The world changed 09/15 and it has changed everything including the campaign

When the markets opened last Monday morning and Wall Street began it inevitable crash the world changed. No different than when jets were crashed into the World Trade Centers on 9/11/2001. No different when Soviet Union turnaround on 10/22/1962 and the Cuban Missile Crisis and brink of global thermonuclear war. No different than when the Soviet Union launched Spudnik in 1957 (my birth year). No different than 1948 when the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear weapon. No different than when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on that day in infamy. No different than on Black Friday on 10/29/1929. Each of those days and events fundamentally changed the world, in many cases they were not unexpected or unpredicted but so prevailing and substantial in their effect that it changed the course of many human beings lives.

The era of post 9/11 is over. The era of post 9/15/2008 Global Financial Markets Meltdown is upon us. The bottom line is that from now on there is no free market anymore. The idea of freedom from regulation and oversight of the financial markets is over. The fundamental philosophy of governance by the conservative forces in our global corporate society has proved to be as effectual as the laissez faire business philosophy of the early 20th Century---it is dead and unsustainable. But the election day comes closer each hour and from that those who will set the agenda, policy and manage the new world will be decided.

Ironically the campaigns diverged from that morning in tone, message, response, and display as how each would govern and not so coincidentally the polls have reflected how the electorate is responding to the campaigns. On that day that changed the world, John McCain read from his script a sound bite that has byte him in the arse since----"the economy is strong." After catching a plane and landing for another speaking engagement he suddenly acknowledged that the "economy was at great risk" but what he had meant earlier that "the fundamentals of the America economy---its work force was still strong". In those few moments McCain and campaign lost any credibility with America. We all knew that was bullshit and then he followed up by digging a deeper hole----by stating that if he was President that he would fire the SEC Chairman Cox as if this was another Brownie. Now he is saying this is the blame of the entire world he fostered by being the deregulator as a member of the Commerce Committee....

But was worse is how George Will characterized McCain's performance over the week where he titles today's column "McCain Loses His Head":

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the SEC, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

...consider McCain's characteristic accusation that Cox "has betrayed the public's trust."...In any case, McCain's smear -- that Cox "betrayed the public's trust" -- is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are "corrupt" or "betray the public's trust," two categories that seem to be exhaustive -- there are no other people...

Last night on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Obermann, Jonathan Alter when asked about the McCain campaign he described it as a reflection of the candidate's personality and attitude. When you see a campaign that is angry, that lashes out like McCain's it is natural that his staff are reflecting the personality of its candidate---as in McCain having a temper and rash decision making process. The conclusion: Obama has demonstrated the Presidential makeup to lead a nation at time of serious even potential mortal challenges.

Now today, Obama comes out and coolly states that in light of 09/15/2008:

Barack Obama said: Tuesday the deepening American financial crisis and prospect of a massive government bailout meant he likely would have to delay expansive spending programs outlined during his campaign for the White House.

In an interview with NBC television, Obama said he would have to study what happens to the United States' tax revenues before making decisions on budgeting for his promised initiatives on national health care, education, energy and other concerns.

Full interview on Today Show here:

The thing is this situation will solidify and reasonate as the predominate factor for the foreseeable future no different than the Great Depression, World War II, Cold War, or 9/11.

Now some local reporting: FiveThirtyEight.com was in town and filed this report. What makes this interesting is that they reported on CO Springs as a battleground in the first place.

Though we had problems finding open McCain/Republican Party offices this weekend on the Western Slope, here in Colorado Springs we had no such troubles. Most well-known for being the home of the Air Force Academy and headquarters of Focus on the Family, this is the heart of the Republican Party's social and religious conservative base, and Sarah Palin has done wonders for the McCain ground game....Meanwhile, though we were eager to spend today heavily covering Republican operations given our striking out this weekend, we didn't ignore the Democrats. We stopped into both Obama's Castle Rock and Colorado Springs offices, the latter of which has been open since June and is as robust an operation as we've seen in Nevada, New Mexico, or elsewhere in Colorado.

We met Robert Samuelson, a middle-aged Obama volunteer, who has been spending his days registering voters. A whiteboard in the Obama office listed different volunteers and their total numbers of registrations earned. 100 gets you a free T-shirt, and most names had earned somewhere between 25 and 80 toward that goal. Robert had 341, not including the 12 new ones he'd returned with moments after we arrived. (He doesn't care about the shirts.) He's lived here 15 years and hasn't seen any Democratic presence like this one. He told us a friend of his had been here 30 years but had never seen s Democratic presidential office in Colorado Springs.

Steve Meyer, a retired Air Force Major and former political science professor who taught for 10 years at the Academy and specialized in electoral politics, told us that Obama's presence compared to past Democratic presidential campaigns was "night and day." Meyer volunteers essentially every day organizer hours, 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. Also a former intelligence officer, Meyer is a volunteer phone bank captain near the Skyway and Broadmoor areas.
He told us that the goal for Obama has to be to get near 40% in Colorado Springs.