The Obama campaign should respond by aggressively linking high gas prices to the Iraq fiasco and "bomb, bomb Iran".

The Democratic response should be a picture of gas prices BEFORE the Iraq war invasion, people from the Bush administration talking about how invasion of Iraq would help lower gas prices, then a montage of gas prices rising with every single year of the Iraq war.

Then a voiceover from Barack Obama saying, "The Republicans are lying to the American people again. Their plan to lower gas prices won't bring a single drop of gas for ten years. That means Americans will suffer at the gas pump for ten more years.

My plan immediately addresses the pain that Americans feel at the gas pump by investing in renewable energies, and alternative fuels. This brings real relief to Americans, not just the mental relief that McCain talks about."

Greg? Do you know where this ad is being shown?

I hope that isn't how the Democracy Corps framed the argument between Obama and McCain about the energy crisis. It isn't a fair characterization. McCain's description is full of positives ("adding" alternative energy, "conservation") while Obama's policy is described as "blaming oil companies" and "rejecting" offshore drilling. These types of terms introduce bias into the questioning, so I hope the questions were more balanced, without reading the actual article.

I read that piece this morning, and wondered about this:

Yet polls suggest that Mr. Obama hasn’t cemented his advantage, while voters remain open to Mr. McCain’s arguments and experience. In particular, he has the chance to persuade them in the states he values most.

What polls is Harwood referring to? I've never seen anything that suggests that Obama isn't strongly favored over McCain on economic issues...

This offshore drilling is a pander, plain and simple.

There are lots of places the oil companies can drill already that they are not drilling, even though we gave them huge tax cuts so they would increase their drilling.

Do you know what they chose to do with that money they got in tax breaks? They chose to buy back their own stock. That is right, you and I and all other tax payers are paying to increase the value of Exxon stock.

My friends, that's not change you can believe in.

The Obama campaign shouldn't let this Ad go a day without a solid response. Permitting off shore drilling won't result in a single drop for 10 years. We need solutions that are far more timely. How about more efficient cars, hybrids and electrics. We can start right now. Why wait for the Republicans and big oil?

Uhh...seriously? Let's see, what is the single biggest contributor to the price of gas...instability in the Middle East...what policy has done the most to destabilize the Middle East...Iraq. Who supported it from the beginning, and continues to support that war? McCain. Who has always been against it? Obama.

Done.

Obama & Co. need to do three things:

1. Hammer home the message that gas and oil prices have soared during Republican rule, and that GOP-friendly oil companies have cashed in big time.

2. State clearly and repeatedly that Barack and Democrats have economically viable plans to promote the use of new green technologies that will provide clean, efficient energy/

3. Hammer McCain's support of the Bush Administration's disastrous record on the environment. McCain claims to be green, but apart froma handful of votes, his record doesn't bear that out and he will be beholden to traditional GOP corporate interests.

It's difficult to fathom Obama camp's reluntance to respond or counter attack. This is second attack ad in two weeks- as CNN would like to call it a "contrast ad" whatever that means.

While these are thin and flimsy baseless attacks (both Iraq flip flop and gas hike attack), Obama camp does have obligation to counter attack- dispel the notions well-before they take any form or shape in the political dialogue.

WOW...

EVEN THE GAS PUMP IS OLD!!!!

And are we drilling in RIVERS now... yeah, that'll work.

Here's a better idea Johnny boy. Let's get the hell out of Iraq and quit treating their country as our battle space so they can get on with the business of pumping their 115 billion barrels of oil out of the ground and into the int'l market.

That'll do a lot more to drive down gas prices than hunting all over the ocean off tourist beaches in Miami and Santa Barbara for years looking for the last dregs of our supply.

This ad is laughable and utterly unconvincing.

The McCain campaign is asking you to believe that after all these years of rising oil prices with oil executives running the Whitehouse and war in the Middle East that suddenly the neophyte Senator from Illinois, that has no experience, and that nobody had even heard of until a couple of years ago... he's to blame?!?

Yeah, right.

According to Michael Scherer, who has turned into as bad an MSM pod person as Ana Marie Cox since he got his Time gig, this ad is really just part of a brilliant McCain team plot to convince people that Obama are strange, crazy, dangerous, otherish cultists.

Michael, of course, does not report that, if that's what they're really doing, this would be about the twentieth retread of a dismally unsuccessful Hillary strategy that McCain's brain trust has tried.