The hyperbolic tone was just what jittery markets--and a jittery nation needed--and, according to the New York Times, he got a fair number of his facts wrong and generally misrepresented Obama, or took him out of context, on just about everything.

You know it's bad for Republicans when...two new polls out of the Old Dominion give the Democratic candidate for president a double digit lead there...when three recent polls show John McCain trailing by double digits in the state that made him a national political figure...and when a new survey of Minnesotans suggests Al Franken could be sworn into the U.S Senate next January. Is a 60-seat Democratic majority in the Senate possible? There may be froth in some of these poll numbers, but it appears neither Sarah Palin's debate performance nor the passage of the financial bailout bill has slowed, let alone reversed, the pro-Obama, anti-GOP trend that's been gathering momentum for two and half weeks. Which means McCain will feel enormous pressure tomorrow night to produce a game-changing moment, lest the trend become irreversible and Republicans start ruminating openly about how to rebuild from the ashes of an apocalyptic defeat.

UPDATE: Another sign: Howard Wolfson agrees with Charles Krauthammer. Surely this means the end is nigh!

At around 3:30 p.m. Monday, CNN provided a perfect illustration for the current moment in this presidential race. When John McCain took the stage in Albuquerque, N.M., about two thirds of the screen was consumed by a tight zoom of the big board above the trading floor on Wall Street--giant numbers showing a dramatic collapse in stock values and retirement funds across the country.

On the other side of the screen, there was John McCain, his head dwarfed in size by the big green numbers. The image was so alarming--the financial collapse now overshadows the presidential campaign--that one could easily overlook the importance of the words McCain spoke. The Albuquerque speech represented a dramatic pivot in the McCain campaign's strategy, to what Republican strategists have called the "Manchurian Candidate" attack.

The Manchurian Candidate is an well-trod technique in political warfare: You claim that you are the candidate people know, while your opponent is not who he seems to be. In fact, you argue, he has secret ulterior motives that he is trying to hide. You say he is a danger to all that the country holds dear. Ana posted the McCain's speech below, but let me repost some of the excerpts, edited for brevity to show how the Manchurian strategy works:

I didn't just show up out of nowhere, after all -- America knows me. You know my strengths and my faults. You know my story and my convictions.. . . And the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent. Even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don't know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign. We have all heard what he has said, but it is less clear what he has done or what he will do. What Senator Obama says today and what he has done in the past are often two different things. He has often changed his positions in this campaign, and the best way to determine where he would really take this country is to examine where he has tried to take it in the past. . . . For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. . . . Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Senator Obama.

More after the jump:

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The St. Pete Times reports that Florida's GOP Chairman is getting a cold shoulder from the McCain campaign, after a meeting last week in which he complained about the quality of its ground operation there:

Palin's high-profile visit, her second to Florida, comes at a pivotal time. Polls show Democrat Barack Obama is now reaping a reward in the polls for having spent millions in advertising over the summer, and Florida Republicans have begun to question the strategy of Sen. John McCain's campaign in the state.

As an apparent sign of the tension between the state party and the McCain campaign, Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer is welcome to attend the events, as long as he makes his own travel arrangements.

The snub comes after Greer forced a tense, top-secret meeting Tuesday with McCain's Florida team and offered a critical take on what it needs to do to prevail in the must-win state.

Greer had already drawn stares from fellow Republicans for comments he made to the New York Times about Palin's shaky TV interviews with Katie Couric.

"She needs to be briefed more on certain aspects," he said. "She continues to be viewed very positively by the base of the party, but she needs to demonstrate that she's got the knowledge and ability to be president should the need arise."

Tommy Vietor, attack puppy:

“On a day when the markets are plunging and the credit crisis is putting millions of jobs at risk, the one truly angry candidate in this race kept up his strategy of ‘turning the page’ on the economy by unleashing another frustrated tirade against Barack Obama. And if John McCain is wondering why he’s lost his credibility, he should look no further than the out-of-context quote he took from a 2007 speech in which Barack Obama warned of the subprime crisis we’re now facing. Since then, John McCain has called for less regulation no fewer than 20 times, proving that he hasn’t learned any lessons from the last banking scandal he was involved in and would give us more of the same failed economic policies as President."

They take apart his use of an old quote after the jump.

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McCain's at an Albequerque event happening as I type; his prepared remarks have him taking his most direct jabs at Obama yet:

This is the agenda I have set before my fellow citizens. And the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent. Even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don't know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign.

We have all heard what he has said, but it is less clear what he has done or what he will do. What Senator Obama says today and what he has done in the past are often two different things. He has often changed his positions in this campaign, and the best way to determine where he would really take this country is to examine where he has tried to take it in the past.

