The Obama campaign has this new ad running in key swing states, going after John McCain's attempts to cast himself as a reformer despite the fact that his campaign is run by Washington lobbyists:

"If seven of McCain's top advisors are lobbyists," the announcer warns, "who do you think will run his White House?"

The Obama campaign, sensing a shift in the media narrative in response to McCain's constant lies and adver-sleazements, keeps up the hits on McCain's character with this scorcher from spokesperson Bill Burton:

"We will take no lectures from John McCain who is cynically running the sleaziest and least honorable campaign in modern Presidential campaign history. His discredited ads with disgusting lies are running all over the country today. He runs a campaign not worthy of the office he is seeking."

The statement is a response to an earlier statement from the McCain campaign decrying Obama's "scathing personal attacks," a reference to the Obama camp's hit on McCain's integrity in a statement late yesterday.

Clearly, the battle for independents will be fought out on this new "character" turf. During the primary the Obama campaign fought out the "character" battle with great skill, managing to criticize Hillary's character relentlessly without Obama appearing to be dragged down from his "new politics" pedestal.

Fighting this battle with McCain, however, could prove tougher. McCain has been described by the press for years and years as a pure-hearted and apolitical maverick who would never stoop to gutter political tactics.

Little by little, the coverage of McCain is changing. But will incrementally tougher media coverage of McCain really matter? The McCain forces clearly have decided it won't. So the question becomes, When does this line of attack on McCain's integrity and tactics start showing up in ads, as it did during the Dem primary? Should it?

If the Obama campaign is to strip away the residual "clean" image that the years of media puffery have calcified around McCain -- and reveal McCain for what he's truly become -- will concerted paid media be necessary?

Obama Cancels SNL Appearance, Scales Back Campaigning Due To Ike
The Obama campaign has seriously downsized its campaign appearances for today in recognition of Hurricane Ike, most notably canceling the nominee's scheduled appearance on Saturday Night Live. Obama held a campaign event this morning in Manchester, New Hampshire, but Joe Biden did not also appear as originally intended.

Palin To Do Solo Rally Today
Sarah Palin will be campaigning today in Carson City, Nevada, for her first swing-state campaign event without John McCain himself by her side, scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. ET. It's a good bet that Palin by herself will get a bigger and more enthusiastic crowd than McCain himself has gotten at his own solo events.

Poll: McCain Backers Now More Enthusiastic Than Obama's
Here's a very interesting number from the new Newsweek poll: Overall, the race is tied 46%-46%, but it's now John McCain's voters who are stronger in their support than Barack Obama's -- a reversal of what we've seen throughout the rest of the cycle. Seventy-one percent of McCain's voters support him strongly, edging out Obama's 67% strong support, compared to 39% strong support for McCain and 61% for Obama from two months ago.

Boston Globe: Palin Really A Big Spender, Tax-Hiker
The Boston Globe reports that contrary to the McCain campaign's manufactured image of Sarah Palin as a fiscal conservative, state government spending has in fact grown by billions of dollars during her short tenure. Thanks to skyrocketing government oil revenues -- helped by Palin's increase in taxes on oil producers -- the size of the state budget has now grown by 30% over the last two fiscal years.

McCain Campaign Admits Palin Didn't Actually Visit Iraq Or Ireland
The Boston Globe has also reported that Sarah Palin did not actually visit Iraq or Ireland, as the McCain campaign previously maintained. When questioned further, McCain campaign aides admitted that Palin only visited troops in Kuwait and did not cross the Iraqi border, and her "travel" to Ireland consisted of a refueling stop.

Poll: McCain Narrowly Ahead In Nevada
A new Rasmussen poll of Nevada gives John McCain a 49%-46% lead in this perennial swing state, within the ±4% margin of error. This result is essentially the same as McCain's 48%-45% lead from a month ago.

Greenspan Critical Of McCain's Tax Plans
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a lifelong Republican and close associate of Ayn Rand, told Bloomberg that John McCain's proposed $3.3 trillion in tax cuts should only be done if they're accompanied by corresponding budget cuts. "I'm not in favor of financing tax cuts with borrowed money," Greenspan said.

A fun pattern has emerged that we don't see too often in politics -- the lies from the McCain-Palin campaign are now being called out as they are told live on the air. Just check out the reception that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) received today on MSNBC:

"You know I think the proof, the proof is in the pudding," Cantor said confidently. "And the fact is, Sarah Palin when she was governor of Alaska, rejected the moneys that came from Washington to construct the Bridge To Nowhere."

He then faced a now-predictable grilling from Norah O'Donnell, who pointed out the truth that Palin did not reject the money at all -- she kept it and used it for other projects.

In the newest installment of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin, airing tonight, she was pressed to explain her frequent claim that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere," and appeared to concede that, well, she hadn't quite said that...

Palin doesn't contest Gibson's version of events: That she favored the bridge even when Congress pulled the plug on it and after it became apparent that the state would have to foot the bill for any new costs. The key moment comes where Palin, after getting pressed, seems to make a concession of sorts, saying she was "for infrastructure being built in the state."

Palin added that "it's not inappropriate for a mayor or for a governor" to try to get "a share of the federal budget for infrastructure."

Of course it isn't! As she says, of course a mayor or governor is going to want to tap the Federal budget for money for local infrastructure buildup, and of course members of Congress will try to get it done, too.

But that isn't the issue. It's very easy to get distracted here, but again, the rub is Palin's frequent claim that she said "thanks, but no thanks" to Federal help for the big local project. The problem is her and McCain's latter-day effort to portray her as having been some kind of Joan of Arc of pork-slayers.

The down-ticket races are following the lead of the presidential race -- and getting dirtier and dirtier by the day. Here are the latest developments:

New Coleman Ad: Al Franken Is A Foul-Mouthed Clown
Wow, check out this new attack ad from Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), going after Al Franken's history of using curse words in public. "I'm Norm Coleman, and I approved this message because I thought it was important for you to see it," Coleman says somberly:

"How f______ shameless these people are," Franken says, in video from 2003 with bleeping added to cover up the curse words. "These people are so f______ shameless!"

Late Update: Franken spokeswoman Colleen Murray gave us this comment on the ad: "Norm Coleman says he wants you to see this because what he doesn't want you to see is his record of supporting George Bush nearly 90 percent of the time, selling out to the special interests, and ignoring Minnesota's middle class."

Franken Ad: Coleman Is With Bush On Social Security
Al Franken has this new serious ad on the subject of Social Security, tying Coleman to the very unpopular George W. Bush's proposal to privatize Social Security, and tracing his own concern for the issue to his wife having lived off survivor's benefits as a child when her father died:

Good Government Group Runs Ad Against Stevens -- And Not About Indictment
Campaign Money Watch, a pro-campaign reform group, is playing the considerable sum of $150,000 to run this ad against Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), interestingly avoiding the subject of his indictment and going after his more mundane links to special interests:

Campaign Money Watch Director David Donnelly told us that economic issues like health care are top concerns for Alaskans, and it's important to look beyond just Stevens' more spectacular scandals: "The scandal in politics is not just what is illegal, but what is legally permitted everyday.

Dem Congressman: My Opponent Hurt The District After I Beat Him In '06
Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN) is making a serious charge against his opponent, former Congressman Mike Sodrel: That after Hill defeated Sodrel in 2006, Sodrel closed his offices early and made a smooth transition impossible for constituent services cases. In response, Sodrel's campaign has responded that the timing of his office closure was fully within the bounds of federal guidelines.

Dems Pick Replacement Candidate For the Late U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones
In Ohio's 11th Congressional District, Warrensville Heights Mayor Marcia Fudge will replace the late U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones on the Nov. 4 ballot. A heavily democratic district, Tubbs Jones won 83% of the vote in 2006 and ran unopposed in 2004, so Fudge is effectively on her way to the House.

Poll: Dem Leads For Missouri Governor
A new Rasmussen poll shows Democrats in a very strong position to pick up the open gubernatorial seat in Missouri, currently held by Republican Matt Blunt. Democratic state Attorney General Jay Nixon leads Republican Congressman Kenny Hulshof by a margin of 54%-39%

Poll: Republican Leads For Washington State Governor
A separate Rasmussen poll gives the Republican candidate the lead in the race for governor of Washington state. Former stat Sen. Dino Rossi has a 52%-46% lead over incumbent Democrat Christine Gregoire, who very narrowly won a disputed election result against Rossi back in 2004.

Here's something that could complicate the McCain-Palin reform message a bit: It turns out that McCain's national finance co-chair, Wayne Berman, is a paid lobbyist, and has been one for years, for two of the oil companies that are at the center of the sex, drugs and oil scandal enveloping the Interior Department.

One of McCain's high-ranking campaign officials also lobbied for the companies for years -- during time periods when the scandal has unfolded -- up until he joined the McCain campaign in the spring.

The lobbyists themselves aren't tied to the scandal in any way, and their activity on the companies' behalf doesn't implicate McCain, either. But it's legit to ask why it is that a campaign that proclaims that it's about reform is taking advice and/or money from lobbyists who were getting paid by companies involved in the scandal, one of whom is still collecting money from them.

Berman, who's McCain's national finance co-chair and one of the Arizona Senator's leading bundlers, is a lobbyist with Ogilvy Government Relations, which has been paid millions of dollars for lobbying by the Chevron and Hess corporations, according to disclosure forms. The second official, John Green, who is McCain's chief liaison to Congress, also was with Ogilvy and worked on those same contracts until joining the campaign.

Chevron and Hess are involved in what is arguably the most sordid scandal in Washington right now.

