Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

[T]he words "William Ayers" appeared nowhere in yesterday's debate, despite the fact that the McCain campaign hinted for days that McCain would go hard at Obama's associations.

Now Politico reports that McCain advisers are privately indicating that Ayers, and Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright, may be off the table for good.

If it's really true that the McCain team is holstering this pistol, it suggests that the McCain campaign's internal polling on how the Ayers stuff is playing is just brutal, likely among independents. It also suggests that Obama's counter-attack -- lambasting McCain's campaign for wanting to change the subject from the economy to personal attacks -- has been effective.

-- GREG SARGENT

John McCain may not be toast, but he's certainly approaching English muffin territory.

-- AMY SULLIVAN

Once there was a president in the Oval office who understood the ramifications of killing innocent civilians abroad, even for an operation that might appear on its face to advance American interest. . . .

That happened in 1985, and the president was Ronald Reagan, the man that Sarah Palin and John McCain have practically nominated for sainthood. But Palin and McCain have in fact dishonored Reagan, and all the leaders from both parties who have come before them, with their cavalier attitude toward how America treats other people around the globe, and how other people should perceive us. We see this in their vicious and petty high school pep rally approach to politics -- where chants of "drill baby drill" seem to be morphing dangerously closer to "kill baby kill" every passing day.

-- WILL BUNCH

John McCain is in deep trouble. In spite of some incremental gains that McCain has made in some national tracking polls, the state polling . . . is so strong for Obama that he continues to hit record marks in all three of our projection metrics. We are now projecting Obama to win the election 90.5 percent of the time, with an average of 346.8 electoral votes, and a 5.4-point margin in the national popular vote.

-- NATE SILVER

Tribal politics assumes some affinity, whether based on real or fictive kinship, and speaking for myself I find that I have few affinities with the tribe I am usually expected to defend and support. Belonging to a political team presupposes that you are pursuing the same goals, and to the extent that being a movement conservative means having a goal of supporting the GOP more or less regardless of what it does then I don’t share those goals, either. This logic of being a team player has been taken to absurd depths in the last eight years, as anyone who broke with "the Family" has been penalized for violating the political equivalent of the code of omerta. In "the Family," when someone ends up at odds with the boss he has to go to serve as an example to others. Disloyalty is not good for business, and if you know what’s good for you you’ll keep your mouth shut.

. . . Loyalty and power rise and fall, as I suppose they have always done, in direct proportion: as Mr. Bush has become weaker, the more willing his former supporters are to turn against him. The disloyal ones are no longer penalized, and it is taken for granted that this new disloyalty is necessary. Indeed, under the new boss, it is positively vital to make clear that you believe that the new boss is nothing like the old boss. The scramble to flee from Bush after years of shameless support shows that the collective good of the team/tribe takes precedence, except when it doesn’t. Turning on the boss and his people if it helps "the Family" in the long term is considered acceptable, but I suppose that is the kind of decision that can only be made at the Don level. It’s not for mere peons.

-- DANIEL LARISON

[Sarah Palin] represents a fatal cancer to the Republican Party.

-- DAVID BROOKS

Obama's supporters, as they push to win this dead-even battleground state, are talking directly about race, betting that the best way to raise their neighbors' comfort level with the prospect of the first black president is to openly confront their feelings.

When Cecil E. Roberts, president of the coal miners union that shapes politics in much of this mountain region [of Buchanan County, Virginia], talks to voters, he tells them that their choice is to have "a black friend in the White House or a white enemy." When Charlie Cox, an Obama supporter, hears friends fretting about Obama's race, he reminds them that they pull for the nearby University of Tennessee football team, "and they're black."

Union organizer Jerry Stallard asks fellow coal workers what's more important: improving their work conditions or holding onto their skepticism of Obama's race, culture or religion. "We're all black in the mines," he tells them.

-- PETER WALLSTEN

I think McCain is down to seeds and stems.

-- RICK HERTZBERG

It seems to me that in the absence of a real press conference, the networks and cable news networks should simply cease broadcasting her speeches live and demand of every Republican guest that they explain this descent into anti-democratic territory. Bush and Cheney despise the press and despise the constitutional balances that restrict their dictatorial impulses. They don't recognize the rule of law as an impediment to the exercise of their power and they don't acknowledge any democratic input, apart from a single "accountability moment" every four years. And now they want to prevent the public's ability through the press to ask the toughest questions and toughest follow-ups even during that one "accountability moment".

This is how Putin behaves. It is anti-American. It has never been tried in modern times before. It is a chilling attack on an open society and the accountability of its leaders to the people they serve. The press has a duty to stand up against it - and to care more about the process than its own precious reputation in the mouths of Hannity, Steyn, Palin and the rest of them.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

The next debate will be the most important debate of the campaign – yet neither Barack Obama nor John McCain will be present. The next debate is about what happens to conservatism after John McCain's defeat in November.

-- DAVID KUO

Cartoon by Pat OLiphant/Universal Press Syndicate