<&Vin> I don't know if I should post http://www.keatingeconomics.com/ or not
<+NoESC> if in doubt the answer is always yes

So it's a short documentary....created by the Obama camp...about how McCain is an evil man. I wonder if there's any bias in it...

McCain's campaign is trying to tie Obama to Bill Ayers. Again. So the Obama camp reacted.

You act like this is unusual.

Stop digging up 90s British pop culture icons!

The Keating 5 scandal is so f***ing complicated that no one in America will understand it, let alone care about it. People don't understand the current economic woes, the don't remember Keating, and they'll never be able to connect the two. Plus John Glenn was a f***ing ASTRONAUT. Astronauts can do no wrong.

The Ayers thing isn't working, either, because people don't remember the weather underground, Ayers paid his debt, and the connection to Obama is weak, at best.

These "October Surprises" on both sides are just digging up the past, they're not playing with Americans, who are pretty much sick of hearing about the past, and the personal attacks.

You do realize Obama's campaign has been pumping out scathing negative ads against McCain too, right?

Well, in this case it's actually a pretty clear-cut case of reaction. McCain's camp openly announced that (for the first time in the campaign) they'd be actively trying to tie Obama to Ayers and Rezko. This is partly to help them make up ground, partly to energize the conservative base and keep them from giving up. Obama returned fire with the Keating video (a subject his campaign hadn't really touched before either), and now Wired is reporting that things aren't going quite the way McCain thought they would. In short, Google's search rankings suggest people are a lot more interested in Keating than they are in Ayers.

People aren't going to understand the Keating Five scandal, but in politics, people don't have to understand something to worry about it; in fact, sometimes it even helps if they don't understand it. If Obama can successfully associate Keating with the economic crisis in people's minds, it's going to kick McCain's ***.

I don't like seeing this happen in an election campaign that had been pretty free of Swift Boat-type smears up until now, but it can't be helped now. Just playing defense against McCain's attacks would lose Obama the election the same way Kerry lost it. Expect McCain to give up on keeping Jeremiah Wright out of it before long, and expect Obama to start talking about McCain's medical records. The ads run by the 527s on each side will be even worse.