Read more »

The Obama camp has just unleashed one of its toughest hits on McCain's character yet, signaling a newly aggressive effort to hammer McCain's supposed honor and integrity over the lies and adver-sleazements that have come to dominate his campaign.

An Obama spokesperson just blasted out a statement comparing McCain's current campaign to the infamously despicable 2000 campaign run against him in South Carolina -- true fighting words -- and adding that McCain "would rather lose his integrity than lose an election."

The broadside comes in response to McCain's rather astonishing appearance today on The View, where he personally faulted Obama for using the common phrase "lipstick on a pig."...

Obama "chooses his words very carefully," McCain said. "He shouldn't have said it."

McCain, when confronted by his hostesses about the fact that he too used the phrase to describe Hillary's health plan, said he'd merely been talking about her plan. Obama was talking about McCain's policies when he used the phrase.

Here's the full response from Obama spokesperson Hari Sevugan:

Today on "The View," John McCain defended his campaign's latest ad campaign, which has been debunked repeatedly as both false and sleazy. In running the sleaziest campaign since South Carolina in 2000 and standing by completely debunked lies on national television, it's clear that John McCain would rather lose his integrity than lose an election.

I guess this must be that new sharper tone the Obama campaign has been promising.

We tend to shy away from posting Web vids. But this one's worth a look, because it's a pretty powerful effort to use Sarah Palin's Bush Doctrine gaffe to frame her experience deficit in starkly emotional terms.

The message is that we should be afraid, very, very afraid, of the specter of Palin as commander-in-chief...

The video is the work of the National Security Network, the progressive think tank started by former Bush counter-terrorism official Rand Beers.

It features all the trappings of a GOP fearmongering ad, complete with visuals of missiles and audio of a scary heartbeat. If those 527s ever do gear up on the Dem side, this is the sort of stuff we'll probably be seeing more of.

Since you might have missed them, I just wanted to make sure everyone saw Josh's update on the commenting and blogging issues we've been having and my update on the new community tools we'll be launching in the next month or so.

Thanks for your patience, and let us know if we're missing anything.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and the state GOP's apparent efforts to rig this year's big Senate race have hit a bump in the road, with the state Dems winning a victory today in court -- though it may prove to be only temporary.

Read more »

Another national poll has found McCain edging into a small lead over Obama, a potential sign that his bounce could have some staying power.

The new Associated Press-GfK poll finds McCain leading Obama 48%-44% among likely voters. Notably, it finds that McCain has had some success beating back the McSame strategy of tying him to Bush:

Half say they believe the Arizona senator would chart a different path from Bush, including a slight majority of independents, a pivotal group of voters.

Other polls have found that majorities think McCain would represent a continuation of Bush's policies. There's some potentially good stuff in the poll for Obama, too: He's doing as well as John Kerry did with white voters and still holds an enthusiasm edge.

Separately, today's Gallup tracking poll checks in with McCain ahead, 48%-45%, a three point lead that's down from the five point lead he enjoyed for a few days, suggesting Obama may be climbing back.

Factcheck.org got a lot of people going today by saying they'd caught John McCain running an attack ad in Colorado on 9/11, in violation of the so-called "truce" between the two campaigns.

But Evan Tracey, who tracks national ad buys for the Campaign Media Analysis Group, says No Dice. He tells me his data shows that the ad ran on Sept. 10th, but not on the 11th.

Of course, the notion that there was really any kind of truce to begin with is a silly construct, as any campaign professional knows full well.

There's a spirited debate going on this morning over whether it matters that Sarah Palin betrayed a clear lack of knowledge of the Bush Doctrine during last night's ABC News interview.

Richard Starr of The Weekly Standard (via Ben Smith) suggests it wasn't a big deal because the Bush Doctrine has no universally acknowledged single meaning.

But Joe Klein counters that it shows that "this woman clearly doesn't know what she's talking about." Matthew Yglesias wonders whether John McCain even bothered talking to Palin about her foreign policy views before picking her as back-up commander-in-chief. And James Fallows points out that it betrays a minimal to non-existent interest in world affairs.

Here's my take. The issue here isn't just that Palin didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was. It's that she didn't appear to comprehend the notion that there's such a thing as foreign policy doctrine at all.

The key exchange occurred when Charlie Gibson asked her what she interpreted the Bush Doctrine to be, and she replied, "his world view, you mean?"

Clearly, Palin didn't grasp what Gibson meant by the word "doctrine" as used in a foreign policy context. She didn't grasp that he was probing her on the question of overarching foreign policy vision -- what set of intellectual guidelines should govern America's conduct in the world and define how we view one of the central moral challenges of our time: Deciding on what constitutes proper use of our overwhelming military power abroad.

This was driven home when Gibson defined the Bush Doctrine for her and Palin responded not with any kind of discussion of the doctrine itself but with boilerplate about Bush's hunt for terrorists.

Does Palin even know that competing foreign policy visions or doctrines exist and that the clash between them is one of the key things this election is all about? Does she even know that articulating and implementing such a vision is, you know, part of what a presidential administration does? Sure doesn't look like it.

Welcome to our newest feature here at Election Central -- a roundup of the latest news on a lot of those important down-ballot races.

The presidential race is obviously the biggest thing out there, but all across the country there are a lot of important elections going on that will collectively have an enormous effect on the agenda this country pursues and how effectively the next president will be able to govern.

In these roundups we hope to give you an idea of the big picture going on in those races -- not to mention the individual races themselves in all their quirky, dramatic and often brutally negative glory.

Look for the roundup twice every weekday, one at roughly 11 a.m. ET and one at 6 p.m. ET.

And without further ado...

New Dem Ad Against Coleman: Forget Hockey, We Want Jobs
The DSCC is running this new ad against Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), who has been running humorous ads boasting about how he brought professional hockey back to the state. "I wish someone would bring the economy back," one woman says in the ad:

Dem Ad Against Sununu: "He Doesn't Even See Us"
Here's the DSCC's new ad against the very vulnerable Sen. John Sununu (R-NH), casting him as out of touch on the economy:

GOP Senator To Skip Debate, Opponent Will Speak Alone
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR), who is in a competitive race for re-election in this blue state, will be skipping a debate scheduled for October 17 at the City Club of Portland. Instead, Democratic state House Speaker Jeff Merkley will stand alone and take questions from state journalists.

Smith Taking Heat On Illegal Immigration Story
Gordon Smith is also facing tough questions due to a story in the liberal paper Willamette Week that alleges his company, Smith Frozen Foods, employs illegal aliens. Smith appeared this week on the Lars Larson radio show, telling the state's premier right-wing talker that it's all a media hatchet-job, but Larson wasn't impressed and later told The Oregonian, "They've nailed him pretty well."

Poll: Dem Incumbent Up In Big Indiana House Race
A new SurveyUSA poll has Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN) ahead of Republican Mike Sodrel by a solid 50%-39% margin. This is the fourth consecutive time these two have run against each other -- Hill narrowly won in 2002, Sodrel then won in 2004, and Hill came back to defeat Sodrel in 2006.

Dem House Candidate Blasts Idaho's Sali For Staffers Doing Campaign Work
Walt Minnick, the Dem nominee running against controversial Rep. Bill Sali (R-ID), has unveiled a new pledgea in his quest to win in a deep-red district: That if elected, he will forbid or severely limit his staffers from working on his campaign. At least two of Sali's Congressional staffers do volunteer work on his campaign, saving him the campaign expense of hiring people to work full-time.

GOP Senators Still Not Paying Up To NRSC
The Senate GOP's campaign committee is still having big problems getting its members to donate sufficiently, and they've had to roll back or cancel ad reservations in important states like New Mexico. Said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who has nearly doubled his personal quota while others have stalled: "The Democrats want it more than we do."

The McCain campaign's new ad -- its latest exercise in adver-sleazing -- accuses the Obama forces of having "dismissed" Sarah Palin as "good looking."

But as usual, the attack is bogus and hypocritical. Here's McCain himself praising Obama's looks on David Letterman's show in March:

Letterman: Here's what we REALLY want, is presidential campaign gossip and dirt and backstabbin'. And the Democrats now are in a position where they could come in and really make hay and all of a sudden, you have a likable young newcomer, Barack Obama ...

McCain: He's a very attractive young man.

Letterman: You have Hillary Clinton. (laughter)

McCain: A very attractive young WOMAN. (laughter)

The spirit of McCain's description of Obama here is identical to the one the McCain campaign is pretending to be outraged about -- Joe Biden's reference back in August to Palin as "good-looking."

Oh, and McCain also "dismissed" Hillary as attractive, to boot!

Will any Republican -- anywhere -- condemn the sleaze that the McCain campaign is cranking out on a now-daily basis?

The McCain campaign issued a new ad today that runs through the ways that Obama has supposedly lashed out at Sarah Palin. It actually concludes with a woman saying, in a tone of a matron chiding an uppity black servant, "how disrespectful."

The McCain camp has also released an ad suggesting that Obama is a predator and Palin is her prey. And it launched a spot pairing shots of a leering Obama with talk about sex and children.

Any Republicans out there have a problem with this type of stuff?

WaPo: Palin Falsely Links Iraq And 9/11
The Washington Post reports that Sarah Palin appears to have publicly linked the Iraq War with 9/11, a long-discredited view. Palin told a brigade of Soldiers about to deploy to Iraq that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."

Obama In New Hampshire Today
Barack Obama is campaigning today in New Hampshire, where polls currently give him a narrow lead, with events in Dover and Concord. Joe Biden does not have any announced public events for today.

GOP Ticket Off The Trail Today, But On TV
John McCain is scheduled to appear today on The View and the Rachel Ray show. Sarah Palin is scheduled to do another interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson, which should be broadcast later tonight as part of a prime-time special.

