Memo to McCain: I'm sorry. The market is in the tank; It's the economy, stupid!

Crooks and Liars:

In response to 13 minute documentary of Keating Five scandal, the McCain campaign said that bringing up this scandal is a hit job:

Speaking to reporters on a conference call, John Dowd, a partner at the powerhouse lobbying/consulting firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, painted the Keating investigation as a "political smear job" led by Democrats who needed to make the issue a bipartisan embarrassment rather than own it themselves.

Ben Smith says:

I'd always thought McCain's great strength in defending the Keating affair was that he'd acknolwedged making a huge mistake, and spent his career repenting by recasting himself as a reformer.

So when his campaign puts his lawyer on the line with reporters to contest the details of a congressional inquiry that, largely, let McCain off the hook, doesn't that cloud the sin-confession-atonement dynamic a bit?

And what kind of campaign that the Smear Talk Express is now running?:

TPM:

So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out "terrorist." McCain paused while the audience laughed at the comment, and then continued with his attack — without condemning or admonishing the audience member

And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out "kill him", though it's not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn't seem to matter.

Yup, a racist and very ugly campaign. While McCain runs a very negative campaign of attacking Obama, his poll number tanks:

The new Wall St. Journal/NBC poll has Barack Obama and Joe Biden ahead of McCain/Palin by 49% to 43%. This is a pretty astonishing drop for McCain:
Sen. McCain's support in rural areas and small towns, where he led by 21 points after his convention, has steadily dropped and he now has just a three-point edge.

Finally, the market plummets:

The Plunge: Dow drops 800 points

Banker named bailout chief; Bush: It'll take time; homelessness spikes.