Attila winning the race

John McCain needs a miracle to win. That, or Sarah Palin.

It’s not that Palin has experience, political know-how or judgment. She just knows how to speak.

That might sound funny given her interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson, but somewhere between then and the vice-presidential debate, she learned how to attack.

As of last Wednesday, McCain was down 11 points. With a month to go, being aggressive is the only way he stands a chance.

Hillary Clinton’s top campaign manager, Mark Penn, wrote in a March 2007 memo that
Obama wasn’t fundamentally American and that he was “unelectable except perhaps against Attila the Hun.”

It is sobering to think that Clinton and McCain are less fundamentally American than Attila the Hun.  

With the economy dogging him, McCain hasn’t been able to connect Fannie Mae to the failure of the economy. His debate style and speaking ability are tame and off-message.

The only way he can win now is with Palin pushing the issue of Obama’s radical relationships, and she has been doing a pretty good job of it.

On Oct. 4, Palin said, “Our opponent is someone who thinks that America is imperfect enough to pal around with a terrorist who targeted his own country,” referring to William Ayers.

Obama responded with a video attacking McCain for his connections to the Keating Five, a political scandal in 1989, in which McCain was cleared of wrongdoing.
Obama’s advisers also went on the defense.

First, David Axelrod said Obama didn’t know about Ayers’ radical past. Then Valerie Jarrett assured us that Ayers won’t have a spot in an Obama administration.  
(I hope Axelrod makes more money than Jarrett.)

McCain can only hope Obama continues to bring up the Keating Five scandal because his response legitimizes McCain’s attacks, and McCain sure has a lot more ammo to attack with.

Ayers is just the start of it. Palin hinted to New York Times columnist William Kristol that she would be bringing up Rev. Jeremiah Wright as part of her effort to expose “the real Barack Obama.”

The most damning connection might be Tony Rezko. The Wright and Ayers accusations succeed in portraying Obama as having radical political views, but Rezko undermines Obama’s whole message of hope and change.

There is nothing yet to connect Obama to any of the crimes that Rezko is being charged with, but Rezko is currently talking with prosecutors about corruption in Chicago government in exchange for a reduced sentence.

I’m sure McCain would like to give Rezko a pardon if he lets the prosecutors know why he was funneling money to Obama and helping him purchase his house.

Obama’s weakest demographic in the primaries was white working-class voters, and white working-class voters are the people who are going to be moved most by questions of Obama’s character.  

The attacks also take the focus off the economy, the issue that has driven Obama’s huge margin.

Can these attacks change the race by double digits in less than a month? Maybe not, but they’re McCain’s best shot.