I'm not privy to any inside thinking. But I do wonder at this point whether there are any second thoughts in the Obama campaign about the decision to (de facto) close down those 527s. A lot of people now seem to be getting it about what McCain's pushing in his 'celeb'/Obama+white girls ad campaign. He's has clearly decided to play on the race issue. But as rancid and dishonorable as McCain's ads are, they are laying down a clear theme for his campaign. And I don't sense a similar one from the Obama camp. The topline national numbers appear to have stabilized. So perhaps the thinking is that for all McCain's sleaze it's not working.

But the lethal message against McCain is that he's four more years of Bush -- on domestic and foreign policy, a lethal message that has the advantage of being undeniably true. I think things would be different right now if that message was being hammered home day in and day out in ads running across the country.