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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Michael Tomasky

One by one, like overripe fruit...

Today brings our second prominent GTT (gentle towel-tosser), after David Brooks' earlier prediction that Obama would win by nine points. In his WashPost column today, George Will speculates that Obama could win as many as...nah, I'm too superstitious to say it.

I will quote this passage, however; Will's assessment of Ayers attacks:

In the closing days of his 10-year quest for the presidency, McCain finds it galling that Barack Obama is winning the first serious campaign he has ever run against a Republican. Before Tuesday night's uneventful event, gall was fueling what might be the McCain-Palin campaign's closing argument. It is less that Obama has bad ideas than that Obama is a bad person.

This, McCain and his female Sancho Panza say, is demonstrated by bad associations Obama had in Chicago, such as with William Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist. But the McCain-Palin charges have come just as the Obama campaign is benefiting from a mass mailing it is not paying for. Many millions of American households are gingerly opening envelopes containing reports of the third-quarter losses in their 401(k) and other retirement accounts -- telling each household its portion of the nearly $2 trillion that Americans' accounts have recently shed. In this context, the McCain-Palin campaign's attempt to get Americans to focus on Obama's Chicago associations seems surreal -- or, as a British politician once said about criticism he was receiving, "like being savaged by a dead sheep."

Points for being able to tell us who that British pol was. I don't know.

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