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More today from Tom Shales in the Washington Post Online

John McCain - Now with 50% More Negatives!


The big picture rhetoric of this campaign has been remarkably consistent.
Barack Obama has been driving his message of hope and change since the last Democratic Party Convention in 2004. He has been defining the political conversation in this country ever since.

He never surrendered this position against Hillary Clinton and he's forced the Republican Party off of it's own message so many times that it has had to re-tool it's campaign and relaunch it's strategy almost every week since August.

So on the day that Barack Obama stood on top of his winning position, John McCain tried to gain ground in typical fashion:

"Barack Obama's ideologically-driven plans to redistribute income will impose higher taxes on families, small businesses, and investors; expensive, rigid, job-killing health mandates on employers; energy policies that fail to promote domestic oil, natural gas, and coal, and will impose a massive Washington-driven regulation of everything from home furnaces to factories; isolationist trade policies that endanger one out of every five jobs; and massive new spending plans that that will burden the economy and saddle our children with debt. Barack Obama is change Americans cannot afford."

Does anybody else see that when McCain reflexively goes negative on his opponent he cuts his forward momentum in half? He has consistently reduced his ability to lead this election by actually presenting himself as an "alternative". Being alternative to the mainstream makes you number 2.

John McCain has falied to make this election about John McCain. He has made it a referendum on one issue:

Barack Obama for President, yes or no.