Hacktacular!

Just heard Chuck Todd and Ron Brownstein, respectable establishment political figures and vote-counters, explain on Hardball how McCain would "park himself in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania" during a general election matchup against Obama, trying to capture downscale voters that Obama is apparently struggling with.

Riiight. Michigan, that state John McCain couldn't beat Mitt Romney in despite there being no competing Democratic race and with crossover voters allowed to participate. Michigan, where McCain said the jobs aren't ever coming back. Ohio, where NAFTA is reviled and where McCain tried to say that changing NAFTA would be bad because then Canada won't help us in Afghanistan, or something. An ardent free trader running in the Rust Belt. With the support of Mike "I just got my clock cleaned in Ohio by populist Sherrod Brown" DeWine. The guy who has admitted to not knowing anything about the economy. That guy,

It's possible that McCain COULD bank on a strategy of winning the Rust Belt, but of course George Bush campaigned pretty hard in Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2000 and 2004, so the idea that Republicans try to win there is nothing new. Why this seems like such a slam-dunk to the Chuck Todds of the world is probably because - well, because he's St. Maverick of McCain.

Later, Chris Matthews plays a clip of Barack Obama talking about how parents need to engage with their children ("make sure they do their homework, put away the video games, turn off the TV") and can't understand how a Democratic candidate would make such a "conservative" statement. Because personal responsibility is inherently conservative. Just ask every conservative who's been indicted and hauled off to jail how much they value personal responsibility; I mean, they all made guilty pleas for their corruption, right?

Ugh, journamalism.

UPDATE: Obama will not have a problem with voters worried about their economic security.

"We are not standing on the brink of recession because of forces beyond our control," Obama told a town hall forum in Austin. "This was not an inevitable part of the business cycle. It was a failure of leadership in Washington — a Washington where George Bush hands out billions of tax cuts to the wealthiest few for eight long years, and John McCain promises to make those same tax cuts permanent, embracing the central principle of the Bush economic program."

In remarks Obama aides suggested were a rebuke to McCain as well as Bush, Obama said more is needed than just "to change faces in the White House," but that the country "needs a change of leadership."