Barack Is Back

Barack is back.

The full-court press by Barack Obama is on. His surrogates started going to one-on-one microphone matchups yesterday, unfurling the history of the Keating Five Savings and Loan scandal as if it just happened last week. It is the timing, more than the coordinated effort itself, that seems inspired, coming after a two week effort by the McCain campaign to stop the bleeding on several fronts. With only 60 odd hours before Tuesday night’s debate, the domination of the news cycles by this new twist on the campaign trail narrative will certainly ruffle the feathers of an already irritated John McCain.

I would imagine the campaign has planned for the inevitable push by Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh or Michael Savage to somehow connect last weeks O.J. verdict with Barack Obama. This is going to take a bit of imagination, but these guys can’t pass this up. Six Degrees of Separation will become Three Degrees of Taint by Association. Somehow, O.J.’s erratic, attention craving antics will be shoehorned into a box with all the misinformation about Obama, even though O.J.’s temperament and decision-making abilities are in the same league with McCain. If you thought you heard some convoluted logic during last week’s vice presidential debate, you better watch out, because the real bullshit is about to start flying.

But Barack is back, his troops manning up, a body on a body, refuting all Republican talking points almost as fast as they are conceived. Now they are playing a little offense, with a email blast/drumroll to announce in tantalizing fashion the unveiling of a 13-minute documentary called "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis", available at KeatingEconomics.com today at noon, along with background information that every voter should know.

Did the "mavericks" think they were shooting at a sitting duck?

Once again, Barack Obama has changed the game, bringing out the big stick on the back nine, just like Tiger Woods does when he knows its time to put some distance between him and the rest of the field. The size and strength of his organization, with almost 40 million dollars and three hundred and fifty paid staffers in Florida alone, have begun to trump the McCain organization at almost every turn out in the field, rendering even the voter suppression tactics the GOP is famous for all but moot in the face of the largest voter registration drive in America’s history.

George Will made a very cogent point on the George Stephanopoulos show yesterday. He said "Barack Obama will be the beneficiary of the biggest mailout in political history in the next couple of weeks – the 401(k) statements that will be hitting mailboxes all across America." Will feels that for many who are uncertain or undecided, seeing the dramatic drop in the account balances of their 401(k)'s will be the final push many people need to start believing that ii really is time for a change, putting one of the last nails in the coffin of the McCain campaign.

Barack is back.

Debate Delay Dicey Decision

Here I was, planning on giving up going to the first night of my college class reunion, S. beginning to get ideas about a debate party of sorts, when my boy John McCain's picture popped up as I surfed through the New York Times website.

"McCain Seeks to Delay First Debate Amid Financial Crisis"

I had just finished listening to our resident teenager explain to her mother, with the slick smoothness of a TV defense attorney, why it was perfectly okay for her to go shopping in the middle of the afternoon ON A WEEKDAY when she is flagging her economics class (is this some irony or what?). Although, according to her, her grade is low only because there are some "slight discrepancies" between what she "knows" and the right answers to the latest test questions.

So when I saw that headline, I felt like I was reading about the teen-aged version of John McCain.

Being unpredictable has worked for McCain lately, keeping the Obama campaign off its stride. But once McCain goes over the limit with these kind of decisions, he'll turn from maverick to menace in a heartbeat.

Does it really matter if he and Obama go to Washington? They've been briefed personally by the two architects of the bailout plan on a daily basis. They've focused almost exclusively on national issues the last few months, as opposed to issues that are germane to their constituents in Arizona or Illinois.

McCain is in a tighter spot than Obama. Oppose the bailout to distance himself from Bush, and the public outcry will be deafening. Vote for the bailout, even a new version, and the shadow of the Bush presidency he's been avoiding all summer will come back to haunt him.

If you live with a teenager, you understand the power of pretext better than just about anybody. The pretext of postponing Friday's debate...

...opens the door to postponing the vice-presidential debate with Sarah Palin, who has never debated anything ever on a national stage.

You do the math.

Something tells me that yesterday's fracas over access to the network feeds touched a nerve in someone behind-the-scenes.

Whether I'm right or wrong about this surely won't matter for long, though, as McCain and Palin are apt to change their minds back at any moment - just like our resident teenage diva.