Sometimes I sit back in astonishment that this race is even slightly competitive. Barack Obama's campaign, purely from an organizational and execution standpoint, is a thing of beauty. They're effecient, media savvy and tasteful. They're the Apple Computer, Inc. of political campaigns.

The McCain campaign, on the other hand, is like the company Dilbert works for. It barely seems run by grown-ups, let alone professionals playing a high-stakes game.

I wondered about the giant screen that displayed pictures of... stuff... behind their speakers. I kept expecting to see a 3-D pie-chart and densely worded bullet points to suddenly appear behind Sarah Palin.

And then we find out that for McCain's speech -- the single most important speech he will give during this entire two-year campaign -- they put a picture of a random North Hollywood middle school behind him.

Why? Because it's "Walter Reed Middle School", and the only logical explanation is that some bozo tried to find a picture of the Walter Reed Medical Center and failed miserably.

And no one, not even John McCain, who has been there, caught it until show time (if then).

And before you go thinking that this is a ludicrous explanation, ask yourself if there is any reason to put a picture of Walter Reed Middle School during the Republican National Convention's main event. A school that is in the troubled Los Angeles Union School District, a school from permanently blue California and famously liberal L.A. County. A school that no one who hasn't attended, taught at or sent children to would know about.

Yeah... and then, regardless of whether that photo was intentional or accidental, it's simply a terrible photo to use in this situation photographically.

The photo itelf is fine, it's dramatic, pretty and uncluttered. But no one thought to ask themselves whether their candidate would look good in front of it on camera. The entire bottom half of the photo is a green lawn, which means that when he's filmed, he'll be alone against a bright green background. The picture will almost never be seen in its entirely, just the lawn.

Either their genius media consultants didn't know or didn't care that this would happen. After taking a great deal of public ridicule for standing their candidate against a nearly solid green background only a couple of months earlier, McCain's people have done it again!

Later they switch out the photo for a picture of an American flag waving in the sky. Again, a very pretty picture in its entirety, but the camera will only see the vast swath of blue behind McCain.

They put their candidate against a bright, solid wall of the color most closely associated with his opponent's party. The color that is the dominant color of his opponent's website. The color that they least want to see on maps of this country come November 4th.

Brilliant.

And best of all? With a solid green or a solid blue background, it's trivial to take some video of McCain's acceptance speech and composite it against whatever hilariously ironic backdrop they want. In other words, they've made the lives of anyone who wants to have a little creative fun at McCain's expense so much easier.

Why didn't they consider this? Why, when Stephen Colbert already invited his audience to do make these sort of mocking videos with McCain's last conveniently green-screened speech, did the solid green and blue backdrops seem like an acceptable idea? And don't say they want the exposure. Publicity is publicity, yeah... but you don't want to actively encourage people to treat your campaign like a punchline.

Here's what I think happened: They showed John McCain some photos and asked him which he'd like behind him. He picked these two out. A brave soul tried to ask him to consider maybe other photos. He received a withering glare and an animal-like growl from McCain. And thus the decision was made. 'Cuz he's a maverick.

Someone, possibly McCain himself chose that sickly green background a few months ago. Someone, possibly McCain himself, chose an inexperienced, unvetted unknown to be his running mate. And someone, possibly McCain himself, stuck him in front of a background that subtly reminds people of his opponent and his opponent's party.

No one on his media staff are any good at their jobs.

How the hell did he even get the nomination with a team that could let things like this happen? Oh yeah... His fellow candidates were all ridiculous.

First, I gotta 'fess up to calling the VP selection, and the date of the announcement, entirely wrong. But it's nice to see that Obama can still surprise me, even if it wasn't a surprise to anyone else.
At any rate, I haven't gotten my text message yet! I got the confirmation one when I first signed up, I texted back my ZIP code after they asked, and eagerly awaited my VP Text for the last week. And now I find out everyone else has gotten it, but I haven't. What up?
But that got me thinking... what's the point of this whole text message thing anyways? Then it hit me: Nov. 4th!
They've got my cell-phone number and my zip code. Imagine on election day, they send out millions of text messages reminding people to vote, and more importantly, reminding people to remind their friends to vote (since anyone who signed up to get a text message regarding Obama's VP announcement is presumably not going to forget about election day).
So that's cool, it's distributed GOTV on a massive scale. It's brilliant, really. But the zip code thing is almost fiendishly clever. 
Imagine it's election day, and Obama's field office in Ohio realizes that a couple of districts aren't going as well for them as they were projecting because it's raining and a major freeway is jammed up with a big accident. They can send out a message to thousands of supporters in those districts saying: "We really need your help in Ohio. Please call everyone you know and remind them how important it is that they vote today. And if you're worried about traffic, we've posted alternative routes at www.barackobama.com/ohio."
Obama can send out thousands of these in the time it takes to phone a single voter with that same message. And a traditional phone call is wasted if the recipient isn't at home. That text message will reach nearly all of their intended recipients even if they're at the gym, at the supermarket or at work, and it'll reach the growing class of people that don't even have a traditional land-line anymore.
That's why they encouraged people to get their friends to sign up for the text messages. That's why they asked for your zip code. And that's why they didn't announce his VP pick until the last possible moment: The longer they waited, the more people signed up. The last two weeks of frenzied media speculation on his VP pick have surely driven millions more people to get in on the text message scheme.
It's easy to imagine that if texting were as widespread in 2000 as it is today, and Gore's campaign had the savvy and foresight to use it, he could have more than made up those few hundred critical votes in Florida. 
I noticed during the primaries that Obama's team clearly understood electoral tactics. This let them get a delegate win in Texas despite losing the popular vote there by a pretty substantial margin. I think we'll see that the primaries were just a preview. They've got a ground-game operation going that's not only better than McCain's, it's revolutionary.
In other words, this is a very bad year for the GOP to be fielding a candidate who doesn't know how to send an email. The difference between Obama's ground game and McCain's is the difference between rocket ships and golf carts.

