Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

The polls show a tightening race, reflecting how perniciously effective smear politics can still be. McCain campaign mud, at least for the time being, is filling in the blanks of an opponent largely unknown to some clueless segment of the electorate.

The dilemma for Obama is how to respond. Trying to stay about it all, as John Kerry did in 2004, is a losing strategy, but full-throttle counterattacks raise the risk of making Obama seem thin-skinned and easily rattled.

Ridicule is iffy. Yesterday the Democratic candidate got some mileage from tweaking McCain about his flipflop on tire inflation for better gas mileage, but too much of that could make him look unpleasantly sarcastic.

For the long haul, Barack Obama has to concentrate on defining himself and his politics for an electorate that wants change but at the same time is wary of risk. He should establish himself as strong enough to withstand smears and then let his surrogates and his eventual running mate deal with the most of the tactical back-and-forth.

-- ROBERT STEIN

Right now, the type of voter who's paying attention is primed to support John McCain. After the conventions, when younger voters typically tune in -- and by younger here, I mean, under 55 or so -- then Obama's margins will widen because these folks are his folks.

-- MARC AMBINDER

We too often expect knee-jerk reactions to events of the day; rarely, in fact, do we see them. With few exceptions public opinion proceeds, instead, by a process known as considered judgment: People obtain information as it develops, evaluate it, let it accumulate to the point that it warrants reconsideration of existing attitudes, and at that point re-evaluate and either maintain or change their views.

Attitudes, this means, are far less flighty or reactive to individual events than is commonly assumed; for the most part they are, actually, rational. Obama's trip, like everything else he's doing - and ditto for John McCain - are therefore about building a case, not about changing daily numbers (which, at this stage, are fundamentally silly).

-- GARY LANGER

Three weeks out from the Democratic convention and Hillary Clinton is slowly emerging from her self-imposed summer hibernation to haunt the party with the prospect that she will at the very least, horn in on some of the presumptive nominee’s glory just by her presence in Denver.

Was her low profile the result of her licking the psychic wounds of being defeated for the nomination? Previous losers have indicated as much and we have no reason to doubt that Clinton was using the time between the end of the primaries and just recently to decompress from the brutal campaign and reflect on the future.

-- RICK MORAN

The Washington Post reports the McCain campaign is offering its supporters "points" -- redeemable for awesome McCain-themed prizes! -- if they go and spread the campaign's message on message boards, blog comment sections, web sites, and anywhere else that free expression is tolerated. Of course, this isn't a new tactic. As the Post notes, "the Chinese government has paid Chinese citizens token sums for each favorable comment about government policies they post in chat rooms and on blogs." Country first, indeed.

-- EZRA KLEIN

Cartoon by John Sherrfius/Boulder (Colo.) Camera