For many of the reasons that are listed in the above post I feel you should begin heading all forth coming posts with the picture of McCain making the crazy face at Chris Matthews. Every post. Even the food ones.

And, while the McCain campaign could have countered by saying that this is old news and that it affected McCain by turning him into a chastened reformer, his lawyer claimed that the Keating situation had always been ginned by the Democrats.

One campaign knows what it's doing. The other does not.

Every day, more and more, I feel like we're seeing the most disciplined, well-run campaign of any of our lifetimes. We're thirty days away from a young first term black senator with an arabic middle name crushing an old white war hero who's been a well known celebrity and media darling for forty years. It's inconceivable

One of these campaigns is playing chess. The other seems to be working its way up to "Chutes and Ladders".

Rove's chickens are returning to roost. It isn't that Obama is using Rovian tactics. It is that he has learned to fight them.

As Ezra points out, the Obama campaign held fire until the time was right. Can you imagine McCain acting so strategically and with such discipline?

Chess at this level indicates the man just might be a good president. No wonder Bill Clinton can't stand him.

Obama also has an advantage in that while the Ayers attack is bullshit, the Keating attack is 100% true.

Granted that wouldn't always matter. But the media has turned on McCain in a major way.

I think we're watching one of the best-run political campaigns in history.

Ezra: congrats on your ability to use the Joe Klein-style, stentorian toady voice. It fits!

However, what you describe as "guilt-by-association" is actually much more.

What's also interesting is that apparently politician accounts or at least BHO can upload videos longer than 10 minutes; I wonder if previous candidates were given that option.

Oh my god, YouTube is in the tank for Obama!!

I haven't had time to watch this. I plan to get to it tonight.

One more comment about the smart timing on this release: Obama and McCain are debating, what, tomorrow night? McCain has a bad temper, and is already coming off as cranky, disrespectful, and nasty. Putting the Keating scandal on the table is likely to piss McCain off a lot, and could make it much harder for him to do what he needs to do in the upcoming debate.

I had been really, really puzzled that no surrogates had been on the campaign trail saying "Keating Five" every chance they got from day one. This would appear to be the answer.

I don't actually have to watch it, though. It's the facts that are devastating, and always were.

Does Obama know there were the Keating FIVE? Four of whom were his Democrat colleagues?

Does he know his own campaign member who introduced Springsteen the other night, John Glenn was a member of the Keating 5. Should Obama really have a Keating FIVE member on his campaign staff?

Did Keating blow up the Capitol building or the Pentagon like Obamas friend Ayers?

Did Keating declare war on America like Obamas friend Bernadine Dohrn?

Did Keating declare Palestinian terrorists who kill innocent Jews heroes like Obamas friend Khalidi?

Did Keating declare 'God Damn America' like Obamas mentor Rev Wright.

Did Keating declare Israel should be destroyed and White people are no different then Satan like Obamas black Muslim friend Al Mansoor?

Did Keating start a anti-Jewish race war in New York City like Obamas friend Sharpton?

Did Keating declare Jews 'mud people' like Obamas friend Louis Farrakhan?

Yeah, didn't think so...

Every day, more and more, I feel like we're seeing the most disciplined, well-run campaign of any of our lifetimes.

This is exactly true. And it's likely to get Obama elected. Running poor campaigns (which, in my opinion, both Al Gore and John Kerry did, and John McCain is doing now) are the deciding factors in remotely close elections. If Gore had run an Obama style campaign (and let Bill Clinton stump for him, too), there would have been no question in 2000 and Gore would have been in the Whitehouse.

And the Obama/Ayers stuff is not bullshit, but it may not be relevant to most voters. While the Keating thing may be "100% true", it's worth noting from a partisan perspective that McCain--reaching across the aisle--was the only Republican in the Keating Five scandal, and both he and John Glenn were cleared of any actual wrong doing. Whatever that really means in DC, with the folks responsible for the current financial crisis presiding over the so-called "bailout".

Does he know his own campaign member who introduced Springsteen the other night, John Glenn was a member of the Keating 5. Should Obama really have a Keating FIVE member on his campaign staff?

Like John McCain, John Glenn was cleared of any wrongdoing and successfully ran for re-election.

Who is this idiot who thinks that very elderly John Glenn former senator and astronaut is on the Obama campaign staff?

And the Obama/Ayers stuff is not bullshit

You can say that, Kevin, and you can repeat it, but it doesn't make it true. Argument by vigorous assertion is not generally considered to be a compelling one.

I would consider connections the Bush or McCain would have to people like Ahmed Chalabi to be much more ominous and serious. Connections you studious ignore, I've noticed.