Wherein I take undeserved credit for influencing television's best political coverage and potentially changing the course of human history forever:
Last Sunday, I suggested a strategery for beating John McCain: paint him as a real-life version of Grandpa Simpson.
Some commenters with an even better recall of Simpsons quotes than me mentioned Grandpa Simpson's semi-famous line "So I tied an onion to my belt -- which was the style at the time...".
I figured this was the perfect example of what I was aiming for, so I stole their idea and decided to call this strategy "Onion-Belting". It's got a nice ring to it, don't it?
48 hours later, The Daily Show leads with a nearly perfect example of serving McCain a huge can of Onion-Belting. At first, I was like, "wow, they had the same idea I had." But towards the end, it becomes almost unnervingly (though hilariously) similar to my suggestion.
Don't believe me? Watch Jon Stewart totally onion-belt John McCain's nostalgia-thon and tell me it's not freaky.
A rational person would conclude this, delightful though it may be, nothing more than a simple coincidence easily explained by both current events and 20 years of The Simpson's consistent popularity. I choose to presume that Jon Stewart personally read my post and said "Staff!!! Get on this now!!!"
And further, I assume this will be the pivotal moment of this election. McCain's Waterloo, if you will. You're welcome, Barack. I expect a cabinet post out of this, "Secretary of Snark" sounds about right.
(seriously, though, it is just a coincidence. An awesome one, but a coincidence nonetheless)

Firedoglake has released an articulate, concise and well-reasoned complaint to the FEC regarding McCain's shenanigans with having his public funding and eating it too. It's definitely worth a read and probably worth your support.
And like the more exhaustive complaint filed by the DNC on this matter, I hope it fails. In fact, I think it's very important that McCain be given a free-ride by the FEC to break the very finance laws he himself helped write.
Why? Because winning this FEC thing isn't the haymaker it appears to be. Presuming Obama is the nominee, a win here actually cedes ground he can hold for the primary and possibly equalizes Obama's biggest advantage over McCain: Fundraising.
The problem is this: McCain's public financing quagmire is simply too complex for the public-at-large to understand fully and the media wouldn't even bother to try anyhow. That means this battle isn't really about courts and commissions, it's about spin.
Should McCain take a beating here, it'll cost him money. That's gonna hurt him, yes. But it's not a knockout blow because it gives his campaign incredible leverage to paint Obama's campaign as attempting to stack the deck in his favor.
It doesn't matter that not one word of their claim is true. The "Obama is stacking the deck" talking point will be repeated over and over by every blowhard and freeper until November. Any attempt by the Obama camp to point out that McCain acted illegally will come off as kicking a guy when he's down, which people expect of every politician except Obama.
Repeated enough, Obama's fundraising will begin to take a hit as people feel less comfortable furthering what they hear is an already unfair advantage. McCain, on the other hand, will see increases in fundraising (as will his 527s) when his supporters start getting letters like this:
"Don't let Barack Obama steal this election!
"John McCain has spent his career as a champion for fair elections, creating FEC regulations that guarantee a level playing field. Now Barack Obama has shamelessly used a technicality in those regulations to give himself a hundred-million dollar advantage. 
"This is the same sort of snake-oil lawyering he used in Florida and Michigan to block the revotes that would have sunk his campaign. 
"Obama's 'Politics of Hope' are really the politics of a stacked deck. If this is how he runs his campaign, how will he run his presidency? That's why we need your support to show America that John McCain is the man to yadda, yadda, yadda...."
See? Nothing brings in cash like an underdog fighting a well-funded machine. McCain and company will use Florida and Michigan (regardless of how that situation is resolved) along with an FEC smackdown to pretend like Obama's campaign is some evil Nixonian bulldozer. Yes, it's all a lie and yes, Barack Obama and his campaign has literally nothing to do with anything they'd be accused of. None of that matters in the spin room.
And what would Obama get? A victory the public doesn't understand and a brief widening in the money gap between their two campaigns. The money is a hollow victory, McCain will surely make it up in free press coverage and the types of fund-raising letters I just mentioned. Worse still, it's a completely unnecessary victory because both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are already winning the money game. In fact, they're trouncing McCain as it is. The last thing on earth we should want to do is upset that dynamic.
But imagine it swings the other way: The FEC drags their feet or simply dismisses the complaints with a sternly worded letter. Yeah, Obama will then have a smaller initial lead monetarily, but that lead will still be huge, and it will get even larger as his campaign and the DNC start sending out this letter:
"Don't let John McCain steal this election!
"John McCain has a well-known reputation as a maverick. But now we see that 'maverick' is just a nice way of saying he has the same sneering disdain for the rule of law as President Bush and Karl Rove do.
"John McCain shamelessly broke the very FEC laws he himself helped write, and the Bush-appointed FEC let him get away with it! 
"This is what we're up against and this is why Barack Obama desperately needs your support. Together, we can show McCain and Bush that no matter how many laws they break, how much power they try to grab and how little they respect the democratic process, America is ready for change."
I like this fund-raising message a lot better. Not only is it in support of my guy, it's also actually true.
This FEC thing has legs, and it's something we've got to use to our advantage (if for no other reason than the irony of it all). But using it to our advantage means making sure we win the spin battle, even if it means bunting on the regulatory aspect.
[ed: This one is the readable one. Sorry for the double post, TPM's blogging tools are a bit touchy.]

