Obama Pours It On, While McCain Struggles For Traction

[DeepModem Mom]

ABC News, The Note: General Malaise
Obama Pours It On, While McCain Struggles For Traction
By RICK KLEIN with HOPE DITTO
Oct. 20, 2008

All Sen. John McCain needs is one new storyline -- but Sen. Barack Obama went out and found three.

You could find one in the masses of humanity that greeted Obama in St. Louis and Kansas City over the weekend.

A second resided somewhere in the $150 million Obama collected in September. (Is there anywhere he can't play now?)

A third burst through in the only endorsement still out there that carries any weight. (Is this the true Palin effect?)

(What better day for a fourth? With early voting starting in Florida, Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton hold their first joint rally since June Monday evening in Orlando....)

Colin Powell's endorsement stings McCain from a few different directions: with independent voters, with Republicans, with anyone thinking about Obama but harboring a final few doubts. For several precious days, perhaps, it keeps McCain from changing the subject -- even Sarah Palin at 30 Rock ("laughing with her . . . or at her?" "Good Morning America" asks Monday) -- couldn't trump this one.

The map continuing to slip, his opponent continuing to pour it on, party unity crumbling, McCain needs to break through the queasiness in GOP camps with a bold campaign message -- a final argument for the final stretch. Yet Powell's endorsement has the power to live for a few more news cycles in part because it was coupled with an indictment of McCain's campaign -- on Bill Ayers, on the economy, and running through a running-mate selection "that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Sen. McCain made."...

It's the "latest sign that the Republican Party's coalition is fracturing amid the stresses of the campaign," The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Weisman and Amy Chozick write. "Late last week, conservative radio talk-show host Michael Smerconish endorsed Sen. Obama, as did conservative columnist Christopher Buckley, the son of National Review founder William F. Buckley. The Chicago Tribune endorsed Sen. Obama last week, the first time the paper has endorsed a Democrat in its 161-year history."

More roads back for McCain are looking like they're blocked off (and Powell wasn't speaking just for himself): "Likely voters overwhelmingly reject his effort to make an issue of Barack Obama's association with 1960s radical William Ayers," ABC Polling Director Gary Langer writes. "Fallout continues from McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for vice president, with 52 percent saying it weakens their confidence in his judgment. And on optimism, it's Obama by 2-1."...

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=3105288

[endarkenment]

1. Time For Another Stunt!

Three failed stunts down and only two weeks left. McFailedStuntShitHisPants is back at the drawing board plotting his next distraction.