Here's the two key things you need to know about the Palin-McCain campaign's cynical new line of attack:
1. Barack Obama is way ahead of John McCain in this campaign. In fact, he's at or above 50% in three of the four national tracking polls, and leading in all of them.
2. The reason for McCain's slide in the polls is simple: While Barack Obama has focused his campaign on solutions to get this country out of the ditch that Bush-McCain policies have put us in, John McCain has focused his campaign around lies about his opponent and the glorification of his own personality and that of his running mate.
To put it in blunt terms, while Barack Obama has provided answers and solutions, John McCain has provided nothing.
And now John McCain is doubling down on his failed political strategy. He is now insourcing the Swiftboating slime machine that is the hallmark of Bush-Rove-McCain politics.
John McCain thinks the only way he can win this election is by destroying Barack Obama.
But he's wrong.
The problem for John McCain is that this election isn't about Barack Obama.
This election is about what's important to America at this crucial point in our nation's history.
It's about recovering from the disastrous Bush-McCain foreign policy legacy.
It's about recovering from this economic catastrophe unleashed by eight years of Republican economics.
It's about finally doing something about our energy and environmental problems.
It's about changing direction from the past eight years, and on that essential challenge, John McCain has nothing to say.
All he has is character attacks -- character attacks that just won't work.
If we wanted to play his game, we could go after McCain's fundraiser with G. Gordon Liddy who had advocated killing federal agents by shooting them in the face. We could make as a centerpiece of the campaign John McCain's vote against the seminal 1990s legislation that protected women's health clinics from anti-choice terrorists. We could talk about Sarah Palin's involvement with the pro-secessionist Alaskan Independence Party. We could savage her extremist witch-doctor religious freak show.
We could do all that, but that's not what this campaign is about.
This campaign is about the future of our country and the world. We have so many problems that are so serious and need to be dealt with.
Barack Obama is winning because has addressed these problems head on and talks about them every day. Because what matters to him -- and to us -- is delivering the change we need to start moving in the right direction.
John McCain is losing because the only thing that he has to offer is tired, old, recycled attacks on Barack Obama. The only thing he offers is the cynical politics of division. The only thing he offers is lies and deceit.
This November, we're going to move past John McCain, and we're going to close the door on the Bush era once and for all. We're going to leave it behind, in the past, where it belongs.
It's time to get something done for America, and the world.