Reading your post does make one stop and think. Let's look at a few points in reverse order 1. Re: Ayers, the biggest objection that both you and Pabst seem to have is that Obama won't just come clean about his relationship with Ayers. To me, this isn't very surprising... for a lawyer. As you know Hap, lawyers tell their clients one thing before all else - do not volunteer any information. So if the Ayers thing is more about Obama's lawyerly refusal to acknowledge anything for which his opponents have less than complete evidence, I would say again that this isn't that unusual in politicians and I am dead sure we could find a bunch of examples of Republicans who have some less than savoury past associations and who won't simply serve up an admission on a silver platter. 2. The Rev. Wright thing is the most distrubing for me. Yep, the fact is that he sat in church and listened to the good Reverend spew that incredible bullshit about AIDS and whatever else he was spewing. Then he had the good Reverend marry him and finally baptize his kids. I am very surprised that McCain has not decided to bring this up - and I still say that we will see him do so next week. You mentioned that Obama is benefitting from the a perfect storm of events and this is defininitely true to some extent. However, I place blame on the RNC and McCain as well. They have handled this campaign very badly in my view, and the biggest mistake the are making is focussing 100% on Obama as the bogeyman. It didn't work for Kerry in '04 and it isn't working now. In part, it isn't working because McCain and Palin just do not 'read' very well on camera when they are making these charges. McCain has that smirking thing going on, sort of sarcastic, and Palin has the sarcasm as well, constantly referring to Biden as "ol' Joe" when she's running him down. Like she's just saying what everyone knows to be true. That 'folksy' way of denigrating Obama isn't working either, regardless of the veracity of what she's saying. It's just not working, and the RNC media consultants should be fired tonight.
McCain has said that negative campaigning works, and he's used it a little bit. As to why he isn't plastering images of Wright all over the media with his "GODDAM AMERICA" I don't really know. Some speculate he won't do it because he was attacked by people who say he fathered a mixed race daughter out of wedlock, (he actually adopted a girl from a Bangledash orphanage). It seems pretty clear he is going to lose this election regardless of the NYT, (nobody reads newspapers anymore). If he were going to start pulling out all of the stops to make up lost ground in the polls, the time to start doing it was last week. I don't think he'll start doing it this week either. It's bizzare because there is nothing more important in a politicians career than winning a presidential election. You never see a football team that is down by a touchdown in the final minutes of the game playing conservative football, but McCain refuses to go to the two minute drill.