Day One

Jon Chait wonders if John McCain is deliberately echoing Hillary Clinton's campaign themes in an effort to face her in the primary: "Every poll now shows Obama performing better than Clinton against McCain. On average, he does five and a half points better than her, which is a very significant margin." Chait has in mind McCain's rather implausible efforts to cast himself as the candidate of policy details, but I clicked over to McCain's website today and was surprised to see that the slogan reproduced above.

This raises the possibility that McCain's campaign team is just lazy. After all, they can't be bothered to out-organized Mike Huckabee even though he's got no money and no machine support. Maybe all they do all day is hang back, look at which Democrat is leading in the polls, and rip off the other one's campaign themes. Mac is Back, in ur base rippin off ur narrativz.