Palin's New Lie: You Can't Prove I've Denied Man-Made Global Warming
In Sarah Palin's second interview with Charlie Gibson yesterday, she attempted to wiggle out of her recent statements denying man-made global warming. After Gibson asked her whether she's changed her position to be more in line with John McCain, she dared Gibson to "show me where I have ever said that there's absolute proof that nothing that man has ever conducted or engaged in has had any affect, or no affect, on climate change."

Alaska Author's Allegation: Palin Banned My Book
Reverend Howard Bess of Palmer, Alaska, has stepped forward to allege that Sarah Palin did get a book banned from the public library -- his own book, Pastor I Am Gay, which he said Palin's church was agitating to have removed from shelves. "Sarah brought pressure on the library about things she didn't like," Bess told the AP. "To believe that my book was not targeted in this is a joke."

Intrade Taking Bets On Biden Withdrawal
Intrade.com is now offering a contract on whether Joe Biden will withdraw from the vice-presidential race, in order to balance out the contract they opened for Sarah Palin after her family problems were first publicized. This begs an important question: Didn't Joe Biden already withdraw from the race?

With the race's final stretch set to be fought out on the rhetorical turf of who's promising real change, the Obama campaign is out two new ads that seek to refine and recapture his change message and further cast McCain as hidebound and out of touch with today's realities.

The first ad, a tough spot signaling a newly aggressive Obama campaign, batters McCain by recalling that he entered the Senate in 1982 -- "times have changed since then," the narrator notes -- and still can't use a computer:

The second features Obama himself directly addressing the camera and sharing his vision of real change...

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign is up with a new "celeb" sneer spot that says the Obama campaign "lashed out" at Sarah Palin and "dismissed her as good looking" because Obama's "star is fading."...

We don't have time to check this right now, but if memory serves, didn't Team McCain at some point dismiss Obama as good-looking? Rings a bell...

It looks like the Associated Press, which has generally had a serious pro-McCain and anti-Obama slant this cycle, has turned on their former hero McCain in the face of mounting evidence that he's a shameless liar running a dirty campaign.

I was looking through TPM's AP wire feed tonight, and here are just three stories I found:

Analysis: McCain's Claims Skirt Facts, Test Voters

Palin Tries To Defend Qualifications In Interview

Palin's Town Billed Rape Victims To Get Evidence

As a special bonus, here's the lead sentence from the analysis piece: "The 'Straight Talk Express' has detoured into doublespeak."

Et tu, Fournier?

Forget war with Russia. The real news from Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin is this stretch, where she is clearly clueless about what the Bush Doctrine is...

"In what respect, Charlie?"

This performance is the kind of thing that could have a serious impact on the race, unless everyone politely agrees to ignore it.

More excerpts from Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin are now available, and this excerpt, in which Palin says that war with Russia would "perhaps" be necessary should that country invade a NATO-admitted Georgia, is the one that's getting all the attention:

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

It's worth keeping in mind that it's in ABC News' interests to hype the heck out of the Palin-wants-war-with-Russia angle. And Palin is clearly discussing what would be an obligation under NATO.

Still, this isn't to say that the larger McCain/neocon program of aggressively advocating for Georgia to be admitted to NATO -- as Palin does here, with a rather frightening amount of gusto, damn the consequences -- isn't severely problematic.

The first round of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin has just been posted over at ABC's site, and as expected, it's pretty dispiriting stuff:

GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"

PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, we'll be ready. I'm ready.

GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"

PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.

GIBSON: Didn't that take some hubris?

PALIN: I -- I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink. So I didn't blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.

Wretched. The rest here.

One of the McCain campaign's chief assaults on Barack Obama is that McCain is insisting that the troops return only after "victory" in Iraq, while Obama refuses to use that word -- a position the McCain forces describe as tantamount to wanting to lose.

But it turns out that none other than General Petraeus may now be refusing to use the word "victory," too.

In an interview with the BBC, Petraeus said he didn't know if he could promise "victory," said he didn't know if he would ever even use that word, and suggested that using it is irresponsible. Here's the key exchange:

Q: Do you think you will ever use the word "victory"?

Petraeus: I don't know that I will. I think that all of us at different times have recognized the need for real restraint in our assessments, in our pronouncements, if you will. And we have tried to be very brutally honest and forthright in what we have provided to Congress, to the press, and to ourselves.

A bit later, Petraeus elaborated:

"This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade...it's not war with a simple slogan."

This seems a bit at odds with McCain's frequent assertion that our goal should be for our troops to come home with "victory" and "honor." What's more, the McCain forces have directly faulted Obama for refusing to use the word "victory." In her convention speech, Sarah Palin said:

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word `victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign."

This is not to suggest that Obama and Petraeus are in agreement on Iraq. Rather, the point is that the simple-minded bromides and attacks coming from McCain and Palin are at odds with the analysis offered by Petraeus himself.

Late Update: Here's the video:

The McCain campaign confirms to me that multiple Sarah Palin interviews are being negotiated with various media outlets -- and that the interviews are set to start early next week.

The McCain campaign confirmed the plans in response to our request for clarification of McCain's quotes in an interview with a Maine news outlet, in which he said: "The fact is that she's coming out in the next couple of days with interviews with numerous people."

A McCain campaign aide declined to offer specifics, but said the interviews were set to begin early in the week, after Palin's return from Alaska. Asked if she were confining her interviews to conservative outlets, the aide said no -- and added a little dig at McCain's leading media nemesis.

"She's going to be doing all kinds of media, though I doubt MSNBC will appear on the schedule," the aide said.

It's unclear yet, obviously, whether Palin has any immediate plans to submit to questioning from the nation's top tier political reporters. But she is going to be appearing in some not-entirely-friendly venues.

Bill Clinton just wrapped up lunch with Barack Obama, and in a quick back-and-forth with reporters, revealed that he'd be doing lots of campaigning for Obama and predicted a sizable Obama win. From the pool report:

Q: [Bill is asked whether he'll go on the campaign trail for Obama.]

Bill: "I'm going out there as soon as my global initiative is over."

Obama: "We're putting him to work."

Q: Will you be out frequently?

Bill: "I've agreed to do a substantial number of things. Whatever I'm asked to do."

Q: What do you think of the state of the race?

Bill: "I predict that Sen. Obama will win and win handily."

Obama: "There you go. You can take it from the President of the United States. He knows a little something about politics."

In a passing moment in an interview with a Maine reporter, John McCain appeared to make a bit of news: He seemed to say, perhaps inadvertently, that Palin is doing "numerous" interviews in the next few days.

Asked by the reporter why Palin was ducking the media, McCain said...

"The fact is that she's coming out in the next couple of days with interviews with numerous people. She's very well versed at that, she's been a governor...She'll be doing a lot of conversations with the media, but we wanted to touch base with the American people first."

Anyone know what interviews McCain is talking about? The only one I've heard about is the one with ABC's Charlie Gibson this week. Palin isn't sitting for an interview as part of a CNN special about her that's airing on Saturday. What interviews is McCain referring to?

We've got a request for clarification in to the McCain campaign, and we'll keep you posted.

Not that you needed it, but here's more on the extraordinary lengths the McCain campaign is going to in order to protect Sarah Palin from genuine media scrutiny.

This coming Saturday night, CNN is running two big programs by the network's special investigations unit, one on each of the vice-presidential candidates, a network spokesperson says. Only one of the two is getting interviewed. Biden, yes; Palin, no.

This is from CNN's description of the Biden special, sent over by the spokesperson:

CNN special investigations unit correspondent Abbie Boudreau interviews the candidate who would be VP, his confidants, family members and challengers to report on the events that have shaped the life and career of Joe Biden.

In Biden's case, the "candidate who would be VP" sat for an interview. Meanwhile, this is from CNN's description of the Palin special:

CNN special investigations unit correspondent Drew Griffin interviews family members, friends, colleagues and critics in reports from Alaska on the events that have shaped the life and rise of Sarah Palin.

No Palin, obviously. What's particularly interesting here is that CNN got access to her family members and friends, which suggests that the McCain campaign and/or Palin were willing to cooperate all the way up to the point where she would have to answer a single question. It was okay to allow her family members to face questioning. Just not her.

Sincere apologies in advance for using this cliche, but it does apply: If Palin can't face a CNN reporter, how can she stand up to the porkers in Congress, not to say Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Al Qaeda?

A new poll suggests that John McCain's bounce may have helped his numbers in the Western swing state of Colorado -- but he's still narrowly trailing Barack Obama, another sign that the bounce hasn't significantly changed the race in many of the key states.

The numbers from Public Policy Polling (D): Obama 48%, McCain 47%, within the ±3.2% margin of error. A month ago, Obama led by a 48%-44% margin in PPP's survey.

This comes after a Rasmussen poll yesterday of another Western state, New Mexico, where McCain took a 49%-47% edge after having trailed by four points a few weeks ago.

One interesting number in the new Colorado poll is that the selection of Sarah Palin doesn't seem to have moved women voters there. Obama leads among women by a 51%-43% margin, similar to his 49%-42% advantage a month ago. The real movement has been among men -- the two were tied 47%-47% a month ago, but now McCain has moved into a 50%-43% lead.

If you would, take a minute to watch this video of a Democratic contributor to CNN demonstrating what seems like an effective way of going on the offensive against the GOP on national security.

The speaker is Democratic National Committeeman Robert Zimmerman, who might not be as well known as some high-profile on-air analyst types but is a CNN regular who frequently gets feisty with Republicans...

The GOPer is Bay Buchanan, who opens by saying that John McCain "owns" national security as an issue. Zimmerman counters by pointing out the extent to which the entire debate over Iraq has shifted towards Obama.

