this strategy will work, especially if they throw in gay marriage and abor... holy crap the dow dropped 800 points!!!!  okay, it's back up, it's not that bad, but my god, what the hell is going on in the economy.  now, what were you saying?  something about president obama and a years?

I can't wait for a McCaskill administration.

is Wall Street is pillaging Main Streets IRA's.  Just getting a bit more gravy as long as the feds still aren't paying attention.  

McCain's only hope is to hope that voters aren't paying attention. There's a lot of talk that one of the presidential candidates this year didn't do anything for years to prevent the economic crisis (indeed, made it possible through deregulation), and other talk about a candidate who is touchy and refuses to answer questions about his record.

Since these are the things voters are hearing from the media anyway, McCain obviously hopes to make voters think they are hearing these things about Obama.

McCain calling somebody else touchy.

That's pretty funny.

McCain's lost his marbles and is now hoping that people just forget all of his previous stunts in favor of this new stunt.  On a side note, though, I'm not sure that "erratic" is really a dig at McCain's age.  The fact is that his behavior over the past two weeks has been flat-out bizarre, so I think that "erratic" covers that nicely.  "Confused," on the other hand, I can see a little more.

is a great reinforcement for the base, and it MAY push some older voters who are probably looking for a reason to feel good voting against the black guy...

Otherwise, this is a little to late to start this attack in just this way.

He's a known terrorist, but we don't know who he is?

...is in WHO McCain is talking to.  He's not talking to democrats and he's not talking to independants, he's talking to highly conditioned republicans.  He could say ANYTHING about Obama and it will only reinforce their opinion of him (whether they'd even had that opinion before).

That is why it won't work.  Because McCain is not living the same world we are, he's living in radical fundy right wing nutcase land, and Independants don't like that.

Obama on the other hand is speaking to a far broader audience.

Thus far, no reaction from the Obama campaign. I suspect he's training pretty hard and getting ready to address these issues tomorrow when he has McCain right there in front of him.

But just to guess what he might say... McCain has consistently lied, shifted, equivocated and just generally been weaselly. Hell, he told an outright lie to David Letterman personally!! And I'd like to see Barack look right at him and say that he was completely dishonorable to stand silently while someone was calling him a terrorist.

There is not a doubt in my mind that John McCain believes all of this whole-heartedly. He's consistently had a particular image of himself that hasn't changed even as reality has. But he's just nuts! But despite all that, and most of all, Barack has got to work through any and all anger he has. Cause making him angry is part of the plan, too.

You mention some good points int eh post, but there is another dynamic that I think you are missing.

In Clinton and McCain's cases, Obama is not only hitting at existing pre-conceived notions, these same negatives are reinforced by his opponents.

In Clinton's case, one of her main themes of the entire campaign was her ability to fight Republicans - with the implicit (and at times explicit) accusation that Obama was too soft. It may be that Obama highlighted the negative aspect of this by framing this as "She will do anything," but he was using her strength against her.

The same principle applies with McCain. He ran all summer on experience and being the tough maverick who shoots from the hip, and these themes are still at the core of what his campaign is about even today.

Obama simply is re-framing this as erratic, old and out of touch. If this is going negative, it's a damn smart way of going about it. How much anger can voters drum up about Obama's attacks when he essentially is agreeing with his opponent while placing them in a no-win situation?

  I'm with you on Claire McCaskill.  She was kicking ass on MSNBC one day and I just felt the need to declare my love for her.  The people watching the show with me just stared...

"One of the more maddening things for me during the primary was the persistence of the myth that Obama didn't go negative on Hillary Clinton."

Todd Beeton kills strawmen dead.

What World Is John McCain Living In?

Bob-Dole-Land.

First, let's not get overconfident.  Republicans managed to say that John Kerry was a really liberal and a flip-flopper without core convictions at the same time, and made that stick.

But you can smell the flop-sweat from the McCain campaign right now---and just like the candidate, they're increasingly erratic.

I can see the "he was missing in action" frame.  That one's probably their best bet, and if they knew what they were doing, they would have been working that one and only that one for some time.  It's supported by Obama "staying out of the way" of the hurricanes as well as the bailout negotiations.  Commercial: "We can't afford a president who just stays out of the way..."

I'm not saying it would win, but it would be better than their current scattershot lack-of-strategy. And it's too late to pull it together now.  Not to mention of course, that the racist-leveraging "other" angle can just be too tempting to pass up.