Two Days, Two Mistakes, The Race Is On

It is amazing the difference 36 hours can make in a presidential contest. The Obama team has definitely shown resliency by cleverly taking advantage of McCain missteps on the economy and his staff's overreaching on technology issues. Of course, McCain is right about the economic fundamentals: the melting of the Wall Street wax-works bears little immediate relationship to Main Street business and the underlying assets of the American economy (particularly its human capital and infrastructure) are in place. But when the market loses 500 points? Let's just say the messaging was off.

More inexplicable is the "McCain's the inventor of the Blackberry comment." Yeah, just like He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named wrote the specs for the Internet. Why did they feel like they needed to respond to accusation that McCain can't write his own emails? I liked their first answer: because his broken fingers and hands, leftovers from Hanoi, make it laborious to do so. He wishes he could write emails. He forwent that skill in service to his country.

Presidential races are like two teams pushing against the same door. These mistakes moved the door a couple inches Obama's way. Too bad.