MCCAIN'S ABORTION GAMBIT.

I disagree with Steve Benen about the politics of John McCain not "ruling out" a pro-choice running mate -- I think it's a reasonably clever move by McCain. Obviously, there's no chance of this actually happening, so the GOP's anti-choice base won't care about this once the pick is made. But it does help McCain accomplish a key goal -- namely, to blur his extremely unpopular position that abortion should be banned in all 50 states.

Given the number of pundits determined to believe that McCain is a moderate on abortion despite the mountain of evidence making it clear that this isn't true, it could very well be effective. Hopefully Obama will do a better job of drawing attention to the GOP's extremism on the issue than most past candidates have.

--Scott Lemieux