I believe the repub flag is hanging at half mast.

Should we send flowers?

So sad. Too bad. Sigh.

(Bet whoever inadvertently sent out that e-mail is, even as we gloat, signing up for unemployment benefits!.)

"What's left for John McCain to run on now--the economy? Good luck with that."

Well I'd suggest that, unless Obama runs very differently on the economy than he has to date, McCain won't need luck. He'll have the edge.

Minus setting up a Prices Commission, if you were one of the heartland voters who are nearly beside themselves trying to cope with this economy, dependent on gas to get to work, everything you buy going up because of the gas prices, would you vote for someone who proposed levying a windfall profits tax on the oil companies? Or would you buy the repugs' proposition that all those companies will do is instantly recoup those taxes by passing them on in higher prices to the hapless ordinary Joe?

And given the current polling on offshore drilling, I don't understand your confidence.

Add to energy prices, if you were that same ordinary Joe, how would you react to endless GOP spiel that Obama - Dr No - is going to tax small business out of business?

Whereas McCain is telling people that America's corporate tax rate is the 2nd highest in the developed world, and he's arguing that he's going to cut it from 35-25% and that will increase jobs and he also argues (debatable) that it leads to higher wages.

Given the heartland's traditional dislike of big government, I think you're kidding yourself if you think Obama has the economic debate tied up.

Hopefully he can do it, but I think it's nuts to assume he has it made. (I think he should be proposing a Price Commission if he's committed to the windfall profits tax.)

Fran, I agree it's a little too early to start the celebratin' but as someone who lives in the heartland and is out talking to people every week about who they support for president and why, I think you are underestimating how abso-fuckin-lutely done we are with Bush.

We've had eight years of supply-side policies with a dash of "fuck fiscal responsiblity" thrown in. I cannot tell you how many times I've heard "I'm a republican but I can't vote for more of the same." It's music to my ears, let me tell you.

Sounds almost as good as the death knell.

To me it all looks like a coordinated attempt by the GOP to neutralize what they might perceive as a winning issue for Obama, by moving toward a more moderate (i.e. non-100 years) position on Iraq. The "time horizon," the non-negotiation talks with Iran, McCain's surge in Afghanistan... it's triangulation, right? That's my suspicion, anyway.

McCain dead? Again? Didn't he die once in Feb or thereabouts?

I understand why some of us might see the softening of GOP positions on these issues (Afghanistan v. Iraq, "time horizon" for withdrawal, negotiations with Iran) as a plus for the GOP.

Because we see their existing positions as weaknesses.

But in fact, McCain's perceived experience with military/security/int'l issues is his only advantage in the race. If his position on those issues became indistinguishable from Obama's, it wouldn't help. It would leave him little to run on, because Obama has a large perceived advantage with the voters on economic issues.

Americans by a wide margin, 63-26 percent, pick McCain as more knowledgeable on world affairs, rate him much more highly in terms of readiness for the world stage and military leadership alike, and put him ahead of Obama by 50-41 percent in trust to handle "an unexpected major crisis."

Obama remains strong on the home front. He leads McCain by 19 points in trust to handle the economy, 14 points on the deficit and 10 points on immigration, the latter a turnaround from a McCain lead in the spring.

http://abcnews.go.com/PollingUnit/Politics/story?id=5378482&page=1

And if McCain is forced to change his position to *be more like Obama's*, because the Iraqi PM says that Obama's plan is "more realistic," and Bush is sidling toward it in practice -- well, it doesn't help McCain, and it's going to be seen as confirming that Obama is indeed ready for the world stage.

Not that I expect the voters to pick all this up tomorrow. The point of the story is that it establishes the context in which McCain's subsequent remarks about Iraq will be interpreted.

Well the entire mainstream press is carrying McCain' water.

Simple translation error, you see, no harm no foul.

My next door neighbor, 72 and a Korean War vet, was very pro McCain last winter; but he is strongly in the Obama camp now.

WHY?

Because the economy sucks. For the first time in his 72 years he is having a hard time making it economically. He's a former business owner as well; and he blames everything on Bush and can't tell the difference between Bush and McCain.

Besides Obama, though, he generally seems to be supporting Republicans, even voting for our former Republican representative who lost in '06. She is running on a "it's the Democrats' fault that gasoline is so expensive" platform. LOL.