Don't Call It A Comeback

During the primary, Hillary Clinton reacted to her surprise victory in the New Hampshire primary by saying "I found my voice." That's what's happening this week in the general election.



The commentary is so sharp and the messaging so pointed that the media really is covering it. And Democratic allies, for once, are piling on.

"One Senator -- John McCain -- woke up yesterday morning, surveyed the state of the U.S. economy, summoned the ghost of his fellow Republican, Herbert Hoover, and declared, 'The fundamentals of our economy are strong,'" said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, before laying responsibility for the current woes in part on McCain's economic adviser Phil Gramm.

"I served with Phil Gramm here in the Senate," he said. "The same Phil Gramm who, as a Senator, was responsible for the deregulation of the financial services industry that paved the way for much of this crisis to occur. I like Phil Gramm, I don't like his economics. A respected economist at the University of Texas -- now that's where Phil Gramm taught, in Texas -- a respected economist at the University of Texas, James Galver said that Gramm was, and I quote, 'the most aggressive advocate of every predatory and rapacious element that the financial sector has,' and went on to say he is a 'sorcerer's apprentice of instability and disaster in the financial system.'" [...]

"Since President Bush has been in office, median income for working-aged Americans has gone down by over $2,000 after adjusting for inflation. Family income is going down. People are spending more for food," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "The cost of gas, of course, is now off the wall. College education costs are up. How does that sound like a situation in which 'the fundamentals of our economy are strong,' according to Senator McCain? And the confusion in all of this is pretty easily understood.

"The truth is," Sanders continued, "that the fundamentals of our economy are strong if you are within the top 1 percent of our country. If you're a million or billionaire, you know what, Senator McCain is right. For those people, the fundamentals of the economy are strong."

I love Bernie Sanders.

The outside groups are starting to help as well, and while they exist on both sides, the fact that ours are playing off of this general narrative about conservative failure on the economy gives them a stronger resonance. And then there's the cultural wallpaper that we're starting to see more frequently, like this Hockey Moms for Truth ad:



Or the Palin Truth Squad:

With today's report that Democrats have "airdropped a mini-army of 30 lawyers, investigators and opposition researchers into Anchorage" to find all the skeletons in Sarah Palin's closet before they come to life and overrun Alaska, the McCain-Palin campaign has launched the Palin Truth Squad to keep America safe from the truth about Governor Sarah Palin, her family, her cronies, and her inexperience. In keeping with the general strategy of the McCain campaign, the Palin Truth Squad will make sure that the truth about Sarah Palin is kept as far from American voters as possible.

"We're nervous about Sarah Palin's record of taking on library books, her ex-brother-in-law, and the atmosphere," said former Governor Jane Swift. "Sarah Palin's commitment to pork is becoming well-known, so we seek to distort the truth about it. We will not allow the left and the media to criticize the only mayor in Alaska who made rape victims pay for their own forensic exams. We know the truth and are committed to making sure that it doesn't cloud the mind of a single American voter."

And there are the #invented hashtag jokes exploding on twitter. You know the "I created the Blackberry" thing has reached a cultural tipping point when the Obama campaign is changing their sigs:

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Burton
Sent: Tue 9/16/2008 4:07 PM
To: Ben Smith
Subject:

[snip]
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld, a miracle made possible by John McCain.

And even Sherrod Brown is in on it, quipping: "If he invented the BlackBerry, I blame him for having to spend too much time on my BlackBerry and not talking to my wife enough."

The momentum has shifted, in my humble opinion.