Every time Iraq or Afghanistan comes up in a debate, John McCain attacks Obama for refusing to admit he was wrong about the surge. In Nashville he said,

He still will not admit that he was wrong about the strategy of the surge in Iraq, and that's the same kind of strategy of go out and secure and hold and allow people to live normal lives.

Obama has wasted precious debate time explaining his statements on the surge, rather than simply asking: Senator McCain, when will you admit you were wrong about invading Iraq in the first place?

If Obama ever said that to McCain, I suspect McCain would melt into a steamy heap on the floor like the Wicked Witch of the West after a bucket of water.

Who You Callin' a Maverick?

By JOHN SCHWARTZ

Published: October 4, 2008

There's that word again: maverick. In Thursday's vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him "the consummate maverick."

But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.

By Dave Lindorff

I’ve been getting some emails that refer to Barack Obama as a
“Manchurian Candidate,” a guy who is somehow hiding a secret radical
and/or Muslim jihadist agenda that will burst forth if he’s elected
president. There is a certain idiot factor at work here, since if Obama
were a closet Weatherman, who somehow learned of and adopted that 1960s
college dropout organzation’s creed at the tender age of 8, it would
have clashed badly with any Muslim teaching he might have picked up as
a student in an Indonesian public school at the same time (he attended
an Indonesian public schoolfrom the age of 6 to 8 before transferring
to a Catholic-run institution).

But since some low-wattage and conspiracy-minded people seem ready
to believe this kind of stuff, let’s consider John McCain’s early
background, and the possibility of his being a Manchurian Candidate
too. Fair’s fair, right?

John McCain made a big mistake by lying about Obama's minor connection to William Ayres, because Barack Obama is firing back with a scandal that hits McCain right between the eyes: the Keating 5.

By Dave Lindorff

The US Senate did what the Founding Fathers expected it to do when
they devised the idea of an upper house of Congress. Playing the role
of Britain’s House of Lords to the House’s House of Commons, it ignored
the rabble (that’s us, the voters) and voted the opposite way of the
House of Representatives, which on Monday had voted down the Bush
Administration’s proposed $700-billion to $1-trillion give-away to Wall
Street financial companies.

The Senate vote in support of the measure, which went 74-25 (the
ailing Sen. Ted Kennedy missed the vote), reflects the fact that, first
of all, Senators, who run representing entire states, are very
difficult to unseat because of the huge cost of mounting a media
campaign against an incumbent, and second that two-thirds of them even
don’t face voters this November, (and one third not for another four
years).

This graph from FiveThirtyEight.com tells the story: after falling slightly behind during the Republican convention, Obama has pulled away from McCain in every national poll and is heading towards an Electoral College landslide of 336-202.

The key swing states of Florida and Ohio are now leaning Obama, as are Red states like Colorado, Virginia Nevada, and even North Carolina.

What happened? The market meltdown became McCain's meltdown, both politically and personally.

On September 15, after Lehman Brothers failed and investors went into shock, McCain once again declared the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." Then when a bailout deal was near on September 26, McCain went to Washington DC to nail it down and nuked it instead. Meanwhile Sarah Palin was interviewed by Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, and the results were disastrous.

Obama barely had to say a word; McCain dug his own grave, with Palin shoveling on the dirt.

By Dave Lindorff

With the Bush Administration, the two leading presidential
candidates, and the Congressional leadership, as well as a phalanx of
Wall Street lobbyists all pushing hard for a massive transfer of
taxpayer money to the coffers of banks and investment banks, the
American people need to demand a halt to this bums' rush to a bailout.

The Republican National Committee just released a new ad that viciously attacks Barack Obama for - get this - the Paulson Plunder!

Apart from calling it Barack Obama's plan instead of Paulson's Plunder, every word of the ad is true. It will cost $1 trillion. And you (and I) will pay for it through new taxes, new spending, and new debt.

And for those policy reasons alone, Democrats should defeat the Paulson Plunder. But if policy isn't enough, what about the raw politics of blaming Obama for Paulson's Plunder? If Republicans are going to attack Obama for supporting the plan, then he damn well should oppose it - as should every single Democrat.