"We're playing offense," McCain senior advisor Greg Strimple told reporters on a conference call yesterday. "To say we're on defense is not true."

Nice try Greg, but that's like John McCain saying "the fundamentals of our economy are strong."

The McCain campaign quickly organized the call in response to the news that McCain was pulling out of Michigan--previously thought to be his best pickup state. ("I won't sugar coat it; the McCain Campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan is a tough blow," Michigan Republican Party Chair Saul Anuzis wrote.

Strimple justified the shift away from Michigan by arguing that "we are tied or ahead in public polling" in Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida, Missouri and Indiana.

"The assertions seemed, at best, cherry-picked and, at worst, ignorant of recent polling trends," Sam Stein of the Huffington Post wrote afterwards. Recent polling shows Obama ahead in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, with Indiana and Missouri still neck and neck.

Of the states John Kerry won in 2004, McCain advisor Mike DuHaime said Pennsylvania and Wisconsin remained their best pickup opportunities. "We're opening an aggressive front in Maine," he added.

The McCain strategists also highlighted their preferred line of attack in the coming month, repeatedly referring to Obama as the most liberal member of the Senate.

"I believe that in every one of those [swing states] they will snap back aggressively in our favor," Strimple claimed. "These are states with a conservative voting constituencies where you have the most liberal member of the United States Senate running at the head of the ticket. And in my years of polling I have never seen someone with a more aggressive liberal imagery among the electorate."

If only that were true. Strimple's assertion--repeated by Republicans over and over--rests of the same flawed National Journal analysis that said John Kerry (hardly a radical leftist) was the most liberal member of the Senate in 2003. If you look at all of the votes in the 110th Congress--not just the ones selected by National Journal--Obama is actually the 10th most liberal Senator, just behind Joe Biden and ahead of New Jersey Bob Menendez. The same ranking found that McCain was the 8th most conservative Senator. That doesn't sound too "maverick" to me.

The Nation, October 3, 2008