McCain's latest dice throw...

"How bad must it be when you decide that you are better off not even campaigning for President?" - Frank Spring

Say what you like about Team McCain, they certainly know how to shake things up. From Britney/Paris ads to picking Palin to 'taking command' of the economic crisis.

Why's he doing this:

• Polls, polls, polls. As Ben Smith said: "But in terms of the timing of this move: The only thing that's changed in the last 48 hours is the public polling."
• McCain hasn't been doing debate prep properly this week (NYC:WTF?), whilst Obama has been on near lockdown.
• The economic crisis even led Obama to stage a polling comeback on his ability to handle a crisis.

In the short term, this will probbaly play to McCain's favour - allowing him to appear commanding on the crisis. Team Obama could call him out for playing politics but that seems hard given that they were the ones who first wanted a joint-response this morning. Long term, the crisis has reminded voters that the economy is the number 1 issue: that benefits the Democratic candidate, not the Republican one.

Does that mean that Obama should accept delaying the debate? I think not. Instead, Obama should accept a 24hr suspension, fly back to DC, negotiate a deal by lunchtime tommorow and do the debate Friday.