"You now see Prime Minister Maliki supporting the time line of Obama and President Bush," Zimmerman says, adding: "The only one not calling for a time line out of Iraq is John McCain."

That last line strikes me as pithy and attention-grabbing, the sort of formulation that other Dem surrogates might employ more often: It makes the case that Obama has heavily impacted the war debate while simultaneously isolating McCain and painting him as too stubborn to leave his corner.

Late Update: Let's scratch my previous Bush formulation. A commenter below suggests something better: "Bush has finally adopted Obama's position. Now the only one who doesn't want to leave Iraq is John McCain."

This story in The Huffington Post got only a bit of attention yesterday, but it deserves a lot more. It appears that Sarah Palin's now-infamous decision to put the state-owned jet plane on eBay might not even have been her idea:

What is left unmentioned is that Palin didn't come up with the idea to sell the plane using eBay in the first place. Moreover, because of the unique purchasing terms of the aircraft -- which required the state to make payments amounting to $20,000 per month even if the jet wasn't in use -- the decision not to hire a broker to help sell the property appears in hindsight to have been a costly mistake.

Before the Alaska Republican took office, it was something of a standard operating procedure for the state to try to sell such big-ticket items using the online auction site. Officials had been doing it since at least 2003, three years before Palin became governor.

"It was the practice of the state to dispose of items such as this via eBay prior to listing the jet," Vern Jones, Alaska's Chief Procurement Officer, acknowledged on Tuesday.

This seems pretty damn important. The eBay tale is a standard line in Palin's stump speech -- it's a pithy formulation that is key to the McCain-Palin ticket's claim to being a pair of reformist warriors.

Given that Palin's eBay idea doesn't even appear to have been an original one, you'd think she should take the same sort of media heat for it that she's taken on the Bridge to Nowhere fib.

Now that the news has broken that Sarah Palin requested an earmark for studying the DNA of harbor seals, it seems worth recalling this:

That's right: During the GOP primary, in the fall of last year, none other than John McCain ran an ad attacking both the Bridge to Nowhere, which Palin of course favored, and earmarks for studying the DNA of animals, which Palin requested. Now McCain is busy remaking Palin as the Joan of Arc of anti-earmarks warriors.

Thanks to TPM Reader SA for the find.

Polls: Obama Ahead In Ohio And Pennsylvania, Behind In Florida
In a sign that John McCain's convention bounce hasn't really changed the race in the key swing states, a new set of Quinnipiac polls shows Barack Obama ahead in the big swing states of Ohio and Pennsylvania, while McCain is ahead in Florida. The numbers: Obama is up 49%-44% in Ohio and 48%-45% in Pennsylvania, and McCain is ahead 50%-43% in Florida.

Obama And McCain To Meet Today To Commemorate 9/11
Barack Obama and John McCain will be putting politics aside for the most part today, with a joint appearance at Ground Zero in New York to commemorate the 9/11 attacks. Then at 8 p.m. ET tonight, they'll participate in a candidate's forum to discuss the subject of national service and how Americans can best serve their country.

Biden In Ohio, Palin Back In Alaska
Joe Biden is campaigning today in Parma, Ohio, where he'll hold a forum with first responders scheduled for 11 a.m. ET. Sarah Palin has arrived back home in Alaska, and is set to do the first of her scheduled interviews with ABC's Charlie Gibson.

Obama: Palin Is The Lipstick -- McCain's Policies Are The Pig
Barack Obama responded on the David Letterman show yesterday to the accusation that he called Sarah Palin a pig. "Technically, had I meant it this way she would be the lipstick, you see. The failed policies of John McCain would be the pig," Obama said to laughter from the audience. "Just following the logic of this illogical situation."

Palin's ABC Special To Be More Barbara Walters Style
Details have emerged on Sarah Palin's upcoming interview with ABC News, and it looks like it will be more of a celebrity interview than a serious political discussion. Palin will get her own prime-time special including a biography segment, interviews with Charlie Gibson in various Alaska settings, and a post-interview panel discussion.

McCain To Hold More Joints Events With Palin
John McCain is planning to have more and more of his rallies with Sarah Palin. Along with benefit of McCain hitching himself to Palin's newfound star-power, the Associated Press points out that this has another advantage: "McCain and Palin traveling together limits her exposure to reporters and gives McCain's top aides more control of her."

Hillary defended Obama from the GOP lipstick brigade at a D.C. news conference today, saying that Obama's comment was "in no way meant as an affront" and accusing McCain's campaign of trying to "divert attention away from challenges facing Americans."

But Hillary, apparently, refused to attack or criticize Palin...

Asked about Palin and her candidacy, Clinton responded only that the campaign should be about the issues. "What I see as critical in this election ... are the differences over issues." She added, "What happens in people's lives is what really counts... That's what it should be about."

A quick word on this. Lots of you have written in to ask where Hillary is or why Hillary hasn't savaged Palin or why she hasn't been more visible at this moment.

Here's the deal. The Obama campaign is in the driver's seat on this kind of stuff. I'm told reliably by people in both the Obama and Clinton camps that there were discussions this weekend -- in advance of Hillary's appearance on Monday -- on how to proceed. Both Obama and Hillary advisers were in agreement that having Hillary personally attack Palin would result in a distraction and media circus that would create more problems than it would solve and would take the focus off McCain and the issues.

I haven't found any evidence yet that Obama's people wanted any more from Hillary on the Palin front than she's delivered. Whatever you think of this conclusion, these things get discussed and hashed out by both camps behind the scenes, and they try to agree on a course of action beforehand. The notion that Hillary would or should go out on her own and attack Palin is just at odds with how these things work.

Keeping track of all the falsehoods -- okay, "half-truths" -- coming from Palin is getting a bit dizzying. On the trail today in Virginia, Palin appeared to suggest that McCain would never, ever discuss his war service...

"Since my own running mate won't say this on his own behalf, I'm gonna have to say it for him," Palin said. "There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you. That man is John McCain."

Coming only days after McCain's convention speech, with its emphasis on his "scars," you really have to hold the reporters covering the event -- not to say the audience members themselves -- in very low regard if you're gonna try to slip one like this past them.

A new Rasmussen poll of New Mexico suggests that John McCain's national bounce has done him some good here -- for the first time, Rasmussen puts McCain ahead in this swing state.

The numbers: McCain 49%, Obama 47%, within the ±4% margin of error. Three weeks ago, Obama had a 48%-44% lead. In 2004, George W. Bush carried this state by a one-point margin.

The poll gives the two candidates very similar favorable/unfavorable ratings. Obama is at 55% favorable and 44% unfavorable, and McCain at 52%-45%, further evidence that this state will be hotly contested all the way to November.

Meanwhile, Dem Congressman Tom Udall has a 51%-44% lead over Republican Congressman Steve Pearce for the open GOP-held Senate seat, narrower than previous margins but still showing a solid advantage for the Dems.

A new set of CNN battleground state polls, all conducted in the days after the Republican convention wrapped up, suggests the presidential race remains close in four key states despite John McCain's national bounce:

• In Michigan, which voted for John Kerry by three points in 2004, Barack Obama is ahead 51%-45%.

• In Missouri, which George W. Bush carried by seven points in 2004, John McCain currently has a 50%-45% lead.

• In New Hampshire, which went to Kerry by a very narrow one-point margin, Obama is up 51%-45%.

• In Virginia, which Bush carried by eight points but has also become much bluer in the last four years, McCain has a lead of 50%-46%.

Overall, Dems can be cautiously optimistic about these numbers. McCain has been riding a post-convention bounce, but has only narrow leads in just two of the four state. And the numbers aren't wildly different from the pre-convention surveys from other firms, suggesting that the bounce may not have affected these particular areas all that much.

The polls for Michigan, Missouri and New Hampshire all have a margin of error of ±3%, while the margin in Virginia is ±3.5%

What if Obama said...

"It's hardly surprising that Republicans imagine my lipstick-on-a-pig remark was a reference to Sarah Palin. After all, with her as Governor, Alaska has got one heck of a pork problem."

Just a thought...

Late Update: I almost forgot to credit the person who, you know, came up with this gag, TPM intern Joshua Sherman...

CBS News has waded into the back-and-forth of the presidential race, rapping John McCain's use of Katie Couric in a new Web ad released today as "misleading."

In the ad, which hits Obama over the "lipstick" nonsense, Couric is made to look as if she's talking about Sarah Palin when she decries sexism in American life, but in fact it's a clip of her talking about Hillary.

Apparently Couric isn't pleased about being used as a stage prop in a fashion designed to falsely suggest that Couric is endorsing the McCain campaign's phony complaints about sexism. CBS spokesperson Leigh Farris emails over this statement:

"CBS News does not endorse any candidate in the Presidential race. Any use of CBS personnel in political advertising that suggests the contrary is misleading."

And Ben Smith reports that YouTube has taken down the original ad at CBS's request.

Oh, the layers upon layers of irony...

The McCain campaign may be decrying Obama's use of the "lipstick on a pig" line, but it turns out that a woman who wrote a book called Lipstick on a Pig actually worked as a flack for none other than McCain.

Even better, that same flack, who worked for McCain on his 1986 Senate race, defended McCain against charges that he'd told a now-infamous joke about a woman who was raped by a gorilla, and enjoyed it.

Torie Clarke, who is better known as a one-time spokesperson for Donald Rumsfeld, published Lipstick on a Pig, a book about political flacking, in 2006.

During McCain's 1986 Senate race, McCain was hit with allegations from women's groups in Arizona that he'd told this knee-slapper (as quoted at the time by the Tucson Citizen)...

