Ballot Box

A guide to the best political buzz from around the web

By XANA O'NEILL

Updated 12:54 PM EDT, Mon, Jul 13, 2009

Print Email Share TWITTER FACEBOOK

Getty Images/Digital Vision

The damage has been done. Even as McCain eases up on the attacks against Obama and implores rally crowds to follow suit, he continues to get slammed for his negative campaign tactics as Team McCain starts to slip into disarray. Today's buzz:

McCain's campaign is eroding before our eyes, reports Politico. His campaign is out of control and his numbers keep sinking. Take-away: "To win, the Republican ticket must attract a significant number of independent voters, swing voters and even some Democrats. Do Sarah Palin's attacks really help achieve that?"
It's possible that John McCain is inadvertently spawning a new xenophobic, racist movement, wrote E.J. Dionne Jr. in the WaPo. His campaign is playing up extremist themes against Obama. Take-away: "It is as if McCain's loyalists overshot the '60s and went back to the '50s or even the '30s."
Holding Obama's past up to scrutiny is not the same thing as going negative, wrote Thomas Sowell in the National Review Online. Take-away: "Barack Obama has carried election-year makeovers to a new high, presenting himself as a uniter of people, someone reaching across the partisan divide and the racial divide -- after decades of promoting polarization in each of his successive rolls."
The WSJ editorial board slams Obama for his ties to Acorn, claiming that his use of the term 'community organizers' is nothing more than shorthand for the type of amoral leaders who are employed by the advocacy group making headlines for alleged voter fraud. Take-away: "Mr. Obama was happy to associate with Acorn when it suited his purposes But now that he's on the brink of the presidency, he wants to disavow his ties."
In a significant reversal from the primaries when both candidates faced an uphill struggle in the battleground state, McCain's prospects in Pennsylvania now look bleak, wrote David Broder in the WaPo. Take-away: "McCain's task of recapturing Pennsylvania from the Democrats look[s] almost like Mission Impossible."
McCain's campaign will be remembered as an Aristotelian tragedy where the hero is doomed by the choices he makes, wrote Hendrik Hertzberg in the New Yorker. Take-away: "The rallies McCain and Palin have held around the country turned into bloodcurdling hate-fests."