Was It Over When the Germans Bombed Pearl Harbor?

My feelings on the Presidential race with seven weeks left are nicely summed up by Tigerhawk...

First, there is a long way to go, and plenty of opportunities for such a well-financed campaign as Barack Obama's to right itself and storm to victory. The debates are still in front of us, and there are gaffe and scandal opportunities aplenty between now and November 4. Some of them will hurt the Republicans. Unless of course the Democrats and the press spend the next two months taking cheap shots at Sarah Palin, in which case McCain will win 40 states. Unfortunately, if Nancy Pelosi's sudden reticence hints at a new strategy then the Democrats are finally getting a clue. Let's hope it takes the media a few more days to digest the new orders.

Second, if the Democrats really are "panicking" this early in the game is it any wonder that they have such a hard time winning the White House? I mean, who wants to be governed by people who panic 50 days before the actual election?

Third, I seriously doubt that Democrats who count are actually panicking. This spate of stories may well mean that they are already finding their balance. If I were Barack Obama, I would be hoping that the Republicans get cocky right about now. These panic stories are just what the doctor ordered.

McCain has thrown Obama off his game, and the press has responded by trying to do everything possible to destroy Sarah Palin, but instead annihilating their own credibility. And Obama's silly ad regarding McCain's alleged e-illiteracy is an embarassing output of being rattled...

In a single not-very-compelling ad calling McCain a clueless geezer who can't even send email, the Obama campaign managed to draw attention to his war injuries again, to show that it doesn't even know that the 2000 McCain campaign actually pioneered the insurgent Web tactics that Obama used in the 2008 primary, and to produce an ad that seems tailor-made to alienate voters more than a few years older than Obama, all without providing any actual reason to, you know, vote for Obama. That's a combination of cluelessness, sloppiness, and narcissism -- it's clear they can't conceive that McCain could have pioneered anything on the Web, and they're probably too young to actually remember the 2000 election -- that seems emblematic of where that campaign has been lately. Hubris coupled with poor execution is not a recipe for success.

Jake Tapper provided us with the context for what Instapundit referenced...

Assuredly McCain isn't comfortable talking about this -- and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this -- but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn't use a computer or send email is because of his war wounds.

I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again "playing the POW card," but it's simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically.

He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general the injuries he sustained as a POW -- ones that make it impossible for him to raise his arms high enough to comb his hair -- mean that small tasks make his shoulders ache, so he tries to avoid any repetitive exercise.

Again, it's not that he can't type, he just by habit avoids when he can repetitive exercise involving his arms. He does if he has to, as with handshaking or autographs.

It's certainly possible that the Obama campaign did not know this, since McCain makes it sound in interviews as if this is a matter of choice, not discomfort because of his war wounds.

In the last two weeks, Obama's media supporters have hounded Sarah Palin to "prove" that her youngest son (born with Downs synrome) is really hers, and Joe Biden made the innocent mistake of asking a Democratic official in a wheelchair to "stand up" at a rally. Now, the Obama campaign makes a commercial mocking McCain's inability to do something that occurred because of his war wounds. At this rate, I'm wondering if Obama's staff plans to show up and heckle at fall Special Olympics events.

This is the sign of a campaign in serious trouble. The GOP should not rely on this to continue, but you have to wonder if Obama's emphasis on his effectiveness in running a campaign as an example of his abilities as an executive is a good idea.