"Did you hear the one about the woman who is attacked on the street by a gorilla, beaten senseless, raped repeatedly and left to die? When she finally regains consciousness and tries to speak, her doctor leans over to hear her sigh contently and to feebly ask, 'Where is that marvelous ape?'"

McCain was defended at the time by none other than the future author of Lipstick on a Pig. Also from the Tucson Citizen in 1986:

McCain press aide Clarke countered, "John does not recollect telling that joke ... And he has a very good record on women's issues."

Clarke said she has never heard Mccain tell the "joke" in three years of listening to "literally thousands" of his speeches.

The reporter for the Citizen at the time recently vouched for the story, telling The Huffington Post that multiple women at the time told her that they'd heard the joke.

As noted below, the McCain campaign has a new ad out designed to portray Obama as a predator and Sarah Palin as prey by pointing to 30 opposition researchers that the Obama team allegedly sent to Alaska to savage her.

Of course, the article that the ad references doesn't say Obama sent them -- it actually says Democrats sent them.

But the Democratic National Committee's chief of research, Mike Gehrke, tells me that the DNC hasn't sent a single researcher to Alaska. "Zero," Gehrke says.

Gehrke also offered this little gem:

"If I had 30 researchers, they'd be busy trying to keep track of McCain's houses."

Late Update: TPMmuckraker has more.

McCain is up with a new ad that depicts Obama's oppo-researchers as hungry wolves in the hunt for Sarah Palin -- an effort to depict Palin as victim and Obama as predator:

The ad, as usual, is full of distortions and falsehoods. The narrator's claim of "completely false" attacks on Palin comes from a FactCheck.org examination of Internet rumors about Palin, having absolutely nothing to do with Obama. And the Wall St. Journal report of opposition researches headed to Alaska -- as if researching your opponent were wrong -- was a reference to Democratic operatives, not the Obama campaign specifically.

Separately, those with extremely long memories will recall that four years ago, the Bush-Cheney campaign -- including current McCain adviser Steve Schmidt -- also used images of wolves in an ad sliming John Kerry. In that case, the wolves represented terrorists.

This time, however, the goal is not to portray Obama as weak a la Kerry, but as threatening. So the wolves are Obama's oppo-folks, out to savage Palin.

Thomas Frank has an interesting little scooplet: It appears that during her convention speech, Sarah Palin quoted an anonymous writer who, it turns out, once lamented that Franklin D. Roosevelt's would-be assassin hit the wrong man.

Here's what Palin said in her her speech:

A writer observed: "We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity." I know just the kind of people that writer had in mind when he praised Harry Truman. I grew up with those people. They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America...

The anonymous writer who penned these words, it turns out, is the right-wing columnist Westbrook Pegler.

Pegler also wrote that it was "regrettable that Giuseppe Zangara hit the wrong man when he shot at Roosevelt in Miami."

As Tom Frank says, there's no evidence that Palin "shares the trademark Pegler bloodlust." But perhaps it's more evidence of her political influences and leanings?

On the trail in Virginia just now, Obama answered the McCain "lipstick" attack, refusing to engage the central phony charge and using it to cast McCain as unwilling to discuss serious issues.

Obama also directly attacked the news media for turning the "controversy" into a major story. It's worth quoting his response at length:

Some of you may have -- I'm assuming you guys have heard this, watching the news. I'm talking about John McCain's economic politics, I say, "This is more of the same, you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig."

And suddenly they say, "Oh, you must be talking about the governor of Alaska."

[Laughter from audience]

See it would be funny, it would be funny except -- of course the news media all decided that that was the lead story yesterday. They'd much rather have the story -- this is the McCain campaign -- would much rather have the story about phony and foolish diversions than about the future.

This happens every election cycle. Every four years. This is what we do. We've got an energy crisis. We have an education system that is not working for too many of our children and making us less competitive. We have an economy that is creating hardship for families all across America. We've got two wars going on, veterans coming home not being cared for -- and this is what they want to talk about! this is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about.

You know who ends up losing at the end of the day? It's not the Democratic candidate, It's not the republican candidate. It's you, the American people. because then we go another year or another four years or another eight years without addressing the issues that matter to you. Enough.

I don't care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and swift-boat politics. Enough is enough.

As you know, the McCain campaign is pretending to be outraged by Barack Obama's use of the common phrase "lipstick on a pig," with McCain surrogates pretending that they believe that Obama was tacitly referring to Sarah Palin as a porker.

The McCain campaign even has a new Web ad (see video below) hitting Obama over the "pig" line.

As it turns out, however, McCain himself has used the same phrase not once, not twice, but at least three times.

The first one is the one that's gotten all the attention: McCain using the phrase last October to describe Hillary's health plan. But there are two more examples.

At a press conference on Iraq war strategy on February 1, 2007, McCain said (via Nexis):

"It gets down to whether you support what's being done in this new strategy or you don't. You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig in my view."

And according to National Public Radio, McCain said the phrase again that same day in a similar context (via Nexis):

"It's all about withdrawal or not withdrawal, okay? I mean that's what it's all about. You can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig."

Meanwhile, here's vid of McCain's web ad:

Meanwhile, Fox News is reporting that Obama is expected to address the lipstick "controversy" soon. I don't know if this is true, but if so, here's hoping that there's not a shred of defensiveness or apology in his remarks.

Here's hoping that Obama strips the lipstick off this pig mercilessly.

A new poll suggests that yesterday's SurveyUSA poll of North Carolina, which gave McCain a 20-point lead, might have been an outlier -- though a new poll this morning still shows him ahead there.

The new numbers from Public Policy Polling (D), which is based in North Carolina: McCain 48%, Obama 44%, with a ±3.9% margin of error. PPP's Tom Jensen immediately set to work on his own poll after he saw the North Carolina survey.

The key difference here is party identification. SurveyUSA's numbers had self-identified Dems making up 40% and GOPers at 41%, roughly in line with the 2004 exit poll. PPP's numbers have Dems at 49% and Republicans at 36%, seemingly consistent with an overall increase in Democratic registration and identification across the country over the last four years.

The only way to settle the question of which party ID breakdown is right is to wait for the actual voting.

AP Calls Out Falsehoods In McCain's New Ad
The Associated Press did a fact-check on the McCain campaign's new ad that claims Barack Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex before they can read. "But the legislation was not Obama's, it never became law and it would have required age-appropriate information in schools," the AP says, citing Obama's statements defining age-appropriate information as teaching children to avoid predators.

Obama In Virginia, And On Letterman
Barack Obama is campaigning this morning in Norfolk, Virginia, and will then be heading off to New York for an appearance on the David Letterman show. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is campaigning in Nashua, New Hampshire, trying to hold on to a state that voted narrowly for John Kerry in 2004 but where John McCain always been popular.

McCain And Palin In Virginia Today
John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning today in Fairfax, Virginia, a suburban area where the local Democratic shift has done a lot to turn this whole red state bluer and bluer. Later on, Palin will be flying home to Alaska for a homecoming rally.

Biden To Do Debate Prep With Jennifer Granholm
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm will be helping Joe Biden prepare for his debate with Sarah Palin, playing the role of Palin in their debate practice. Like Palin herself, Granholm is a female governor who overcame questions about inexperience in her own past campaigns.

Some Dems Worrying About McCain's Bump In The Polls
The Hill reports that some Congressional Democrats are worried about John McCain's bounce in the polls. "That's all people have talked about since we got back," said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri. "I received a phone call from an Obama fundraiser who said we're going to have to go back and revisit the strategy."

Palin Still Sticking To The Script
It's been a week and a half since Sarah Palin was picked to be John McCain's running mate, and she's still sticking to the script on the campaign trail. The Associated Press notes that Palin has only been repeating the same talking points from her convention speech, and has not taken any questions "until she's comfortable enough for a hand-picked interviewer later this week."

WaPo's Dionne: McCain Shamelessly Lying
More mainstream media figures are catching on to John McCain's campaign style. "This is not false naivete," E.J. Dionne writes for the Washington Post. "I am genuinely surprised that John McCain and his campaign keep throwing out false charges and making false claims without any qualms."

It looks like more than one prominent Georgia Republican likes to use the word "uppity" in regards to prominent African-Americans -- this time, it's the GOP nominee in one of the few House seats that Dems could possibly lose this year.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that Rick Goddard, a retired Air Force major general running against conservative Dem Congressman Jim Marshall, referred in a radio appearance to "a very uppity newscaster" who had a testy TV exchange with Newt Gingrich at the Republican Convention. This appeared to be a reference to MSNBC reporter Ron Allen, who is black.

The Goddard campaign didn't deny that he was discussing Ron Allen, telling the Journal-Constitution that Goddard "simply evoked a word -- that by definition -- described the reporter's demeanor as being superior, arrogant and presumptuous."

This comes after Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) told The Hill that he believed both Barack and Michelle Obama were "uppity," then denied that there was any racial connotation to the word.

The new NBC/Wall St. Journal poll suggest John McCain's bounce isn't as big as other polls have said, with Obama still holding on to a narrow lead.

The numbers: Obama 47%, McCain 46%, with a ±3.3% margin of error. About three weeks ago, Obama had a 45%-42% lead.

The poll confirms what other surveys have found, that the selection of Sarah Palin has helped McCain make inroads with women voters. Obama led by 14 points among women in the last poll, but now that lead is down to four points.

The poll also shows a boost in enthusiasm for McCain, with 34% of his backers being enthusiastic about him, with 44% satisfied and 22% picking him as the lesser of two evils. Three weeks ago his voters were at only 12% enthusiastic, 46% satisfied, and 41% lesser of two evils.

