When he goes negative he does it in that passive aggressive way that will turn people off.  Axelrod could do it though as he did in the primaries.

Having been joined now be a chorus of Obama blogs in concern with Obama's post partisan unity schtick campaign, I am somewhat amused that no one noticed the problem before.

Obama has run a horrible campaign and is an awful candidate. There's no debating it. One point that Steve missed is that Obama has done virtually nothing this summer. It's not just about defining McCain negatively, it's about trying to get Democrats to vote for him. Heck, he can't even try to get the base on board because he's too busy with the creepy rallies overseas and throwing sand in the eyes of people who supported Hillary.

He tried to warn the voters that McCain was going to try to scare people off, and what did that get him?  Days and days of coverage of his "because I don't look like all the other presidents;" that was a disaster.

Regardless of the reality, a lot of people believe the maverick label that McCain has. Obama has done nothing to change that view. Tying him to Bush will take more effort than Obama has been willing to exercise to date.

The thing that I can't get out of my head is that, to date, McCain and the Republicans have basically pulled to a draw in the Presidential race without them using anything remotely resembling their A game.

When's the last time you've heard anything about Wright, or Ayers (not to mention the players to be named later)?

Essentially, not a peep from the Republicans about these damaging issues, and Obama is already in the fight of his life?

All it takes to cut Obama down to size is to compare him to Paris Hilton?

The political conditions are such that Obama could run the worst campaign in history and still win.

It should be true for this election.  But I am not confident that it is true.  And we haven't even seen what kind of tricks the Republicans are going to pull yet.  They are morphing McCain into a guy who is going to win the war in Iraq and get us out, who's going to catch bin Laden, and who is going to be the greenest Republican you've ever seen, and all kinds of other things.  If things keep going this way, he's going to differentiate himself from Bush so much that he'll look like an Independent.  You won't even remember he's a Republican.  That's what all the Repubs have been doing when election time comes around -- they are removing the failed Republican brand from every piece of campaign propaganda they have.

It's unbelievable.

Marshall thinks it's a good idea to attack McCain by saying he'll do anything to win? What's so surprising about that?  That's a primary campaign attack, not a general election attack.  In a primary, you don't do anything to win because it might damage your opponent, your ally.  In the general, heck, who doesn't expect a candidate to do anything to win?  

Maybe they are trying to lose.  Or maybe, they considered the primary to be the real race, and they think they can now coast to a win in November with a "we can't lose" attitude.  That's a risk I'm not willing to take.  Or maybe they're scared to death of the Republican attacks and spend most of their time on defense.  Obama has a lot of weaknesses to attack, so it wouldn't surprise me, given what we've seen lately, if he never really gets his offense out on the field.

McCain has been a national figure for decades. People have a clear idea who he is. It would be very difficult to change that.

What Obama needed to do was engage in the Politics of Contrast --- the GOP brand itself was already in disrepute, and by promoting the Democratic brand as a positive, he could have succeeded.  Instead (and with a LOT of help from idiotic congresscritters) he's been muddying the distinction between the two parties rather than creating a stark contrast.

Who is that "fine" to? It's fine to him but it's not fine to me. It throws my opinion out the window without an explanation (or he misrepresents  the content of FISA bill in his explanation). We just disagree. Period. Deal-breaker? Drop dead.  Next question?

It's obvious that taking no firm stands on policies gives him the greatest latitude in courting the general public because there are no boundaries of principle to limit him. This is what he means by "unity." No deal-breakers for him, only deal-breakers for those us who are stubborn about things like the Constitution (Not to get psychological but I think this stems partly from  lack of confidence that he'll be elected, so he's giving himself every possible leeway. "The soft bigotry of low expectations" about himself).

Whatever it is, this is the behavior of a tyrant. Not a listener, not a uniter, but a tyrant.  He might not be a malevolent tyrant but this is the gestalt we're looking at, the model we're allowing his campaign to create whose conditioning to subjective trust can be adopted by a less benevolent future tyrant.

As to BHO's "lost opportunity," he lost/betrayed the heart of his party with his FISA flip, as one of several examples, he figured he could impress the intel boys by going along with Bush on FISA while guessing his Dem base had "nowhere else to go." Wrong.  

I find it nearly impossible to campaign for Obama to get out the vote because I can't talk to voters or host house parties in my midsized California town (as I've done every election season for the last 25 years) explaining Obama's stands on issues because I don't know how he stands on issues and I'm  hesitant to perpetrate a fraud upon my neighbors by pretending I do. Major disconnect right there. Paralyzing. Many of my fellow townspeople feel the same way, caught in this dilemma of trying to campaign for a candidate we don't understand. There are no deal-breakers. There is no deal. There is only subjective devotional trust based on BO's "unlikely" biography, etc. Slap on the back, "Hail fellow, well met! He's a great guy. A least he's better than Bush." How pathetic. His FISA move was no better than Bush. His campaign's insistence on subjective trust is no better than Bush. Trust is for dictatorships.

I still give Obama the advantage in this race, precisely because the GOP is fighting the worst uphill battle since 1976. But what should be a blowout is turning into a squeaker. Not only that, the GOP hasn't even tried using the more explosive Rezko/Wright/Ayres business. Maybe they'll overreach with it, but if they do it carefully, it could be quite damaging.

I can't think of much that Obama has managed to do these last two months. The McCain = Bush approach has felt half-hearted and inconsistent to me. And going on vacation and staying there when the Russia-Georgia conflict erupted allowed McCain to own that issue.

This is my favorite:

[B]arack Obama has been proving himself the most party-focused presidential candidate in recent history - POSSIBLY EVER.

Huh?

Who's the greybeard they speak of that Obama didn't "elevate" to reassure us of his commander-in-chief credentials?  Wes Clark?  (Nice!)  and who is the Clinton operative hired meant to heal divisions in the Primary?  Patti Solis?

The last sentences:  In other words, strong parties aren't the problem - they're the solution.  And NOW THAT HE HAS ONE OF HIS OWN, O is determined to prove it.

You're starting to be all over the place, in case you haven't noticed.  But I love ya anyway.

Because you're honest and straight-forward, even when it's uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, Obama is in a pickle, and I do not know how you could still position him as the winner, as we've not even begun to experience what the RNC will let loose on him ONCE he has become the definite Democratic nominee.