McCain is an ally of a very unpopular president and has age running against him. This race should not be close at all given the issues. One obvious reason for the closeness of the contest is race.

From a poll conducted by Stanford for AP and Yahoo, it appears that race is a factor even among Democrats. While the US has made great progress in the last 40 years, it may not be enough for the first black candidate to win. There are still a lot of bigots out there.

More than a third of all white Democrats and independents -- voters Obama can't win the White House without -- agreed with at least one negative adjective about blacks, according to the survey, and they are significantly less likely to vote for Obama than those who don't have such views.

...

Just 59 percent of her white Democratic supporters said they wanted Obama to be president. Nearly 17 percent of Clinton's white backers plan to vote for McCain.

Among white Democrats, Clinton supporters were nearly twice as likely as Obama backers to say at least one negative adjective described blacks well, a finding that suggests many of her supporters in the primaries -- particularly whites with high school education or less -- were motivated in part by racial attitudes.

Race, at its core, is no more than a few difference on a few alleles that is reflected in phenotypical difference such as hair, skeleton, and skin color. It says nothing about the individual difference between people and certainly should not be the basis for stereotypes. Sadly, it often is.

In Obama's case, this is even more true as he is the son of a African father and a mother of European descent. As he himself as often noted, he is neither black nor white. He was raised largely by his white grandparents. He attended world class schools where he excelled. Why would people infer things about his character and intelligence from his phenotype? I think this is a sad comment on America that so many do.

Lipstick Bungle, an editorial by Charles Blow in today's NY Times, delves further into the NY Times/CBS poll. It examines in more detail the responses concerning Gov Palin.

McCain has said and certainly demonstrated this week that he is weak on economics. There is amble evidence that Palin shares this trait. Blow notes her "financial credentials include running Wasilla into debt, listing (but not selling) a plane on EBay and flip-flopping on a bridge to wherever. In fact, when it comes to real issues in general, she may prove to be a liability."

He thinks that even Republican support for Palin may be superficial and he should have picked Romney, who has sound credentials. As for Palin, 77% of Republicans had favorable opinions of Palin, but "when asked what specifically they liked about her, their top five reasons were that she was honest, tough, caring, outspoken and fresh-faced. Sounds like a talk-show host, not a vice president. (By the way, her intelligence was in a three-way tie for eighth place, right behind 'I just like her.')" As to what they like least, they chose "her lack of experience, her record as governor and her lack of foreign-policy experience." He notes that 1/3 said they would be concerned if she should actually become president. He close with the following.

Many of your supporters will no doubt cry sexism. Fine with me. But that defense rings hollow. I find many of them to be sexist. Fresh-faced? Delegates on the floor of the Republican National Convention wearing buttons like “Hoosiers for the hot chick”?

The Washington Post notes that "Obama met in Coral Gables, Fla., with his economic advisers and then strongly endorsed the work of Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. Obama said he supported giving the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve the broad authority they need to shore up the system."

Understandably, McCain did not react directly to the emerging plans on how to avoid further economic damage. "But while he, too, said both parties must work together to solve the crisis, he mostly spent the day going after Obama in highly personal terms, saying the senator from Illinois had been 'gaming' the system rather than trying to reform it."

"We've heard a lot of words from Senator Obama over the course of this campaign," McCain said. "But maybe just this once he could spare us the lectures, and admit to his own poor judgment in contributing to these problems. The crisis on Wall Street started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling, and he was right square in the middle of it." He added: "That's not country first. That's Obama first."

Huh? Sen McCain knows a lot about lobbing. Remember the Keating affair? McCain was lucky to have survived it and Keating ended up a convicted felon.

While McCain worked hard to somehow blame his opponent for the crisis, Obama was supporting what had been done so far to solve it and looking forward to how to prevent a repeat.

Obama said the potential cost of the financial rescue would not prevent him from pushing for a middle-class tax cut if he becomes president, arguing that broad-based tax cuts are part of a long-term solution to the economy's ills.

He deflected a questioner who wondered whether, by deferring his own financial rescue plan until Washington has acted, he was standing on the sidelines at a time of economic crisis.

"You don't do it in a day," he said. "We'd better do it in an intelligent, systematic, thoughtful fashion. I'm much less interested at this point in scoring political points than I am in making sure that we have a structure in place that is sound and is actually going to work."

McCain tried to somehow convince people that others were to blame including his opponent. He really did nothing to help resolved the crisis. In stead he tried to leverage fear and doubt to his own advantage.

Obama noted that the administration was doing a good job stemming the crisis, but that more needed to be done. He sought the advice of knowledgeable people. He tried to calm people's fears. As Roosevelt said in similar circumstances, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." There is no doubt in my mind who was more presidential.

Johathan Capehart reacted much as i did to Palin's comment in Michigan about a Palin and McCain administration. She has a long career of getting people to support her while she is trying to obtain a new office and then turning on them savagely. She reminds me of a black widow spider then eats its mate.

Fact Check notes that "an Obama-Biden ad says McCain supports "cutting benefits in half" for Social Security recipients. False!" It is far more complex than that. and would amount to far less that half and apply only to individuals born after a new law went into efffect. It does note that McCain does support letting individuals invest some of the their retirement funds in stocks and bonds. That is true. Wonder how that would have effected folks living on the margin during the current crisis? Go think.

Fact Check has an article that both candidates have misrepresented the others positions on issues important to Hispanic Americans. The Obama ad tries to link Rush Limbaugh and McCain to slurs of Mexicans by Limbaugh. It is not clear what Limbaugh actually said, but it is clear that they do not represent McCain's views. Limbaugh has been no friend of McCains and only recently began to support him.

McCain's ad "blames 'Obama and his Congressional allies' for blocking an immigration bill that McCain co-sponsored. But it was a Republican-led filibuster that sunk the bill in the Senate, and McCain said afterward that 'A lot of the Republican base was passionate about the issue, and they made their influence felt.'”

The Just the Facts video on FactChec.org is worth a watch as it summarizes the weeks misinformation by both campaigns.