But Obama's supporters are still more jazzed up. His voters are 55% enthusiastic, 33% satisfied, and only 12% lesser of two evils.

The McCain campaign is up with a new ad attacking Obama on education that makes some rather strong insinuations about sex:

There's a lot to chew on here. But we want to focus on one particularly pernicious aspect of it. The ad shows a dreamy-looking Obama as it says:

Obama's one accomplishment? Legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read?

In a final moment of subtlety, the ad says Obama is "wrong for your family."

According to the McCain campaign's own email, the sex ed claim is based on Obama's support for a bill, in the Illinois state legislature, that said:

"Each class or course in comprehensive sex education offered in any of grades K through 12 shall include instruction on the prevention of sexually transmitted infections, including the prevention, transmission and spread of HIV."

As you can see, the McCain ad says that Obama was the one who pushed the "comprehensive sex education" measure. The Obama campaign has pointed out that the bill would simply add instruction on disease prevention to already existing Illinois sex-ed standards. But the McCain campaign cheerfully turned this into Obama's support for "learning about sex before learning to read."

And "civil" and "honorable" McCain approved that message.

Late Update: Obama spokesperson Bill Burton's response directly questions McCain's honor:

"It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls - a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn't define what honor was. Now we know why."

A new SurveyUSA poll suggests that Barack Obama's efforts to win this historically-red state might be hitting some bumps -- John McCain is now up 20 points.

The numbers: McCain 58%, Obama 38%. A month ago, McCain had a much slimmer lead of 49%-45%

On the one hand, this poll could just be an outlier, as other recent polls have shown the race to be closer. But on the other hand, this suggests the possibility that McCain's post-convention bounce could most clearly manifest itself by putting some of the red states where Obama had hoped to compete out of reach -- for the time being, at least.

In an unusual move, the McCain campaign has quietly started buying ad time on the national networks, a strategy that for the most part hasn't really been pursued on a large scale in presidential campaigns for at least two decades, a close follower of national ad buying tells me.

Since Friday, the first day after the GOP convention, the McCain campaign has purchased at least $500,000 worth of time on the national nets, with an eye towards advertising nationally during daytime TV shows, Evan Tracey, who tracks ad buying for the Campaign Media Analysis Group, confirms to me.

Among the shows McCain has bought time during, according to Tracey: The Price Is Right, Guiding Lights, and Days of Our Lives.

"It's really outside the norm," Tracey says of the McCain camp's buying. "Presidential campaigns have by and large skipped national programming for the last several cycles." Tracey points out that presidential campaigns haven't really invested heavily in national ad buying since the late 1980s.

There has been a bit of national network buying in this election -- during the Olympics, for instance -- but that has been the occasional exception.

The unusual ad spending also sheds a bit of light on McCain's demographic strategy. The buys during daytime TV suggest outreach to elderly and female voters, Tracey says, both of whom the McCain camp has aggressively targeted.

"Soap operas and game shows are a way to beef up the older and female demographics," Tracey says, adding that McCain advisers "know they need to get into these older populations that still watch daytime broadcast TV."

It's unclear how much the McCain camp intends to sink into national network buying going forward, or which particular spots will run there, but the half-mil McCain's people have already put down suggests the possibility that there's more to come.

This seems like a big deal: Is the GOP trying to confuse voters and rig the election against the Democratic candidate in a hotly-contested race for a plum Senate seat?

It seems that way to quite a few people in Mississippi -- because the candidates for this election have now been placed in obscurity at the very bottom of the physical ballot that voters will see on Election Day.

In a move that could very well bring on a lawsuit, the state elections board -- controlled by the GOP -- today put the special election for Senate underneath even races for county offices and school boards. This was despite the fact that state law seems to clearly require placing federal races at the top of the ballot.

Placing a race like this at the bottom of the ballot could cause many lower-information voters to overlook it. Democrats feel this decision will disproportionately affect poorer voters who tend to vote Democratic, and furthermore that this was the whole point.

A statement from Democratic candidate Ronnie Musgrove implied that a lawsuit could be on the way. "We will win this election no matter where the Secretary of State puts it on the ballot," said Musgrove's campaign manager. "But this is about the law and they don't get to make up their own laws."

Hillary is set to do what is likely to be her only high-dollar fundraiser for Obama before the election -- an intimate dinner in Manhattan where she's planning to raise at least $500,000 for the Illinois Senator's presidential run from some of the party's wealthiest donors.

The dinner will take place on September 22nd, at the Upper East Side home of her campaign's finance chairman, Hassan Nemazee, who is one of the most prolific fundraisers in the Democratic Party.

"This is the only dinner that Hillary is doing in New York," Nemazee tells me in confirming the plans. "It's probably the only opportunity to have an intimate dinner with Senator Clinton on behalf of the Obama campaign."

Couples will pay $28,500 each to attend, and the cash will go to the Democratic National Committee's Victory fund to elect Obama.

Asked if he'd lined up enough commitments to achieve the dinner's goal, Nemazee said: "I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't have commitments."

The effort to tap Hillary as a fundraising draw comes as Obama's finance team is stepping up the pressure on Democratic fundraisers to bring in more money as the full weight of Obama's decision to forego public financing becomes apparent.

This video clip of GOP Senator Norm Coleman has to be seen in order to be believed. Coleman, who is seeking re-election in Democratic-leaning Minnesota, began literally spouting gibberish when asked what he thought of the Bush years:

This video has a date with an Al Franken ad for late October.

(Via MNPublius)

In Obama's ad hitting McCain on education this morning, there's this throwaway line:

"He even proposed abolishing the Department of Education."

What's the basis for this charge? It turns out that in December of 1994, McCain said: "I would certainly favor doing away with the Department of Energy and I think that given the origins of the Department of Education, I would favor doing away with it as well."

Here's the full context of a CNN interview on December 11, 1994 (via Nexis), when Newt-mania was gripping the land:

FRANK SESNO: Senator McCain, would you favor doing away with the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Energy?

Sen. JOHN McCAIN: I would certainly favor doing away with the Department of Energy and I think that given the origins of the Department of Education, I would favor doing away with it as well. HUD had experienced many failures under both Republican and Democrat administrations and I would certainly want to revamp it from the bottom up, because, clearly, public housing in America is almost as big a disaster as the welfare program...

We're working to determine if McCain has ever retracted this. Either way, it's an extreme position that some moderate Republicans would be reluctant to embrace these days. Even McCain probably wouldn't be willing to embrace it now, and it's probably something Obama or the Dems will use to hit McCain on education going forward, partly because it could alienate female voters.

Interestingly, the GOP's rapid response push-back on the Obama ad, which fought back against some of the spot's other charges, didn't even try to debunk the Department of Ed charge, even though it's among the more explosive ones.

Unchastened by the multiple media outlets who have pointed out that Sarah Palin's claim to have said "thanks but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere is a lie, she repeated the falsehood again today on the trail today in Lebanon, Ohio. Here's her quote:

"You're gonna hear a lot about the abusive practice of earmarks in Congress from our good senator here. We championed in Alaska reform of the old earmark process. I told Congress, `Thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge To Nowhere up in Alaska. If our state wanted a bridge, we were gonna build it ourselves."

As Josh notes, the falsehood has now been debunked by everyone from Newsweek to the Associated Press to the Wall Street Journal. But here's Palin keeping up with it anyway.

McCain aides clearly think they can just keep pushing this lie until the news orgs tire of pointing out that it's false -- or, as McCain campaign Rick Davis might put it, until the news orgs start treating her with "deference."

Perhaps some will worry that continuing to point out the lies runs the risk of coming across as indecorous. But let's keep doing it anyway. As Newsweek put it in a very good piece on this, the movement towards holding the McCain campaign accountable for the falsehood every time he and his campaign repeat it represents "a certain kind of progress."

Late Update: Obama spokesperson Tommy Vietor responds:

"On the same day that dozens of news organizations have exposed Governor Palin's phony Bridge to Nowhere claim as a 'naked lie,' she and John McCain continue to repeat the claim in their stump speeches. Maybe tomorrow she'll tell us she sold it on eBay."

Late Late Update: Here's the video:

The Anchorage Daily News, which knows Sarah Palin as well as anyone, weighs in with an editorial today posing some tough questions that Palin should be forced to answer:

* Why have you reneged on your earlier pledge to cooperate with the Alaska Legislature's investigation into Troopergate?...

* As governor of Alaska, you have not pushed for laws or regulations that put your personal views on abortion, same-sex marriage and creationism into public policy. As vice president, will you push to outlaw abortion, restrict same-sex marriage and require the teaching of creationism?

* If you were a fully qualified vice-presidential candidate from the get-go, why did you wait more than 10 days to face reporters?

*McCain spokesman Rick Davis told Fox News the media didn't show you enough "deference." How much deference do you expect to get from Vladimir Putin or Hugo Chavez?

* You have said victory is in sight in Iraq. In July 2007, when you visited Kuwait, you said, "I'm not going to judge the surge." In the March 2007 issue of Alaska Business Monthly, you were asked about the surge and quoted saying:

"I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. . . . While I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place."

Define "victory" in Iraq? What is the exit plan?

To that last one I would only add: If you were saying only a year ago that you hadn't focused on the war in Iraq beyond wanting to know that we have an exit plan in place, why should we see you as qualified for the gig of back-up commander-in-chief right now?

When ABC News' Charlie Gibson does his exclusive interviews with Palin, we'll find out whether this big-shot news anchor is anywhere near as tough a questioner as the little Anchorage Daily News is. Prediction: It won't even be close.

It's looking like scandal-plagued Rep. Don Young won his very close primary in Alaska, though a recount is still likely -- and if his lead does hold up, then the Dems' chances of winning the House seat in this deep-red state just skyrocketed.

