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"The aura around him is just really nice."

LOL.

But grumpy old TPM says: "The latest McCain Web ad takes the 'Celeb' tag to a whole new low ? it proclaims that 'Hot chicks dig Obama.'" Huh? The ad didn't "proclaim" "Hot chicks dig Obama." The ad showed that various fools love Obama ? including some lunkhead who said "Hot chicks dig Obama" and some ditz who said "The aura around him is just really nice." If you think it's offensive to say "Hot chicks dig Obama," then you should do what the ad invites you to do: Discount the support for Obama and think for yourself.

ADDED: The TPM quote above is from Eric Kleefeld, but here TPM top dog Josh Marshall ? referencing the recently revealed Mark Penn memos ? wonders "How do you think McCain's memos read?"

Now, this is an interesting way to analyze things: Knowing what you know about the Hillary Clinton campaign and what was in the Mark Penn memos that are now available, look at what the candidate is doing and speculate about what is in the internal memos. Marshall says:

Only the deeply naive or the deliberately oblivious -- which regrettably includes the greater number of the people covering the campaign -- don't know the answer to that question.

In other words, you're stupid or willfully blind if you don't realize the McCain campaign is trying to resonate with racism. But let's imagine the Obama memos too. Let's not be deeply naive or deliberately oblivious.

There must be frank and embarrassing analysis of the opponent's weaknesses and the voters' biases in every political campaign. I want to speculate about this sort of thing, but let's be careful. If we don't have the memos, we don't really know what was said, and your speculation is only speculation, even if you are willing to sternly insist that only idiots fail to acknowledge that your interpretation must be true.

Full post as published by Althouse on August 12, 2008 (boomark / email).