So John McCain's ad tonight is ... going to congratulate Senator Obama. Classy, I suppose, but what's the goal? (After all of the chicanery of the last few months, I don't take anything for granted from this crew.)
Is his campaign trying to blunt any criticism that Obama will bring to bear on him tonight? Is his campaign worried that the constant negativity of his campaign is hurting him among, well, any non-conservative base voters he hoped to steal from Obama? Or, as one Democratic operative who doesn't work for Obama just suggested to me, Steve Schmidt is just trying to screw with everybody's heads.
One other possibility: The McCain campaign feels like it's done the job of driving up Obama's negatives over the summer, and now thinks it's time to pivot back to portraying the candidate as a positive maverick in time for fall. But that requires a pick like Lieberman that will hurt him with conservatives, and the spring may have proved that McCain can't out maverick (really, out reform) Obama.
--Tim Fernholz