My opponent has invited serious questioning by announcing a few weeks ago that he would quote -- "take off the gloves." Since then, whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar.

Rather than answer his critics, Senator Obama will try to distract you from noticing that he never answers the serious and legitimate questions he has been asked. But let me reply in the plainest terms I know. I don't need lessons about telling the truth to American people. And were I ever to need any improvement in that regard, I probably wouldn't seek advice from a Chicago politician.

My opponent's touchiness every time he is questioned about his record should make us only more concerned. For a guy who's already authored two memoirs, he's not exactly an open book. It's as if somehow the usual rules don't apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there's always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But ask such questions and all you get in response is another barrage of angry insults.

Whole thing is after the jump. The speech's main thrust? "Even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don't know about Senator Obama."

Audience reacting wildly to every (negative) mention of the Illinois senator.

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• "Mistress Johanna, owner of Le Salon DeSade, and her business partner are drafting paperwork to create DomPAC to help lobby lawmakers to rewrite prostitution laws to protect BDSM practices." [Jezebel]

• "'You let me down. Yes 'me'--me and everyone else who has ever defended you,' wrote Cohen--again! Pity poor Richard, who gives so much of his heart to faithless politicians--in an open letter where he noted that he'd been unable to find a single Clinton defender during his recent stay in Davos." [TNR]

• I need a translation of Tina Brown. [The Daily Beast]

• "In a series of particularly relevant experiments, psychologists Todd Rogers and Michael I. Norton recently showed that most people are extremely poor at spotting even dramatic discrepancies between questions and answers." [WP]

• "Samarra now is totally different from four years ago. It is an ancient and holy town for all Muslims. This town expresses the historical heritage and glory for the Muslim caliphs. But now it is submerged in worry, restricted by concrete walls." [Baghdad Bureau Blog]

Child is father to the man, etc. From TNR's rather exhaustive look at Palin's formative years:

But Palin compensated for what she lacked in talent (and height) with a freakish intensity. When I asked Elwyn Fischer, another classmate, how Palin got the nickname "barracuda," he thought it had to do with "that little grin thing she does." "She sets her teeth, it looks like she's eating jerky," Fischer said. "Flashing some fang, you know." Teeguarden allowed that "as a young player--freshman, sophomore--she was a bit foul-prone. ... She wasn't about to back down. I'm guessing it was connected to those kinds of things."

Palin is often described in profiles as an academic standout. But, as on the basketball court, she was good but not great. Like most high schools, Wasilla had several distinct subcultures--among them, a religious/jock clique, of which Palin was a part, and a group of more bookish kids that took AP classes and studied theater. "We were considered the geekier, nerdy kids. We were smarter," recalls Elle Ede, another classmate. And yet Palin didn't lack for academic ambition. Rodger Foreman, one of her English teachers, would allow students to appeal their exam grades if they felt they'd been scored harshly. Foreman recalls that Palin regularly availed herself of the appeals process. "She was kind of like that. She thought she was right."

By the way, I really wanted to work in a "Trollope" joke here but was worried you'd think I was referring to that insane Cindy McCain story.

I'm of two minds about how to deal with the McCain campaign's further descent into ugliness. Their strategy is simple: you throw crap against a wall and then giggle as the media try to analyze the putresence in a way that conveys a sense of balance: "Well, it is bull-pucky, but the splatter pattern is interesting..." which, of course, only serves to get your perverse message out. I really don't want to be a part of that. But...every so often, we journalists have a duty to remind readers just how dingy the McCain campaign, and its right-wing acolytes in the media (I'm looking at you, Sean Hannity) have become--especially in their efforts to divert public attention from the economic crisis we're facing. And so inept at it: other campaigns have decided that their only shot is going negative, but usually they don't announce it, as several McCain aides have in recent days--there's no way we can win on the economy, so we're going to go sludge-diving.

But since we are dealing with manure here, I'll put the rest of this post below the fold.

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In case your Monday morning started out too cheerfully:

The researchers found most children are aware that women and minorities have been excluded from the U.S. presidency. Although most of the children believed people of all races and genders should be president, they offered surprising answers as to why only white males have held the nation's highest political office:

* One in four participants said it is illegal for women and minorities to hold the office of president;
* One in three children attributed the lack of female, African-American and Latino presidents to racial and gender bias on the part of voters; and
* While some children expressed the belief that prejudice shapes how adults vote, another third of the participants said members of the excluded groups lacked the skills to hold the position.

I'd love to know the race/class/gender breakdown among those subgroups, and by "love" I mean, "I want to find out if my assumptions about the race/class/gender breakdown among those subgroups matches my exceedingly pessimistic assumptions." Because I don't think I'd really "love" to know.

But that's all gonna change, right?