bid to be the change candidate is failing, most voters associate him with Bush, almost nobody believes he picked Palin because she was the most qualified, Palin's popularity outside the GOPer base is non-existent, Obama leads on the economy, etc.

And although the CNN poll has Obama down 6 in Indiana, a new poll by the Indianapolis Star has Obama up by 3 points. I thought Indiana would be close, and Obama has a good chance of winning it.

I guess the impression is that at worst the race is now back to where it was before the conventions, but that polls in coming days and next week could show even greater Obama gains as the economic crisis sinks in. I have to say I was also bouyed by the campaign's video on their strategy. First, the registration numbers are amazing, and all those resources going to ground game--this was emphasized in the pitch--could really pay off. Second, there's been talk in recent days that Florida might be getting out of reach, that Obama might stop spending so much money there. But the campaign video emphasized the attention they're paying to Florida, and the major resources they're committing. And then, an hour after I saw this, the CNN poll came out--with Obama ahead by 4 points when the third party candidates are figured in.

Speaking of that, the Libertarian Bob Barr is now on the ballot in PA. I'm wondering who benefits?

Collapse?

A really bad day for McCain-Palin. Besides a re-energized Obama and a fiery Biden taking control of the economic meltdown issues, McCain appeared tired and testy on Today and Morning Joe, his CEO surrogate admitted that Sarah Palin wasn't qualified to run a company, and one of his advisors boasted that McCain had helped create the tech revolution symbolized by the Blackberry.

And McCain's losses among the media continued, in a fairly big way with this column by Richard Cohen in the Washington Post. Cohen had the rep of a McCain guy, always willing to give the maverick the benefit of the doubt. But no more, not with words like this: "... the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised." "McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most."

But here's the most devastating part of Cohen's column: "I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty." The reason was: "It had to do with integrity. McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not."

"...McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both."

Consider all the lies that candidates tell--mostly Republicans, like both Bushes--and the media ignores or "balances" with denials from the other side without mentioning that factually they are lies. I can't recall so major news media people and even news institutions coming out and branding a presidential candidate as a liar.

And apparently once it starts, it becomes relentless. The New York Times even editorially analyzed a McCain commercial that appeared only in Spanish, and exposed McCain's "fraudulent" assertions about Obama's record on immigration under the title "What's Spanish for Lies?"

Meanwhile, Palin's popularity continues to plummet in tracking polls, some high level national press is camped out in Alaska to cover the McCain machinations attempting to forestall the legislative investigation into her potential abuse of power, and a David Brooks column gives voice to national security conservatives who are saying that she's simply not qualified to be VP.

What effect this is having on voters is not yet known, as polls coming out now are still within the shadow of the Palin convention bounce (the Dkos daily tracking poll had Obama up another 1 point on Tuesday, for a total lead of 4 pts.) But with the first debate less than two weeks away, an interesting dynamic is at work. There is polling evidence that the Palin bubble is gone, and so the two presidential candidates go into the debate either even or with Obama ahead. If the economic news continues to be bad--and it certainly won't be good, it just might fade--then McCain is going to find himself at the debate with the primary issue being exactly the one he is weakest on: the economy, and specifically the area of regulating financial institutions.

Not only is his campaign run by lobbyists for some of the most troubled Wall Street firms and banks, and not only is much of the current crisis traced back to the deregulation pushed through by his economics mentor, Phil "mental recession" Gramm, but McCain's own record on deregulation is very suspect, including his involvement in trying to limit government's ability to regulate the Savings and Loan scandal, as a member of the Keating Five. He has to be very worried that this topic will be resurrected.

McCain is already acting paranoid in media interviews (even though he hasn't had an actual press conference in over a month.) He doesn't respond well under pressure--the question is will people really notice it this time?

The McCain campaign looked to be on the verge of collapse before the GOPer convention, and he pulled a Palin out of the hat to live on for awhile. The question now is whether the final collapse is underway.

