Better

More like this please:

McCain Is A Reckless Hothead
In an apparent effort to regain the offensive, the Obama campaign launched a broad attack on McCain today, portraying him as reckless on foreign policy, a hot-head who's too willing to use force and not willing enough to apprise himself of facts on the ground before urging military action.

OK, is it the same old politics? Yep. But is it an effective attack? I think so. It is just inflammatory enough to get talked about on cable teevee and to get a fair amount of free media, but it avoids the "below the belt" connotation of any reference to his military service or POW experience. It also contains a significant kernel of truth, and plays into the desired narrative of "McCain is dangerous, just like Bush." Whether Obama will have the discipline to stick with this line of attack long enough to really make it part of the campaign narrative is yet to be seen.

Also, two new negative ads on McCain:

This one seems effective to me. It's not character-driven, which means that it may not play into the narrative theme the way I would like it to, but it's hard-hitting and probably would resonate in Ohio and the rest of the rust belt.

The other:

I think is less effective. Abramhoff who? Ralph Reed? Isn't he the guy from Family Ties who made those Back to the Future movies? Too "inside baseball," especially for low-information voters.

Also, what I want to see is every single time they call Obama "elite" or "celebrity" to have an Obama surrogate point out that McCain's the one with ten houses and a private jet.

I kind of hate to see Obama go negative; it dilutes the "hope" theme. But the last three weeks really have shown how much impact the dirty politics have, and I'm all about winning, and if winning means we to play the character card, so be it.

Interesting and rather rational take on the recent polls here at Daily Kos, with the possibly insightful conclusion that "McCain is spoiling his own brand with independents in order to consolidate his own base (my prediction from way back was that he can't have both)." A couple of other bright points:

• McCain is much more perceived as running the negative campaign (but will it matter?)
• The large (almost 2-to-1) enthusiasm gap perists
• Obama is still winning independents and women
• Obama is heavily investing in the ground game, rather than blowing money on ads (will it pay off?)

I'm still worried and terribly nervous. It's nice to see some signs of life from the god guys, though, and knowing that we've got the next week or so of media on our side is also nice. Let's bring on the running mate!