Young faced a strong primary challenge from Lt. Governor Sean Parnell, who had the support of Sarah Palin. The primary was two weeks ago, but a winner still hasn't been declared as Young took a lead of less then 250 votes with absentee ballots still left to be counted. But now, the Anchorage Daily News reports that there are less outstanding ballots than Young's current lead of 239 votes -- meaning that even if all of them went to Parnell, Young would still survive.

The polls consistently showed that Parnell would have been a much stronger candidate than Young against Democratic nominee Ethan Berkowitz. And with Young losing to Berkowitz by double-digit margins in most surveys, his apparent primary win is very good news for the Dems.

Here's what a Republican source told us the morning after the primary: "Don Young is going to lose some time in 2008. The question is whether it's now or November."

New Obama Ad: McCain "Doesn't Understand" Education
The Obama campaign has launched this new ad against John McCain, hitting McCain for voting to cut education funding and having an economic plan that would take money away from public schools. "John McCain doesn't understand," the announcer says sternly:

Obama To Give Speech Today, Blasting McCain On Education
Barack Obama is set to deliver a speech today in Dayton, Ohio, going after John McCain on public education and promoting his own charter-school plan. "In the past few weeks, my opponent has taken to talking about the need for change and reform in Washington, where he has been part of the scene for about three decades," Obama will say, according to the prepared remarks. "And in those three decades, he has not done one thing to truly improve the quality of public education in our country. Not one real proposal or law or initiative. Nothing."

Obama In Ohio And Virginia Today, Biden In Missouri
Barack Obama has a campaign event today in Riverside, Ohio, a big swing state that could potentially decide the whole presidential race, plus his education speech in Dayton. He'll then head to Lebanon, Virginia, for a town hall tonight. Joe Biden is in Missouri today, courting a swing state where recent polling has given John McCain the lead, with events in Columbia and and St. Louis.

McCain And Palin Campaigning Together In Ohio And Pennsylvania
John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning today in two big swing states. First up is a campaign rally in Lebanon, Ohio, scheduled for 10 a.m. ET, and a rally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET.

More Media Outlets Calling Out Palin On Bridge To Nowhere Lies
Here's a sign of just how thin and obvious the McCain campaign's lies are in claiming that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere: Even the pro-McCain Wall St. Journal and Associated Press have called them out on it. The Journal today says Palin continues to make the claim "despite significant evidence to the contrary," and points out that Palin still kept the money and used it elsewhere.

WaPo: Palin Charged State For Her Nights At Home
The Washington Post reports this morning that Sarah Palin has charged the state of Alaska a per diem expense for nights she spent at her own home in Wasilla, a charge intended to cover personal expenses for state officials while conducting government business. It's not exactly the kind of story that helps her image of being a fiscal conservative.

A new set of Rasmussen polls, all conducted yesterday in the middle of John McCain's post-convention bounce, suggests that this race remains close on the state-by-state level.

• In Colorado, Obama leads by a 49%-46% margin, actually an improvement for him since McCain's 49%-48% edge three weeks ago. Both results are within the margin of error.

• In Florida, the race is tied 48%-48%, compared to a 48%-46% McCain edge from about three weeks ago.

• In Ohio, McCain leads 51%-44%, compared to a 48%-43% lead for McCain from almost three weeks ago. Rasmussen has been the most favorable pollster for McCain in Ohio.

• In Pennsylvania, Obama has a slim 47%-45% edge, not significantly different from his 48%-45% lead two and a half weeks ago.

• In Virginia, McCain has a 49%-47% lead, not significantly changed from a 48%-47% McCain lead from over three weeks ago.

All five polls were conducted yesterday, and have a ±4.5 margin of error except for the Ohio survey, which has a ±4% margin error.

Separately, a new SurveyUSA poll of Virginia conducted this past Friday gives McCain an identical 49%-47% lead, with a ±3.7% margin of error. This is also not significantly changed from a 48%-47% McCain edge from over three weeks ago.

McCain and his advisers are now conceding that, yes, Sarah Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it -- but they're casting this as more proof of her reform credentials.

In so doing, the McCain camp is piling new falsehoods atop the old ones.

McCain himself rolled out the new push-back on the campaign trail today, saying the following:

"The fact is that Gov. Palin learned that earmarks are bad and she did say, we don't need our bridge to nowhere, and we will pay for it ourselves if we need it. I mean, that is just a fact."

Meanwhile, McCain adviser Tucker Bounds appeared today on MSNBC, where he acknowledged that Palin used to favor the bridge, but said she turned against it for good reasons.

"But as it became more wasteful, the budget ballooned, it became a staple for wasteful spending, she said No," Bounds said. "And she was the one that drove the nail in the coffin that killed the bridge to nowhere."

Nope.

It's bogus to say that Palin turned on the project because the costs ballooned. The real reason she came around to opposing it was not that the overall costs went up -- the project was always a boondoggle, and costs were always going up -- but that one particular element of the project's cost ballooned: The portion that Alaska would have to pay, instead of getting the money through federal pork.

In her statement finally ending the project, Palin explicitly lamented that fact. "Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329-million short of full funding for the bridge project," Palin said at the time, "and it's clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island."

As for the claim that Palin drove a stake into the project's heart, the project was practically dead already by the time Palin officially shut it down, as the non-partisan CQ's PolitiFact section pointed out. She shut it down after it became clear that Congress would no longer fund it -- meaning that Alaska would have to use its own $329 million to build it, thus leaving Palin no other choice but to shut it down.

Bottom line: Palin did not tell Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks," on the bridge. It was Congress who cut off the money to Alaska. Oh, and she didn't Say No To Pork, either -- when Congress wouldn't spend that money on the Bridge, Congress did allow her to keep it for other projects. And she did.

We're now getting a better idea of John McCain's post-convention bounce, with most new polls showing the race either tied or with a narrow McCain lead:

• The new ABC/Washington Post poll gives McCain a 49%-47% lead among likely voters, with a ±4% margin of error. Two weeks ago, just before the Democratic Convention began, Obama had a 49%-45% lead with likely voters. The internals find that McCain's pick of Sarah Palin has paid off with white women -- Obama led 50%-42% with this group before the conventions, but McCain has grabbed a 53%-41% lead now.

• The new CBS poll has McCain up 46%-44%, with a ±4% margin of error. Two and a half weeks ago, Obama had a 45%-42% lead.

• The new Hotline/Diageo poll has the race tied at 44% each. Two weeks ago, Obama had a 44%-40% lead.

It's clear that McCain has gotten a bigger convention bounce than Obama did, but convention bounces are themselves not exactly permanent things. They are the product of one candidate getting mostly positive coverage for a whole week -- and there are still eight weeks to go.

The Obama campaign, clearly convinced they have nabbed the McCain camp in a major error with the Palin-killed-Bridge-to-Nowhere fib, showcases it in a new ad that argues that McCain is "no maverick."...

The spot, which will run in key battleground states, is a hard-hitting one, directly taking on the "maverick" claim by referencing the multitude of lobbyists working for McCain, his voting record in sync with Bush, and of course, the Bridge-to-Nowhere fib. And it directly accuses McCain-Palin of "lying about their records."

In coming days, we'll discover whether the McCain camp's efforts to swipe the "change" mantra succeed in diluting or canceling out Obama's McSame message, or whether they merely shift the battle onto rhetorical turf that favors Obama.

On the trail today in Flint, Michigan, Obama tees off on both McCain and Palin, pointing out that the McCain campaign's promises of reform ring hollow given the multitudes of lobbyists working for the Arizona Senator...

Obama also directly targets Palin on the Bridge to Nowhere, suggesting that whatever "wait and see" posture Obama advisers had planned with regard to Palin has been scrapped.

"You can't just make stuff up," Obama says, perhaps optimistically. "The American people aren't stupid."

The build-up towards the end suggests that in the days ahead Obama will be directly engaging the McCain campaign's efforts to steal Obama's "change" mantra, battling it out on the Illinois Senator's rhetorical turf.

A nice catch from Ben Smith: In an interview on MSNBC today, McCain spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker appeared to suggest that Sarah Palin will do an actual press conference with reporters one of these days -- really and truly she will:

It was nice to see MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell swat aside Hazelbaker's snide aside about the media's "great interest in planning her press strategy." Hazelbaker quickly walked this back with some boilerplate about how the McCain campaign of course understands that the press performs a vital function and hence will eventually make her available.

Bull-bleep. The McCain campaign isn't going to grant any real media access to Palin because McCain advisers, out of the goodness of their hearts, know that the public deserves an unfiltered look at her and that this is key to making our Democracy function.

Indeed, the McCain campaign is cheerfully being very up-front about exercising total control over the terms as to how -- or whether -- she's made available. McCain campaign manager Rick Davis made this as clear as you could want by suggesting recently that he wants to see her treated with "deference" first -- basically flipping the entire press corps the bird.

Bottom line: The McCain camp will only allow the media to have meaningful access to Palin if the cost of keeping her sequestered begins outweighing the benefits. Period. And the only people who can extract that cost are members of the media themselves. The Obama campaign could give such efforts a big assist, but really, should they have to?

Today's polls confirm that John McCain is enjoying a post-convention bounce, though it might not be all that drastic in terms of the big picture:

• Today's Gallup poll has McCain again 49%-45%, outside the ±2% margin of error. McCain was down seven points in Gallup before his convention began -- but going back a bit further, he'd inched into a two-point lead just before the Democratic convention gave Barack Obama his own artificial bounce. In this sense, McCain's bounce has put him just ahead of where he started before the conventions.

