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- Over the weekend, Barack Obama agreed to a three debate schedule put forth by the Commission on Presidential Debates which appears to close the door on John McCain's offer to hold town hall-style debates.
- Obama has released a more aggressive ad attacking John McCain for being in the pocket of big oil, and Campaign Money Watch discovers that McCain received millions from oil executive just days after reversing his position on offshore drilling. Earlier today, Obama claimed to be open to tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of a larger energy plan.
- John Heilemann and Chuck Todd each argue in separate pieces that going negative is probably the only way McCain can win the election, although the strategy risks damaging the "McCain brand."
- Nate Silver argues in The Los Angeles Times that one reason Obama is underperforming compared to generic Democrat-Republican matchups is an increase of Democratic identification since 2004. But since both Obama and McCain are not perceived as typical representatives of their party, the national polling numbers reflect voters' impressions of the candidates themselves, rather than the parties they represent: "The problem for Obama is not so much that he's underperforming a generic Democrat. It's that he hasn't yet been able to re-brand McCain as a typically conservative Republican."
- A new Washington Post poll finds that not only is Obama leading McCain amongst lower-income voters by a 2-1 margin, but that he is actually beating McCain among working-class whites by 10 points, 47-37. Mark Blumenthal has some caveats, however.
- In move designed to mock Obama's (correct) suggestion that proper tire inflation can help with fuel economy, the McCain campaign is distributing tire pressure gauges to reporters on the Straight Talk Express and in Washington D.C. with the note, "Obama’s energy plan." Glad to see this election is really about the issues.
- After being tied with McCain in Gallup's daily tracking poll since Friday, Obama has now pulled ahead three points, 46-43, and Rasmussen shows a statistical tie with McCain up 47-46.
- Nicholas Lemann has an excellent essay in The New Yorker that reviews Thomas Frank's new book, The Wrecking Crew, in the context of a century-old book on interest group politics.
- CQ Politics gets into the details of voters in Ohio, determining it to be "THE battleground state" -- an assessment I've come to accept based on polling from the last two months.
- And Finally, Rick Perlstein digs up his prescient March, 2007, essay from The New Republic on the presidential election, and concludes that it will come down to "FNB politics," an acronym I don't wish reprint here on TAPPED's family-friendly blog.
--Mori Dinauer
