He may be richmond with a different name; though I'll concede that he has reason to celebrate.  Tell me if you thought that last Thursday, you thought we would see McCain up three in gallup (he'll be likely up more tomorrow and possibly hit 50%) and tied in Rasmussen in just over a week.  I would have thought you were under heavy intoxication if you made that claim.

Except he's not a Democrat - he's a chaos/concern troll that the management won't ban for reasons that I don't understand.

McCain is anti-some earmarks, not all earmarks.  He walked back immediately from his anti-all earmarks stance when he learned that his definition of earmark would include aid to Israel and hospitals.

this year they will be thinking of Obama or McCain's position on earmarks??

Obama is simply attacking their "reformer" creds, which he should be doing. This is mainly a process issue, which voters don't really care about.

The right-wing doesn't love Sarah Palin for her record they love her for her ideology. They don't give a piss about her serious incompetence and lack of accomplishments. These are the people that still like Bush.

It will be so easy to win that argument if we are disciplined.  We need to ask McCain how much he will save cutting earmarks but continuing our current foreign policy - if you're going to sing "bomb Iran" and get all Rambo with Russia, you like all the neo-cons before you will have to maintain or ratchet up the military budget, continuing the GOP legacy of deficit-spending.  Obama can just point out that cutting out ear-marks, as nice as it sounds, won't really help our economy and it will just mean less money for the small towns McCain loves (ones like Wasilla) will get less help for their infrastructure.

Unfortunately right now the GOP seems to be Tefflon when it comes to the hypocrisy front.  The "reform" argument from McCain and Co. is such a load of BS, I don't know how people are buying it.  I can only believe it won't stick.

And lastly, I think we can learn one thing from the GOP.  We need to not freak out everytime we get down in the polls.  Obama was up by more than McCain is and HAS broken the 50% mark.  He has been up for longer too.  So we need to keep fighting, but when we get in to full scale concern-troll mode, we don't help our cause.

You're kidding, right?  Palin's speech was a hit amongst rednecks everywhere but did anyone like McCain's speech?  Anyone?

I don't know if you saw Nate's historical look at VP fav/unfav (here), but Palin's actually not really out of the norm beyond the fact that her unfavorables are historically high.

For all the hemming and hawing about how 'mean' the blogs were - they accomplish one thing.

They gave her a historically high unfavorable impression in her rollout.   For all the base pumping she does, I have a lot more faith in that unfavorable number seeping into the indie and moderate vote than I do the favorable.

It seems clear at this point that much of America didn't see the same things we see from the Republican speeches. While we saw an empty, sarcastic jerk in Palin, America saw its earnest new pal. We saw a tired, flat old man in McCain, but more viewers apparently saw a straight-shootin', straight-talkin' fella they could trust with the keys to the family nuclear arsenal. Disheartening, but it's reality. Did anyone really expect that the GOP would fail to seriously contest this election along culture war lines, or that big chunks of the electorate would be eager to go for it again?

All that said, it's easy to let daily tracking polls drive us to distraction. Bounces usually fade, and we have 8,000 excruciating days of campaigning to grind through yet. If McCain is still up like this a week and a half from now, and the state polls start to show serious erosion, then I'll commence hyperventilating.

I don't think they should go there...

That would be perceived as going after his support of Israel.  The Picking of Palin puts more Jewish voters into play than before.

with in my previous post; by the way Jerome, I'm now in agreement that Obama in retrospect should have jumped on HRC's idea to use the windfall profits tax for a summer gas tax holiday.  McCain would have opposed it and we could have used gas prices as a wedge issue against the pubs and high oil company profits at the start of the summer.  Sure it's pandering but it seemed to work for McCain and drilling as it kept him close during the summer.

Opposing HRC on the holiday was good for him at the time as it brought back the indies that left him in PA and kept him within two points of her in IN the same week that Jeremiah Wright re-emerged.  Though I agree with Obama on the holiday, I can see your thinking was in O'Reilly's words "perspicacious" (sp?).

Believe it or not, Jerome, I got that you were specifically referring to the media, but the effect of your sentence is to lump them together as blowhards.

Attacking her honesty is the best bet. That's what the earmark thing was about. It wasn't about McCain's earmark record. It's about Palin supposed rejection of earmarks.

There's a record of Palin completely lying about the Bridge to Nowhere, earmarks, Troopergate. Make it about her character: she does not tell the truth.

At the same time remind Democrats of how extremist right wing she is.

This will pull Democrats back and keep Independents from going to McCain.

And that will win it for Obama in the end.

Honestly, no not really. It would be a start. I simply don't think the approach right now of the A list bloggers- to turn this into a referendum on Palin- is smart. She's red meat for the Dems as well as the GOP base. But people aren't going to vote on her.

It has to be framed as a message about Mccain=Bush. Or, the next level- McCain=Bush=failed presidency. Everything I said until Nov as negative branding would be about failed presidency. I would want people to think McCain=Failed Presidency. THis to me is the whole point of McSame. Not that McCain is just like bush, but that he will fail like bush. This is the point that needs to be made explicit rather than implicit.

Palin only value to us is that she must be plugged into that.

Just off top of my head- as a layperson, I might say " McCain is again showing how much like Bush he really is. Like the failed presidency of  Bush before him, he picked an able politician  as VP who is an extremist.  We see what kind of results that extremist has brought to the country. McCain and Palin will do the same."

I frankly would never mention Palin without mentnioning McCain and Bush along with failed presidency.