LIGHTNING ROUND: THIS IS GREAT NEWS FOR McCAIN!

• Politico reports on PowerPAC, which plans on investing $10 million in a GOTV drive for Barack Obama for African-American and Hispanic voters. A related story in USA Today notes that in "swing counties" across the country, minorities have been settling in numbers that could prove decisive for Obama, who prefer him in large numbers over John McCain. Also, Nate Silver argues in a NY Post op-ed that the quadrennially-vaunted youth vote will likely live up to the hype this year, due to a 50 percent increase in numbers since 2004, issue focus and effective branding by the Obama campaign.
• According to the internal memos to be released along with an Atlantic story on the collapse of the Clinton campaign, Mark Penn signed off on portraying Obama as an "unAmerican" figure: "I cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values."
  
• Reflecting on the Edwards revelation from Friday, former Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson argues that if Edwards had dropped out before the Iowa caucuses in January, Hillary Clinton would have won the state, instantly derailing Obama's ascent. Nate Silver and Marc Ambinder (among others) provide the necessary antidote to Wolfson's sloppy reasoning.
• Taegan Goddard learns that parts of John McCain's speech on the situation in Georgia appears to be have been lifted from the Wikipedia article on the subject. Matt Yglesias spins positive: "Given that McCain, by his own admission, can’t use the internet it’s a bit of an ironic situation though perhaps it counts as progress of some sort."
• Polls: Obama maintains his lead in national polls, moving five points ahead of McCain in the Gallup daily tracker, 47-42, and polling a three-point, 42-39 percent lead in an Economist poll [PDF]. Survey USA has McCain one point ahead of Obama in Virginia, 48-47, and Public Policy Polling has Obama with a stable four-point, 48-44 lead in Colorado.
• Resident ABC News gasbag Cokie Roberts on Obama's Hawaiian vacation: "I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii, and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be in Myrtle Beach." Ana Marie Cox points out that Hawaii receives 5 million American tourists every year.
• In addition to the inartful comments of Hillary Clinton and Bob Kerrey that Tim documents below, TPM catches another off-message moment from a prominent Democrat, this time in the form of Russ Feingold: "[McCain] calls 'em as he sees 'em, and as president would call 'em as he sees 'em, and would make people mad all over the place because it wouldn't fit anybody's playbook." Can someone tell me when total unpredictability suddenly became a desirable trait in a presidential candidate? Don't we want the guy with his "finger on the button" to be someone not prone to making random snap decisions?

--Mori Dinauer