North Korea

Question - A new international crisis is good news for which candidate for President?

Answer - the one who is qualified for the job.

Kim Jong-il, North Korea's leader, is seriously ill and is likely to have suffered a stroke weeks ago, American officials said Tuesday, raising the prospect of a chaotic power struggle in nuclear-armed North Korea.

McCain really started to turn his campaign around with his reaction to the Russian invasion of Georgia last month. Now, the news is playing to his benefit once again.

Kim's health is a topic of intense interest among governments and security experts, especially because Western officials are unclear about who would succeed the man known as the "Dear Leader."

North Korea is one of the world's most isolated and unpredictable states, and a messy transfer of power would focus new attention on the security of its nuclear weapons arsenal.

McCain had experience enough to seize the moment that Georgia represented. He has experience with Korea as well.

Where's the Competition?

Is the possible Obama money miscalculation being exacerbated by overreaching in the number of states it wants to put into play.

"One of our strategic goals here is to wake up on the morning of Nov. 4 with as many pathways to 270 electoral votes as possible," David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, recently told reporters. Nov. 4 is election day.

There are a number of states where Barack has organization and has spent money on advertising where McCain still looks stronger.

McCain has no field office in Georgia, using instead a Florida-based office for the Southeast. Yet he has reason for optimism: An aggregate of public polls compiled by the website Pollster.com shows McCain with a 6-point lead in Georgia.

Obama is pushing hard in North Carolina.

No Democratic candidate for president has won North Carolina since Jimmy Carter in 1976. This year, Obama has sent more than 100 paid staff to the state. The same nonpartisan ad study, compiled in part by the Wisconsin Advertising Project, showed that Obama aired more than $1.6 million worth of ads in North Carolina over a seven-week period this summer, compared with none for McCain.

Yet Pollster.com showed McCain with a 3-point edge in North Carolina.

The McCain managers are also unfazed by Barack's Montana incursion.

Montana is a small prize with just three electoral votes, but it has gotten considerable attention from the Obama campaign. Obama is airing TV commercials in the state, which last voted Democratic in the 1992 presidential race. He has opened 17 offices in Montana and visited the state five times, according to Democratic officials.

Republicans aren't the only ones unimpressed with Barack's strategy.

Even some Democrats privately wonder about Obama's strategy, questioning whether resources might be better spent on states that look more winnable.

When you combine the potential for Barack's refusal of federal funds to lead to money struggles as the steam comes out of his campaign with a possible overreach on strategy, Barack may have created a potential disaster scenario.

In McCain's view, the election hinges on several Rust Belt and Upper Midwest states, particularly Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as the perennial battleground of Florida.

All Georgians

John McCain continues to capitalize on events in Georgia.

McCain considers himself a close friend and fervent supporter of Saakashvili and Georgia, and has taken a hard line against Russia since hostilities between the two countries began last week. He told a town hall meeting here today that Russia's aggression had ominous implications.

Even as Barack continues to look not ready for prime time.

"We must make clear to Russian leaders that the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world require respect for the values, stability and peace of that world.''

A McCain spokeswoman said McCain initiated today's call, but that the two men speak frequently.

McCain told the audience that Saakashvili "knows that the thoughts and prayers and support of the American people are with that brave little nation as they struggle today for their freedom and independence. He wanted me to say thank you, to give you his heartfelt thanks for the support of the American people."

McCain said he told him "that I know I speak for every American when I say to him today, we are all Georgians.''

Barack's Mushy Response

Is Barack's response to Russia's invasion of Georgia - consisting of mushy, internationalist platitudes - something that will turn from a benign attempt to look presidential into a campaign liability? Perhaps so, when contrasted with McCain's more forceful and specific action oriented comments on Friday.



On the other hand, McCain's people weren't smart enough to make sure his press conference was held in a place where jets wouldn't be warming up!

Barack admits he was talking about race

Barack now admits the obvious, as his campaign manager did before him, that he was referring to race when he said:

So what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, `he's not patriotic enough, he's got a funny name,' you know, `he doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.'

The powerful part of the statement has been ignored. It's the "what they're going to try to do is make you scared of me," part that makes this explosive when combined with the issue of race.

"I am black!" he is shouting out - "You better watch out, because the racist Republicans are coming to get me!"

"I'm young. I'm new to the national scene," Obama said. "My name is Barack Obama. I am African-American. I was born in Hawaii. I spent time in Indonesia. I do not have the typical biography of a presidential candidate. What that means is that I'm sort of unfamiliar and people are still trying to get a fix on who I am."

This is Barack being cute on race - he wants to use it to his advantage by notifying voters of the danger, but he also wants to be the 'post-racial' candidate. If Barack is going to use race as a shield in this election, isn't it time to let go of the claims that he is transcendent?

Meanwhile, the mere inclusion of a blond female in a McCain ad on Barack is designed to stoke the latent racial angst in Americans, we're told, maliciously injecting race into the campaign.

Democrats accused McCain of cynically turning things on their head; by crying foul, they claimed, McCain managed to put race front and center just as he was stepping up his personal attacks on Obama.

Is Barack just trying to keep the minority vote stoked, or does this also work to create a 60's style paradigm in the election that keeps his suburban liberal affluent voters motivated?

Obama benefited in the Democratic presidential primary from anger stirred by suggestions that his rival, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, and her surrogates were using race to appeal to white voters. Although Obama never explicitly made that case -- and usually works to downplay his ethnicity -- he is thought to be counting on strong black support in November to win battleground states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania, and to put Republican-leaning states such as North Carolina and perhaps even Georgia into play.