I see a terrible problem here and I don't see the solution.

Throughout the primaries and now the general, the only way Obama's opponents have scored against him was by (I'm going to be polite) reminding voters that Obama is "not like us"

In the primaries it was the Rev. Wright thing, the Muslim libel, the e-mails to the Jewish community, the "elitist" brouhaha, etc. And now it's the "One" and the rest of that meme. Not one of these charges, not one, would have been launched if Obama was white.

Team McCain is not stupid. It studied what worked against Obama in the primaries and sees that the "uppity negro" thing is a winner.

So far it has been.

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Dan Schnur, who was John McCain's communications director in 2000 is not much impressed by either Obama's or McCain's choices for VP.

I don't much care who the Republicans pick. Obviously, I prefer the weakest possible candidate and Romney just may fit the bill.

But what about Schnur's point about Kaine. He does lack national security credentials. Would we be better off with some general or at least Jim Webb (who, sadly, took his name out).

I like Kaine alot. He's a good governor, a progressive, a Catholic, and he speaks Spanish fluently. He is also wicked smart. But is he the best we have?

I think the Obama folks need to hear from us BEFORE they make this critical choice. No point grousing after Obama makes the pick. They read TPM. We should mouth off now.

Everybody predicted that TIME's Joe Klein would have to publish a major mea culpa after writing that the neocons played a major role in getting us into the Iraq war.

But he's not doing it. He is not allowing ridiculous charges of anti-semitism to stop him from saying what everybody knows: that although the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld crowd led the charge for war, they were supported and buttressed by neocons in the administration, on the Hill and the media.

This is a narrative some very powerful people do not like. They claim to fear that, because most of the neocons are Jews, Americans will conclude that the war on Iraq was pushed by the Jewish community.

Of course, that is not so. Although most neocons are Jews, few Jews are neocons. Every poll taken of Jewish opinion shows that, after African-Americans and non-Cuban Latinos, Jews have been the segment of the population most strongly opposed to military action against Iraq and Iran. This is no big surprise considering that 80% of Jews are Democrats, and the same percentages supported Gore, Kerry and will, no doubt, support Obama.

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Bill Kristol, neoconservatism's intellectual powerhouse, is suffering. Driving around the Washington suburbs this weekend, he saw a few Obama bumper stickers.

"As I drove around the Washington suburbs, I saw not one but two cars -- rather nice cars, as it happens -- festooned with the Obama campaign bumper sticker 'got hope?' And I relapsed into moroseness. Got hope? Are my own neighbors' lives so bleak that they place their hopes in Barack Obama?"

The reference to the "rather nice cars" sums Kristol up. What a silly and superficial man!

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