The Convention bounce and Palin bounce are steadily wearing off. Unfortunately for McCain, he doesn't have another convention, doesn't have another VP to unveil, and as the candidate of the incumbent's party things like the Wall Street crisis will only hurt McCain and give more fuel to Obama.

The RCP electoral college map, which I should be happy about because Obama has stayed at 273 with no tossup states pretty much forever, isn't that good a measure because state by state polls don't update fast enough to reflect the day to day political situations.

I will say this, the race is close now. I think it still favors Obama, and that it's always been pretty close, but I do think at this point that it could go either way. The fact that working class votes in Ohio have been trending towards Obama and continue to trend towards Obama even after Palin is a really good thing for him.

O'Reilly hacked by anon.

And in the "no shit Sherlock" category, Obama's race may be influencing voters.

Racists?  In my America?
It's more likely than you think.

It's all right there!

Damn.  That's an impressive play by McCain.  I don't think Obama could have pulled off the same.  McCain can now claim the high ground about solving the country's economic problems thus forcing Obama to either step back from the campaign as well or risk scorn for continuing the battle while McCain fights to save "the little guy."

Had Obama done this first the Republicans would have shouted about it being simply a smoke cloud to prevent voters from seeing the "Real Obama."  It would have gone over like a lead balloon.  With the Republicans floating the idea, though, it somehow gains legitimacy.

What a world.

For the first time since 8/24, the electoral map with no toss up states at RealClearPolitics has registered a change in the electoral vote count. After a month of Obama at 273 EV to McCain's 265 EV, it now has Obama taking Virginia and winning 286-252. This is a map that has resisted change, through the ups and downs of the conventions and the vp picks that map did not change. Now it has changed.

Oh God.  I missed this live, but, wow.

Part I
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/cP12aNzocSc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/cP12aNzocSc</a>


Part II
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/W2kjFn4s4sU" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/W2kjFn4s4sU</a>

Biden's going to eat her alive tonight.

So poking around a bit more today I found a cnn piece on Tina Fey's parody of her on SNL last week.  Turns out part of Fey's dialog in the bit was lifted verbatim from Palin's interview.

You can't get much better than that.

Dammit, I want to watch the Palin-Biden debate, but I havn't the connection.

From the transcripts, it looks like he kicked her ass on account of her being functionally retarded and a bullshitter, but all the news I read says that she "held her ground" and make it look like she was really sharp and on the ball and Biden just drawled out the party line. Am I missing a bunch of inflection or something here? On paper it looks like you wouldn't put this woman in charge of a soccer practice, despite the fact she simply will not shut the fuck up about being a soccer mum, and yet everyone is saying she "exceeded expectations".

"Exceeded expectations" in this case can be taken to mean "Didn't drool on her own shoes".

Having watched it live, the impression that I got was that Biden wanted the debate to be about substantive issues, and she wanted everyone to think she was "one of us."  I found her whole take on the concept of debate more than minorly distasteful.  She seemed hell bent to say what she had been coached to say and avoid actually answering the questions as they were posed to her.