The DCCC and DSCC are well funded this year. Let them worry about downticket.

Here is what the Republicans do:  pick up on some existing source of doubt or dissatisfaction and amplify it a million times.  Eg: doubts about Michelle, hates America, blah blah blah.  Spread rumors that she is controlling the VP pick.  Makes Obama look weak and hen-pecked.  That picks up on both the worries about Michelle this year, and on the decades old riff that all Dems are weak.

Here's what the Dems do: decide what THEY, the Dem leadership, think should be a negative, and attack on that, whether it already exists or not.  This election, for their negatives they are looking only to themselves for what they think will strike a negative chord, not the great main middle of the electorate.

So Rs = exploit existing fears and anxieties; Ds = make up new ones that they wish would work and are unwilling to abandon when they don't.

No question too that our side needs to follow up some of their adverting with tougher and better surrogates for the chat fests.

But as to events to back them up, the party in power is always in a better position, obviously, to help create same.

As to O's message having not quite the impact it should, let's also not forget this MCM has been in the tank for St Mac for at least a decade now.  No one at this desk ever was under the naive impression that just because they greatly favored O over HRC in the primaries, that that would automatically mean they would continue the O cheerleading against the Repub.  

And they do have a choice. there always have been an appreciable number of black Republicans, and McCain at least has not been insulting them to their faces as others have in this campaign. Or taking them for granted. Socially, AAs tend to be a bit more conservative than middle class white folks under most circumstances. More than one group can switch allegiances, given enough motivation. For decades, those few who could vote voted for the Party of Lincoln, until FDR.

AAs do not as a rule think he's incompetent, or green or any of that. No more than other candidates in other years who were elected. Get over it if you think they're wrong on that. And they don't think you would act as you have if he were  otherwise just as he is, but white. Get over it if you think they're wrong on that as well. If you want to argue with them that he was racist or he cheated, do so if you choose but wear armor and ear plugs when you go, if you do. Somehow I don't think you will, as the conversation here and in in other places has not addressed that community at all, except in the third person.

But I will say that no amount of certain people claiming they didn't do it and it's all his fault won't cut the mustard in that thought process  on at least the current record. McCain simply playing out the Clinton playbook in the fall, for example. Running clips of what she said to defeat him, which she should have known better than to say in the first place.  Meeting with McCain people to strategize how to do that; last Thursday's meeting between her brother and Carly Fiorina does not help.

In a country where good citizens are supposed to move forward by playing by the rules, it looks a lot like someone who did not win by the rules,   and who therefore decided that the winner should not be allowed the benefit of the win, because that was HERS! is acting here. And that appears to be what's happening here. Better let the Republican in than let the one who won the Primaries under the rules of those primaries enjoy his victory. Because he should not have won it, should not have even run against her. he was not entitled to run against her. That a black person who otherwise met the qualifications should not have considered running against her because she is who she is, is not an idea they will accept.

I do not speak for all AAs but if that's the feeling they end up with, they will vote Repub rather than Clinton in 2012 ( or for the other party if she has switched by that time ) and I will gladly do so alongside them. Don't tell me about principles, because equality is the first among them.

Forcing her onto the ticket will heal nothing as there as as many people who won't vote for her under any circumstances now as there are who won't vote for him.

And God help us all if anything happens and Hillary supporters stand up in public and pat themselves on the back for their success in defeating him in November if that's what happens.