McCain's "Hamas" attack has Karl Rove's fingerprints all over it.  It's classic Republican divide-and-conquer/guilt-by-association politics.  It's worked well for them in the past, but it won't work this time.  The Republicans have created a monster, and that monster is going to eat them alive in November.  They have cultivated a base that consists of a bunch of ignorant, racist misanthropes, who the Republicans can easily drag to the polls every four years using fear and suspicion to cow them.  These are precisely the voters Barack Obama was talking about when he said that bitter Americans cling to guns and religion.  The Republicans have intentionally MADE these people bitter for precisely that reason.  They've being played like a bunch of goddamn hillbilly banjos.

One problem, though: their numbers are severely depleted this year, and McCain goes into this race vastly unpopular among these folks.  And in trying to appeal to them and win them back, McCain risks alienating the rest of America.  When he embraces Haggee--which he must do if he hopes to win the hillbilly demographic--he alienates Catholic voters.  And if he tries to distance himself in order to woo Catholics, he loses the base.

Crop rotation.  That's what the Republicans forgot.  You can't keep planting the same seeds in the same dirt all the time, because eventually the weevils take over.  And the weevils now RUN the Republican Party.

Is there any other way to read this than as an implicit announcement that Obama is the nominee?

It will be interesting to see if the Clinton campaign makes a similar arrangement.

This article is well worth reading:

<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html">http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html</a>

And the ramifications are well worth considering.  One of the best ways to hold back the Clintons is to donate again to the Obama campaign.  He needs a MASSIVE month.  There's nothing more convincing to many of these party insiders than the ability to raise funds.