The mainstream media pretty openly hearts McCain. We can attack that particular bias directly, but we won't make too much headway. The whole "maverick" narrative is so entrenched in the coverage of the campaign as to have become a postulate.
It's what I call a Pop-Truth: Once a characterization of someone has become the base assumption of their identity in the minds of the public-at-large and the media, it cannot be changed.

Thus Gore the Serial Exaggerator. Thus Kerry, the pedantic flip-flopper... And thus Bob Dole, the curmudgeon in 1996.
So it's safe to assume that from now until November, it will be impossible to change these three perceptions of McCain:

1. He speaks his mind.2. He's politically unpredictable.3. He's old. 

To me, this means one thing: It's time for some aikido. Attacking McCain's Pop-Truth effectively doesn't mean trying to change these perceptions. It means using these perceptions against him. It means giving the media a narrative that extends rather than defies their perceptions of him and letting them repeat it enough that it becomes assumed rather than debated.

I think we need to show him to be the Grandpa Simpson of American politics: An ornery, forgetful man flummoxed by modern America. In other words, a man quick to both confusion and anger.

The opening for this lies in the Iran/Sunni/Shiite/Al Qaeda gaffe he made a couple of weeks back. We know that it's not so much a gaffe as a scary misunderstanding he actually held, but that's beside the point. Viewed through the lensing of Grandpa Simpson, a simple gaffe is as damaging as  being consistently and entirely wrong.
Then there's the great condom stumble. This is even more damaging because unlike the political alliances of various Iraqi factions, everyone knows condoms prevent HIV. Everyone. Including McCain unless I'm massively overestimating him.

This wasn't so much a lack of knowledge on a commonsense issue, as it was political unpreparedness, a sign that he's not a maverick. But it's useless to use this to prove his non-maverick-ness, that's his Pop-Truth. Instead, go Grandpa Simpson on him: He admits to being stumped on whether condoms prevent HIV, needs someone to literally dig up his stated position on it (which isn't even his), and tentatively defers to Bush's position on it despite admitting not actually knowing for sure what that position was. 

All this on an issue that pretty much everyone knows: Condoms prevent HIV.

Then there's his "you little jerk" comment at someone who asked if he was too old. Personally, I thought that was funny, and I think for the most part, that's how he meant it to be. But it could also be read as cantankerous, ala Grandpa Simpson.

Start digging through YouTube and coverage of press events, I'm sure we'd find plenty more examples of where his maverick straight-talk can be read as the rantings of a grouchy, poorly informed old man. That goes doubly for the various flip-flops he's made to gain the nomination. Paint them as "political expediency" and we won't make any headway. Paint them as "makes stuff up so people will listen to him", you've got Grandpa Simpson.

Beating McCain means not attacking his strengths head-on, but turning them against him. For anyone who is justifiably concerned that this would be too undignified, remember why I'm advocating it: The media refuses to give McCain the critical eye they've set on every other candidate, Republican and Democrat, in this campaign. This is the best way I can see to get them to focus on his flip-flops, his poor understanding of world affairs, his very conservative social views and his outrageously hawkish foreign policy. It's the best way to show America the real John McCain.