Sure your headline is not inadvetant confession?

Two MUST-READ articles spelling out the reasons why Obama can't drop McCain in the polls:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-romm/obamas-self-defeating-rhe_b_117463.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/why-voters-say-they-dont_b_117238.html

Same reasons Kerry (war hero) and Gore (Nobel Laureate) BOTH LOST TO A CHIMPANZEE.

Obama's campaign needs to WAKE UP and stop playing Little League ball!!!

Josh: can you make sure these articles get forwarded to the campaign? PLEASE!!?!?

Oh don't make me puke, truthseeker. "People who worship Obama..." Give me a break. I have had it up to here with the insinuation that Obama supporters are falling for some kind of modern day Rasputin. Fuck. You.

Just because your candidate did not or will not win does not mean that the people who vote for the other guy are idiots. We process information through our ideological lenses and you process it through yours. And just because we reach different conclusions does not mean we've not been thoughtful and measured in our examination.

So, go ahead and feel smug and smarter than us. I hope that will comfort you on November 5th. Jackass.

The epithet "Republican" will do perfectly well as the only pejorative Democrats need to consistently apply as concerns anything to do with Grandpa John McCain and the Geriatric Old Poops. As Harry Truman so truthfully said: "You don't have to give the Republicans Hell. Just tell the truth about them and they'll think its Hell."

From now until November, the Democrats simply need to repeat: "Bush, Cheney, McCain, Republicans" with a suitable tone indicating a no-need-to-explain-the-obvious revulsion. The voters already understand the implicit, horribly negative associations. "Republican" will certainly do as the Democrats' label-of-choice for Panama-John McCain until some more appropriate and vulgar synonym for venality, corruption, and criminal incompetence comes along.

What exactly is wrong about providing actual video of McCain speaking? How is that a vicious, underhanded assault?

Josh hasn't superimposed images of Britney or Paris, on McCain. He hasn't added a sound track of people breathlessly chanting "McCainMcCainMcCain."

He's just chosen clips from actual McCain appearances, and collated them together.

Now, I admit that the result is pretty damning. I was opposed to McCain before watching that episode of TPMTV. But afterward, I was saddened -- and I wanted to know a lot more about McCain's advisers, because I was pretty sure they would be running the country de facto if McCain won.

Sorry. It's an important job. If one of the candidates shows that he doesn't have the mental acuity or verbal agility to do it, I don't want reporters to politely look the other way.

And by the way, age is not the only issue here. McCain may be a little slower on his feet than he used to be, but if he had started out as a thoughtful, well-informed observer, he might still be ready for the job.

What I get from that set of clips is a guy who really can't be bothered to distinguish Sunnis from Shiites. He's content with the conventional wisdom about "Al Qaeda" as the enemy. And he has a vague sense that all of our enemies -- Iran, Al Qaeda, whatever -- are all in the same category.

That kind of intellectual laziness would be a problem if he were forty. If the machinery starts to creak and slip a bit, it's going to be a disaster.

The only thing I would ding Josh for is his apologetic intro to the montage, which seems to imply that it's only fair to run clips like these "because McCain went negative first." That's a teensy bit disingenuous. For one thing, TPM ran a montage from the green-screen speech some months back. More importantly, there's nothing especially risque about creating a montage of the other guy's own words, in order to ask whether he's got it together. That's a question we legitimately need to ask.

Lalo, you're trying to apply your standard of behavior for Obama to a journalist and commentator who doesn't work for the campaign. Josh is free to write anything he wants, as opposed to the stricture of "respectable campaigning" you insist Obama adhere to.

And let's face it, Obama largely has adhered to a campaign of ideas and issues. It's McCain who has violated that standard most egregiously, just as it was Hillary who did during the primaries.

So if Josh wants to edit together McCain's "greatest flubs," what's wrong with that? McCain just releaed an ad stringing together ancient footage of Dems praising him — ancient but for a clip of Hillary's snub of Obama in favor of McCain.

McCain is the oldest presidential candidate ever, with war wounds that push his age beyond the mere chronology. His state of mind is entirely relevant to his qualifications, indeed it is the single most important dimension of presidential readiness.

John McCain has his own Chris Crocker.

All I'm saying is that progressives are answering the wrong question, whether or not Obama is a celebrity. And, in anger, they are are pointing a finger at McCain, saying "Look, look, he's also a celebrity, plus he's the oldest".

I cannot believe that this is the take-away that you found in that video. Surely you do not mean this in earnest? That video did not say "look, he is a celebrity." It said, "look, he is senile." That is mean, I grant you, but it is hardly an instance of unhinged rage. Mr Marshall's montage might not have been an answer to McCain's "who's ready to lead?" but it is an answer to a question every bit as much on the minds of voters "is McCain up to the job?". That you can see this as an example of a myopic rage on the part of Mr Marshall says more about you than about Mr Marshall himself.