The Fundamentals

Reality Intrudes

It's a shame that so many will have to suffer before it is over, but the economic chickens are coming home to roost for Bush-McCain-Palin.

But even before reality intruded with a stock market crash and the fast unraveling of financial industries, there were signs that the fantasy world constructed by imagery and McCain lies was coming apart.

I noted some of the signs yesterday. Marc Ambinder sums up his list . Notably, he observes that "The Press Has Turned" against McCain, after giving him a pass on all those gaffes in the summer and the pre-conventions lies.

Given the Palin bubble, you have to wonder why they indulged in such overkill after the GOPer convention. Perhaps to score a knockout blow right away, but that didn't happen. They rose in the polls a bit, but not a lot. And now, Chris Kofinis on Keith and this guy agree with my intuition yesterday that the Palin bubble has burst. Voters are focusing on the fact that she would make a horrific commander in chief. And now Palin-McCain is refusing to cooperate with the Alaska investigation into her alleged abuse of power, which doesn't look all that good for her transparency and ethical reform image.

In the polls, the McCain bounce seems to have evaporated. At least one tracking poll shows an Obama resurgence (after being tied, he's up 3.) We'll see what happens the rest of the week.

So they've got nothing but some dwindling momentum, and a rabid right base that is more energized. As Ambinder suggests, Palin bought McCain some time.

Now the stock market crash has gotten the media's attention in a way that unemployment rising above 6%, falling production and consumer confidence apparently couldn't. Pig lipstick was more important.

Now some attention may be paid to what Obama and Biden have been saying about the economy. They both need to do a better job of more comprehensively explaining how we got into this mess, and what they will do to make things better. It's not guaranteed. But the election is theirs to win.

You Can't Run Away from Your Record, McCain

Lies Coming Home to Roost

Scared Straight

P candidate McCain didn't have a good weekend, media-wise. More of his campaign's lies were exposed by major newspapers and news services, including a whole list of them in this story. Paul Krugman had already concluded, in his column titled "A Blizzard of Lies," that "the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse." Notice that word: lies. These folks usually stay away from it. Now it's becoming the buzz.

VP candidate Palin had an even worse weekend. There were major--and I do mean major--exposes of her time as governor of Alaska (in the NY Times) and mayor of Wasilla (in the Washington Post.)

Perhaps the most devastating critique of the McCain-Palin ticket came in a column by Frank Rich: " A week ago the question was: Is Sarah Palin qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? The question today: What kind of president would Sarah Palin be? It’s an urgent matter, because if we’ve learned anything from the G.O.P. convention and its aftermath, it’s that the 2008 edition of John McCain is too weak to serve as America’s chief executive. This unmentionable truth, more than race, is now the real elephant in the room of this election."

But all this means little unless there is evidence that it is making a difference in how voters view this election. That may come in the next few days--the most recent tracking polls show McCain's progress stopped and Obama gaining a bit. We'll soon see if this is a viable trend, although it looks like a stock market crash on Monday may also get a little attention and throw yet another wild card into the mix.

But what I see and sense, both online and in person, is that all this has reached one part of the electorate with major force: the people who are suddenly scared to death by the prospect of McCain-Palin.

They're coming out to cheer Obama in New Hampshire with new fervor, and they're contributing money to the Obama campaign. New 527 groups are gearing up, and there looks like a new urgency for Obama. People who loved him but were laying back, figuring this was a done deal, are getting up out of the chair. People who aren't sure they are that enamoured with him are looking at the alternative, and getting scared straight.

Add them to the 2.5 million Obama contributors, the half million who joined up just in August to break all records for campaign contributions by a healthy 11 million bucks (for an August total of $66m). And this was before VP candidate Palin. Among the new activists, about a thousand women demonstrating against Palin in Alaska.

So watch for more evidence of this in the coming week. VP candidate Palin may have galvanized some of the GOPer base, but she has also scared a lot of other people straight to Obama.