I love posting on Liberal Oasis. I don't post enough mostly because I don't think that I have enough of the thoughtful posts that are worthy of the first liberal blog that I ever read.

Jay Rockefeller (D-Va) is an Obama supporter. He went after John McCain this week which is fine. I believe that John McCain is loved by the press and has gotten mostly favorable treatment over his long senate career. Therefore, when you go after McCain, you have to be very careful. You have to be thoughtful. You, also, have to understand what is out of bounds. You can not criticize McCain's disability (his right arm) which he got during the war and you can not denigrate McCain's military service. On the other hand, if McCain brings up his military service then you can thoughtfully comment. These are the rules. Deviations from the rules will be punished by the press, talk radio hosts and John McCain who will use his cozy relationship with the press to beat you into a pile of protoplasm.

Jay Rockefeller deviated. He said, "He flies at 35,000 feet and drops laser-guided bombs, missiles. He was long gone before they hit. What happened down there, he doesn’t know." Rockefeller added that he knew the comments were “unkind” because McCain was fighting for the country, but he added, “You sort of have to care what goes on in people’s lives.”

What the heck is that? In baseball, that is serving up a mushball that will be hit out of the park. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and the rest of the right wing talking heads will play this in an endless loop and read this on the air for the next 2 weeks as they try to tie this to Barack Obama. Democrats, we can not afford these types of mistakes. We simply can not give Republicans talking points.

John McCain is plenty vulnerable. His position on the war which is central theme is wrong. 70 - 80% of Americans want us out the war which continues and continues. You can paint him as a man who talks about principle but seems to go with the flow on torture and Bush's tax cuts. McCain stood up in the Senate and strongly denounced torture in any form but caved to the President when push came to shove. He really stood up and denounced the President's tax cuts in 2000, 2001 and in 2003. Now, as part of his platform, he wants to make the tax cuts permanent. As a matter of fact, he has proposed new tax cuts. McCain has offered no help to American's who have fallen victim to predatory lenders. He has supported a Herbert Hoover approach of letting the market figure it out. McCain even voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. Come on. That was probably the easiest vote in the history of Congress and McCain, the man of principle, got it wrong.

Attack McCain's ideas. Tie these terrible ideas to Bush and his failed policies. Do not attack McCain the war hero. We can easily win a war of ideas. We can't win if we attack McCain the war hero. That's a losing battle.