1. The New York Times’ Adam Nagourney argues that micro-problems can add up to macro-losses in national political campaigns. He lists eight relatively small factors that added up to big worries for Hillary Clinton. In no particular order: the timing of the Edwards endorsement; Michigan and Florida; Bill Clinton; The Drudge Report; the tipping scandal; Joe Trippi’s work for Edwards; immigrant driver’s licenses; and planted questions/false rumors spread by Clinton forces.
2. Two new online indexes have debuted. The Clinton campaign has a kind-of-interactive time line index of all the hardball “attacks” Obama has delivered this cycle, as part of a larger effort to diminish Obama’s claim to rising above “old” politics. It’s a long list, though it would be interesting to see how much longer an equally-comprehensive Clinton index would read. Also, the Democratic National Committee has developed a “wiki” of negative information about John McCain. Like the HilliaryHub index, it should be read with a skeptical eye. For as the Daily Show blog asks with sarcasm, “Who better to tell us all the truth about Democratic rival John McCain than Democrats?”
3. The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz does the most complete and authoritative wrap up to date of the McCain campaign’s increasingly aggressive (read: bellicose) approach to the press. It is still true that candidate John McCain spends far more time with the press than any of his rivals. But that carrot is now matched with a ever-larger stick: ever-more contentious relations between the McCain camp and the reporters he once called “my base.” (Note the accompanying photograph of my no-relation namesake at the Post, Michael Shear, whom the newspaper’s caption writers declined to identify. He’s the guy on the left.)