This is Palin, today:
If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear [...]

After last night’s report at Talking Points Memo that the McCain campaign was involved in pushing the Ashley Todd story by claiming the B on the cheek stood for Barack, the McCain campaign is fighting back against those allegations, unsuccessfully.

We’ve been knocked here a few times for our site showing “McCain / Palin” ads—a problem we think we’ve solved—which got us wondering why they showed up here in the first place. Looking at our content, we realized we’ve evolved into an anti-McCain / Palin site, rather than a pro Obama site.

Marc Ambinder has a post up that bullet points the Republican case for the Presidency. He caveats (probably to avoid mountains of hate mail) that some of it is far fetched, and that it’s simply the case McCain campaign officials are giving to donors and other VIPs. I thought it’d be fun to discuss each point on it’s own, briefly.

We’re going to hear a lot about national polls tightening, and with the first round of the weekly polls released today by CNN, showing Obama +5 (+8), they’ve got something to chew on. But as I made the point in the previous post, Obama isn’t losing support; McCain is just picking himself up off his floor. You can talk all you want about the national race tightening, but when you have Virginia +10 for Obama, it doesn’t really matter much.

OK folks, it’s now game-time. Come Tuesday, we are two weeks away from election day, and, to be honest, the national polls are tightening. It may or may not be coincidence, but Barack Obama and his campaign have all come out today, publicly and privately, saying they worry about complacency, and foregone conclusions causing many not to care. So, this is a post to get people motivated for the final push: we need it, we need to stay focused, and we need to get people to GET OUT AND VOTE, either now in early voting, or on Tuesday, November 4th. As Barack Obama says, it’s time to start “running scared.”

So then why am I so nervous this morning? Is it because the daily trackers are near uniform in showing a tightening race? Perhaps. Is it because McCain had a good line with “I am not President Bush.” Maybe. Is it because the media seems intent on finding a McCain comeback story? Possibly. But what’s really killing me is why hasn’t Barack Obama put this thing away?

The Right is dying to start a comeback narrative. Drudge was doing all he could at the beginning of the week to start the narrative. Trouble is, the facts keep getting in the way. National polls ranging from +9 to +14 Obama, steady as a rock daily trackers, and news Obama is outspending McCain 3:1 has the ability to push the narrative a lot more than the delusional Drudge. But if they can get something going, the Right is sitting there with engines revved. Even the traditional media will play their part, because it’ll be a huge story.

Over the weekend, Politico found itself revising a story that claimed “McCain launches new economic plan with tax cuts aimed directly at the middle class.” Supposedly, McCain was going to announce Capital Gains and Dividend tax cuts, among other things. Aside from the fact that approximately 68% of the nation hasn’t heard of capital gains, let alone receive any to be taxed, Politico stated it was targeted at “the middle class.” It wasn’t, and Politico was forced to revise the story.

The assumption was that the polls last week reflected that the negative campaigning of John McCain weren’t working; he made no gains in the national trackers, and the statewides were as bad as ever. But I think we may have been jumping the gun on this issue. The goal of negative attacks ads may not be immediate returns. Rather, it’s to plant seeds of doubt so that, over time, people have a negative impression of Barack Obama.