Blasts From the Past

CBS gives Obama a tighter 47-43 lead.

Having already suggested to Sarah Palin that the Reverend Wright might be fertile territory, Bill Kristol turns to handicapping the race:

"The odds are against John McCain and Sarah Palin winning this election. It's not easy to make up a 6-point deficit in the last four weeks. But it can be done.

"Look at history. The Gore-Lieberman ticket gained about 6 points in the final two weeks of the 2000 campaign. Ford-Dole came back more than 20 points in less than two months in the fall of 1976. Both tickets were from the party holding the White House, and both were running against inexperienced, and arguably risky, opponents . . .

"If a campaign can convince supporters of the other candidate that the race is effectively over, the enthusiasm and volunteer efforts drop off -- as does, ultimately, their turnout on Election Day. Just as important, undecided and loosely affiliated voters become persuaded there's no real contest and lose any incentive to look closely at the candidates. This explains the efforts of the Obama campaign -- aided by a colluding media -- to sell the notion that the race is over, that McCain supporters should give up, and undecided voters should tune out."

Just a second, Bill. Whatever you think of the coverage, the "colluding media" aren't saying Obama has pulled ahead because they love the guy. They're saying it because the polls have shown several battleground states suddenly turning blue. And your colluding Fox pundit Karl Rove also says Obama is over 270 at the moment.

CQ's David Corn finds the new attacks tiresome:

"It seems that whenever Obama criticizes McCain's policies, McCain's response will be, 'Bill Ayres, Bill Ayres, Bill Ayres.' Or, I suppose, it might shift to 'Jeremiah Wright, Jeremiah Wright, Jeremiah Wright.' I wonder how McCain is going to follow this strategy in the debate on Tuesday night. His running mate, Sarah Palin, looked quasi-foolish trying to change the subject so many times during her face-off with Joe Biden. If McCain is asked about the fact that Obama's tax proposal offers more tax cuts to the bottom 99 percent of taxpayers than his own, will he say, 'That's just the sort of plan that a pal of Bill Ayres would propose. And let me tell you about Bill Ayres . . . '?"

When it comes to the Wright stuff, Wizbang asks: Why not?

"John McCain would be committing political malpractice if he didn't highlight Obama's very long term relationship with Jeremiah Wright, a man who said America was a curse on this world. What else could have he meant when he said it's not God Bless America but it's God Damn America and that AIDS was invented by the US government in order to commit genocide. Both Ayers and Wright see America as a source of hate and evil in this, and Barack Obama worked with and used both of these men to advance his political career to get him to where he is today: running for president."

History's verdict awaits, says American Prospect's Ezra Klein:

"If his campaign's final assault is defeated, it will be read as a repudiation of these politics. It will be understood as firm proof that you can no longer purposefully shatter this country's uneasy sense of tolerance and consensus and be assured that your pieces will be bigger . . . McCain, a man who once fashioned himself as among the country's most decent leaders, will have to live with the knowledge that history will remember him as having been unable to stand against bigotry and fear when they presented a political opportunity."

Of course, the victors have a way of rewriting history.