Call the waaahmbulance for WackoKelly.

I asked an Obama staffer today how long the video had been finished for. He laughed. "No comment."

There was a Kos diary from a couple of months back where a guy in a rope-line asked Obama not to be bullied, and Obama said he was saving stuff for later.

I was surprised he didn't mention Keating at the first debate. But this hits the news cycle so that it's relevant tomorrow, and McCain has to address it live on camera for the first time in a long time.

Having seen the full-on national campaign up close this weekend, it's staggeringly well-disciplined. Case in point: the vendors of unauthorized campaign tat who follow Obama from venue to venue can't compete with the official merch.

Actually, John McCain's association with dishoonest people hits a whole lot closer to home than Charles Keating.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/1994-09-08/news/opiate-for-the-mrs/

Does anyone other than a diehard Republican actually want a (diverted) drug thief occupying the White House as
First Lady?

Contrary to Kevin and Stanley Kurtz (wingnut author of the article he linked to), there's not only nothing wrong with Ayers' worldview (though it was certainly wrong for him to advocate violence in pursuit of it), you also cannot impute that worldview to his associates on the CAC board.

So Kurtz has a whole bunch of nothing; I hope it comes up tomorrow night so Obama can smack it down hard, then having done so turn the discussion to Charles Keating.

Do you really think that this video is likely to trump Rezko's confessions?

Huh?

Rezko who?

Confessions what?

(tee-hee-hee-hee, suppressed giggle)

Check it out, and remember, don't hate the playa, hate the game:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081007/ap_on_re_us/fundraiser_trial

This is the equivalent of a stripper jumping out of a big Happy October cake!

The huge, huge, stripper-equivalent revelations from that article:

"Besides bankrolling a large portion of Blagojevich's campaign, Rezko raised substantial funds for Obama's past campaigns in Illinois — although none for his current presidential run.

Obama's campaign says it has sent to charity $159,000 traceable to Rezko's past fundraising.

While Blagojevich was frequently mentioned at Rezko's trial, the testimony rarely touched on Obama, who has been accused of no wrongdoing.

Unmentioned at the trial was a purchase by Rezko's wife, Rita, of property adjacent to the Obama home near the University of Chicago on the city's South Side. Obama and his wife, Michelle, purchased their home the same day that Rezko's wife closed on her property. And she later sold some of her property to the Obamas to enlarge their lot. Obama later said that allowing Rezko to do what appeared to be a favor was a "bonehead" move."

Wow, that's killer!

What's impressive, having finally watched it, is that the video mainly makes a policy argument with a surprising amount of wonkish detail. The argument is *not* that McCain hung out with a bad guy, but that he helped the guy evade regulation, and this anti-regulatory stance is consistent across his record. The March 2008 footage at 10:52 is devastating.

i just want to weigh in that i'm really old. god, this video is boring. and the music is unbelieveably annoying. how i love black and white columns of print (even on a computer screen) with background music from my ipod shuffle. but hey whatever works. we get my vote all the time. this has been an astonishingly brilliant and well run campaign, but if boring videos with bad background music are what it takes, i'm going to read a lot of novels for the rest of my allotted life span, and then vote for the more liberal guy

The video shows that they will try to counter punch. By spouting the previous crap about McCain running a campaign he will regret or Campbell Brown's commentary about running a campaign your proud off is a sure fire way to get your ass kicked. "You play to win the game." It's about winning bottomline and it looks like the Obama campaign might have actually learned from 2004, rather than looking like a bunch of pussies and complain to the refs.

Obama far left radical freeinds have one thing in common; they all think America is a bad country and far worse then other countries and terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.

Ayers balmes America for Sept 11th; Wright blames America for Sept 11th; Dohrn blames America for Sept 11th; Khalidi and Al-Mansoor blame America. Even Michelle Obama claims America is a mean country and OBama tells an 8 year old child that America is no longer a great country..

In my opinion this video is a huge mistake. It just gives the MSM fodder to draw false equivalencies between this and the McCain/Palin "Obama pals around with terrorists." In fact CNN's Campbell Brown has already done this.

Rope: 1
Dope: 0

In my opinion this video is a huge mistake. It just gives the MSM fodder to draw false equivalencies between this and the McCain/Palin "Obama pals around with terrorists."

I think that might be the point. Who is the audience for this video? How many people outside the press are going to watch a 13-minute mini-documentary? This is pitched to the press in the hopes that they will treat the Ayers smear equivalently. I.e. just politicians going negative. Noise canceling out noise.

IMO.

Interesting point, Jeebus. You might be right.