• Today's Rasmussen poll has McCain ahead 48%-47%, with a ±2% margin of error. McCain trailed by around five points before the Republican Convention, and the two candidates were about even right before the Democratic Convention.

• The new CNN poll, on the other hand, presents a different story. They have the race tied at 48%-48% each. Right before the Dem Convention, they put the race at a 47%-47% tie, and after the Dem gathering it was only an insignificant 49%-48% lead for Obama. So CNN never really had much of an Obama bounce, and they don't have a McCain bounce, either.

Bear in mind that McCain's convention bounce could turn out to be just as ephemeral as Obama's was -- given that such bounces are a product of one candidate dominating news coverage for a whole week.

Has ABC News' Charlie Gibson become the McCain campaign's favorite network anchor?

The question is a fair one in light of the news that Gibson has landed the first exclusive interview with Sarah Palin, as part of a rather odd-sounding arrangement under which he'll be asking her questions over the course of multiple interviews up in Alaska.

Recent history suggests that we shouldn't anticipate a terribly aggressive grilling of Palin from Gibson. There are good reasons for the McCain campaign to be able to count on this -- and to favor Gibson as a result.

The Palin interview was the second exclusive granted to Gibson by the McCain campaign in less than a week. He was the only anchor to interview McCain during the GOP convention.

While Gibson did confront McCain with a few tough questions, the opening of the interview was heavily freighted with questions like this one:

Senator, you're going to be accepting the nomination for president of the United States tomorrow night. You spent 5.5 years in a prison camp and you had a lot of time to think during that time. Did you ever, in your wildest imagination, think of such a thing?

...and this one:

Your image has always been sort of the outsider, the straight talker, the hell-bent, swashbuckling Navy pilot. Now that you're to be the nominee, is it in any way constraining?

More to the point, Gibson himself has revealed in advance what he thinks the parameters of the questioning of Palin should be.

Read more »

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz gets it right on the new McCain ad's repetition of the Palin-blocked-Bridge-to-Nowhere falsehood:

The Arizona senator has made a crusade of battling pork-barrel "earmarks," but the whopper here is that Palin opposed her state's notorious Bridge to Nowhere. She endorsed the remote project while running for governor in 2006, claimed to be an opponent only after Congress killed its funding the next year and has used the $223 million provided for it for other state ventures. Far from being an opponent of earmarks, Palin hired lobbyists to try to capture more federal funding.

Let's hope the rest of the coverage follows suit. Kurtz also accurately notes something we hit here on Friday: Chiefly, that McCain is trying to swipe Obama's "change" mantra.

Here's the response, from Obama spokesperson Bill Burton, to McCain's new ad falsely claiming that Sarah Palin blocked the Bridge to Nowhere:

"Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time and he and Sarah Palin will continue Bush's economic policies, his health care policy, his education policy, his energy policy, and his foreign policy. McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office. That's the kind of politics people are tired of, and it's anything but change."

It's good to see the L-word alive and well. The question remains whether the same news orgs that debunked the original Bridge to Nowhere falsehood will aggressively stay on McCain and hold him accountable every time he and his campaign repeat it.

Hillary is set to campaign for Obama today in Florida. Will she aggressively target Palin? Former Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson, over at his new blog at The New Republic, says the answer is No:

I have been asked repeatedly over the last several days to respond to the idea that Hillary Clinton will soon be dispatched by the Obama campaign to "take Palin on."

The questions are fair, but what undergirds them is an obsession in our popular culture with the "cat fight," an offensive term that describes the spectacle of two well known women fighting with one another...

Don't hold your breath. It's not going to happen.

It's not in Hillary Clinton's interest, and its certainly not in the interest of Barack Obama and the Democratic party...

If anything, Democrats should be talking about McCain-Bush, not McCain-Palin. Every day we are focused on Palin is a day we are not amplifying the Obama campaign's message that Senator McCain simply represents four more years of President Bush.

It'll be interesting to see how Hillary handles the inevitable questions that are directly about Palin -- how she'll try to duck the "cat fight" narrative.

Some eye-opening national numbers from Survey USA, based on polling on Friday, shows McCain in the lead on key issues like Iraq, health care, and energy independence.

* On the question of who has the better plan for Iraq, it's McCain 55%, Obama 41% -- despite multiple polls showing solid majorities agreeing with Obama on withdrawal.

* On the question of who has the better plan for energy independence, it's McCain 54%, Obama 42%.

* On the question of who has the better plan for health care, it's McCain 46%, Obama 45%.

* McCain is seen as stronger on education, 50%-45%.

Obama does hold a nine point lead on who's stronger on the environment, 49%-41%. But somewhat ominously, more respondents (49%) say they'd bet that McCain will win the election than say Obama will (44%).

These results are almost certainly ephemeral, but they do suggest a successful convention for McCain.

Late Update: A good take from Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com on the post-convention polling.

New McCain Ad: McCain And Palin "The Original Mavericks"
John McCain has a new ad out on national cable and in key states, pitching both himself and Sarah Palin to voters as "the original mavericks." Interestingly, the ad continues to perpetuate the falsehood that Palin was responsible for stopping the Bridge to Nowhere:

Obama And Biden In Upper Midwest Today
Barack Obama is campaigning today in the swing state of Michigan, visiting both the blue-collar city of Flint and the more upscale Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills. Joe Biden is also on the campaign trail today, visiting Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Des Moines, Iowa.

McCain And Palin In Missouri Today
John McCain and Sarah Palin will be appearing today in Lee's Summit, Missouri, a large suburb of Kansas City, and are scheduled to arrive at a rally at 12:30 p.m. ET. Recent polls of Missouri have given McCain the lead in this perennial swing state.

Hillary In Florida Today
Hillary Clinton will be campaigning for the Democratic ticket today in the big swing state of Florida, where John McCain is believed to have a narrow lead based on most polling. Hillary will be making campaign stops in Tampa and Kissimmee.

Palin Grants Interview Of Sorts To ABC
Sarah Palin will be granting her first news interview as VP candidate to ABC News' Charlie Gibson this week, though the circumstances seem quite odd. Instead of sitting in one location like a TV studio and taking questions, there will be multiple sit-downs over two days in various places around Alaska -- an arrangement that could become as much a feature story about her life as it could be a hard-hitting news interview.

Poll: McCain Bounces Into Ten-Point Lead
The new USA Today/Gallup poll finds John McCain enjoying a very healthy convention bounce, with a 54%-44% lead over Barack Obama among likely voters, and 50%-46% among registered voters. A week ago, when Obama was having his own convention bounce, Obama led 50%-43% among registered voters.

Obama To Meet With Bill Clinton This Week
In the latest development in the long-running drama that is Democratic Party unification, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton will be be meeting for a private lunch on Thursday. A Clinton spokesman told CNN that Bill extended the invitation after he found out that Obama would be in New York to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

John McCain is officially enjoying a nice convention bounce in the new tracking polls, with a tie in one poll and a lead in the other.

The latest numbers from Rasmussen: Obama 48%, McCain 48%. Obama was ahead by five points in this poll before the Republican Convention.

And here are the new figures from Gallup: McCain 48%, Obama 45%, with a ±2% margin of error. Obama was ahead by around seven points in this tracker before the GOP Convention began.

These are both three-day tracking polls, with two days' worth of sampling from after McCain's acceptance speech. Tomorrow we'll be getting polls that are taken completely after the end of the convention.

McCain Campaign: No Palin Interviews Until She's Treated With "Deference"
McCain campaign manager Rick Davis told Fox News this morning that Sarah Palin won't be doing any media interviews "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference," and when Palin would be "comfortable" doing it. So far in this campaign, Palin has taken only one question, from a gushing Alaska reporter: "Governor, we feel like we're losing you -- are you still going to be there for Alaska?"

Obama And McCain Off The Trail, Biden In Montana
Barack Obama has no public events scheduled for today, but Joe Biden is hitting he trail in Montana. Biden has an event in Kalispell, scheduled to being at 4:30 p.m. ET. John McCain does not have any public events today.

Obama Mocks Palin For Earmark Flip-Flops
On Saturday, Barack Obama mocked Sarah Palin for aggressively seeking earmarks in Alaska and campaigning nationally as anti-pork, yet another sign that Palin has eclipsed John McCain as the real story on the Republican ticket. "I mean, words mean something," Obama said. "You can't just make stuff up."

Palin Sticking To The Teleprompter
Jonathan Martin reports that Sarah Palin's public appearances on the campaign trail remain scripted affairs. Palin is repeating the same applause lines she used at the Republican Convention -- and still using a teleprompter along the way.

Obama: Recession Could Delay Rescinding Of Bush Tax Cuts
In an interview on ABC's This Week, Barack Obama said that a recession could delay his plans to rescind some of the Bush tax cuts for top earners ahead of their scheduled expiration. "I think we've got to take a look and see where the economy is," Obama said.

Hillary Limits Criticism Of Palin
Hillary Clinton is thus far refraining from making any direct personal criticisms against Sarah Palin, telling reporters that it won't be a focus for her. "This election is about issues, and that's what's going to matter to people at the end of the day," said Clinton.

GOP Sen. Inhofe: Does Obama Really Love His Country?
Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma told the Tulsa World that the GOP can win this election because of questions about Barack Obama's patriotism: "Do you really want to have a guy as commander in chief of this country when you can question whether or not he really loves his country?"

Dem Convention Officials: Flag Story Is False -- GOP Stole Our Flags
Democratic Convention officials told the Huffington Post that Republican allegations are false that the Dems were throwing away miniature American flags left over from the Denver convention. Instead, they say, they were put in storage but then stolen by GOP-aligned vendors, who then turned around and used the story for their own political gains.