Megan McArdle Hears Right?
Plus: Scott McClellan-Level Campaign Blogger Michael Goldfarb Again Risks Splintering the GOP-RPG Coalition

RCP now has the electoral college at 274-264, McCain.

As far as I can tell, it's just the same map Bush won with in 2004.

To state the obvious, the veep choice for both depends on how much each thinks they need to shake things up.

If one's ahead, one can play it safe with an inoffensive pick that placates the base but doesn't make any serious play for independents.

If one's behind, one probably should risk alienating the base in an effort to grab more swing voters. Chancy, but if you're losing anyway, you might as well gamble that you can both hold the base and build on it. It really doesn't matter if you lose by 3% or 6%, after all. Losing is losing.

McCain's current momentum suggests he should not make any high-risk moves and should just go with someone safe like Portman or Pawlenty or other people I've never heard of whose names begin with a "P." The base is slowly but inexorably coming back to him; he has a decent share of independents and a chance to get more naturally, just through questioning Obama's lack of experience race; so why rock a boat on a safe and steady course?

Obama, however, has had a bruising couple of weeks, and if his cultists' caterwauling is any indication, he's almost panicking. He's not doing especially well with swing voters, and he doesn't have a lock on Democrats' votes, either.

It's Hail Mary time.

So...

Vice President Hilary Rodham Clinton.

Michael Goldfarb Re-Offends: Again, even after his "heartfelt apology," which I am beginning to suspect was less than earnest:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others. John McCain has often said he witnessed a thousand acts of bravery while he was imprisoned, and though not every one has been submitted into the public record, they are remembered by the men who were there (one such only recently reported by Karl Rove though it escaped mention in any of Senator McCain’s books). But as Swindle said, this is a “desperate group of people trying to make something out of nothing.”

Watch that dirty mouth, fella, or I'll kick you right in your dice-pouch.

In all seriousness, 90% of the public doesn't know what he means by Dungeons and Dragons, and of the 10% that do, 5% have played.

I think he'd do better to use my descriptor for such folks -- Internet Detectives -- or something else.

The insult doesn't make complete sense. Fantasy baseball, as they say, is Dungeons & Dragons for people who used to beat up people who played Dungeons & Dragons.

And the Online Church of Obama Christ is just Dungeons & Dragons for people who used to get beaten up by people who played Dungeons & Dragons.

So he's really elevating them, rather than denigrating them.

Hopefully he will offer another apology and I can get some more hits off it.

The LAT Knows Why Obama Lost His Lead! Well, boys, he never had a 12-point lead in the first place, your insistence to the contrary.

But having claimed your silly-shit poll was balls-on accurate, now you have to explain his precipitous fall.

And of course the explanation is obvious.

It's the relentless "onslaught of negative attacks" from John McCain that done it.

Of course, of course.

You guys have a lot of excuses. You know that?

posted by Ace at 09:23 PM

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