TPM down the tubes

Less than a day's worth of TPM commentary on McCain:

• 8:44am: "We're still talking about honor with this guy? Face it. This guy is running the sleaziest presidential campaign of our lifetimes. McCain and Palin are out their lying their heads off. Liars have no honor." "a preening fraud"
• 9:56am: "the freaks on Fox News or any of the sycophants at the AP." "John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies." "And today McCain comes out with this rancid, race-baiting ad based on another lie."* "This is ugly stuff. And this is an ugly person. There's clearly no level of sleaze this guy won't stoop to to win this election." "But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes." "They've both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office."
• 10:01am: "There's just no getting around it at this point, the man is not morally fit to serve as president."
• 12:56pm:"he's morally unfit to be president."

TPM used to be smartly written, now it's all Olbermann hyperbole. Things aren't bad or tasteless, they're the worst ever and the sleaziest ever and representative of a lack of any human decency. It's a political campaign, and people take shots at each other, and sometimes they even present less than the full truth of a situation in order to present the best case for their candidate. This is nothing new or surprising, it's the way it's always been. All this wailing and moaning is changing a once well-written blog into the dumbest DailyKos thread. Seriously, "Liars have no honor"? "freaks"? "rancid"? Why not call McCain a poop face, while you're at it?

I think some of this is coming from a place of resentment because McCain is doing well. McCain dominates the news coverage and has run tons of clever, well-made ads. Obama, in comparison, does little attacking and has run a couple of hesitantly critical ads. Obama has all that money and all that creative class support, why the hell can't he put out some happening ads? McCain turned his media campaign around from being dorkily derivative to strong ads that are timely, attractive, and effective. Where's Obama? It's like we're back in the last months of the primary season - Obama wants to sail above it all and run out the clock. Trouble is, this time Obama doesn't have a reserve of won delegates to sit on as he limply coasts to victory.

Oh! While I was composing this, another TPM post:

• 3:21pm:"The whole operation is just one big bamboozling lie." "If McCain and Palin don't like it they should have thought of that before they decided to run as frauds."

This is followed by a cartoon of a big pink pig wearing lipstick. Josh Marshall has a PhD in American history. Now he has also has a blog with pig cartoons.

*The ostensibly race-baiting ad is the McCain sex ed ad, which baits because it has a picture of white children in it. Though, frankly, the kid looking at the camera looks Asian to me.