I heard today that McCain decided to put all his chips into Pennsylvania and over at the fivethirtyeight site Nate or Sean is trying to figure out how this makes sense.
I live in Pennsylvania and when I got home a shiny, fantastic packet from the state Democratic party was in the mail with handy, dandy forms and instructions for applying for and voting by absentee ballot.
Go below for the fold for a few comments on how, once again, the Obama campaign seems to stay a step or two ahead of the McCain camp.
Some days the McCain campaign so reminds me of Wile E. Coyote. As you'll recall, Wile E. is a smart coyote and in a normal world he would dine on road runner meat regularly.
But a terrible combination of bad luck, bad timing, bad equipment from the Acme company and the suspension of normal laws of gravity, thermodynamics and common sense defeat him. And there is something really weird about caves, too. The road runner can run through paintings of caves on rocks, but the Wile E. cannot.
And so it is with the McCain campaign. Wile E. McCain saw how the Hillary Campaign almost got the Obama Road Runner last spring with attack ads that pointed that the Road Runner was not like the rest of us. So McCain tries that attack with the Bill Ayers ads and Colin Powell himself comes out nowhere and hits Wile E. McCain with an endorsement that must have felt like a cast iron skillet in the face.
Today Wile E. comes up with a cockamamie scheme to concentrate all his forces on Pennsylvania. This is a little like the original Wile E. deciding to pile up a ton of dynamite on the Road Runner.
And what typically happened to the original Wile E. is the he'd light the fuse (from Acme) and it would fizzle out. Then after the Road Runner runs off, Wile E. would check on the fuse and ka-boom the dynamite would go off, leaving him all burnt looking.
So on the very day Wile E. McCain announces a plan to put a ton of political dynamite into Pennsylvania to blow up the Obama Road Runner campaign, what happens?
The Obama Road Runner campaign does a mailing to that gives Democrats like me kits, forms, phone numbers and colored brochures on how I can go down to our election bureau and vote early by absentee ballot, emulating the early voting thing voters get to do in Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia and places like that.
I wish I'd taken a picture of the folder, because it is really clever and very slick. It looks better than anything official I've ever gotten from the state or local bureau of elections.
It had to have cost a pretty penny and I wonder if we'll get follow up reminders and additional folders.
What I don't know is whether this is just a limited thing to people who have previously voted by absentee ballot. Or was it a mass mailing? Please take the poll below - I am curious.
Anyway, for me at least, the Obama Road Runner has done it again to the Wile E. McCain.
Even before Wile E. McCain mounts his big, last ditch effort this weekend, I will have already voted.
KaBoom.