Someone else who thinks Indiana is getting very close to critical for Obama, who has spent seven weeks on defense stuck in Wright/bitter/Ayers territory. Michael Tomasky:
"In the last, say, three weeks, Obama hasn't put forward a single new proposal. He hasn't, at least on any evidence that I've seen, tweaked his stump speech much. He's been static and stale..."
"Indiana is, for my money, very, very close to being a must-win state for Obama. If he holds North Carolina and ekes it out in Indiana, she'll be dogged out of the race. If he loses Indiana, she carries on, as do the memes that he can't win white votes and can't relate to working-class people..."
"A final point: TV commercials. As far as I can see, Obama is still running a bunch of ads featuring him speaking heroically about change while people beam up at him rapturously....
Those ads were great a while ago. Now, they're terrible. They preach only to the converted. If you're a Democrat and you're not enraptured at this point, you're probably not going to be."