Now this is an interesting item from my local paper. Only a few days ago Marshall Wittmann was John McCain’s director of communications. Today, Wittmann said he is endorsing the Kerry-Edwards ticket and accused the bush-cheney team of waging “an unprecedentedly cynical and divisive campaign.”

“I am an independent McCainiac who hopes to revive the Bull Moose tradition of Theodore Roosevelt, and I support the Kerry-Edwards agenda,” Wittmann writes.

“This unreconstructed Bull Moose will run with the donkey in November.”

Wittmann had been McCain’s director of communications for the past two years. He left Wednesday to become a senior fellow at the DLC, a centrist or right-of-center Democratic group….

Wittmann said the point he is making is that the Bush administration has “betrayed” efforts to create a new politics of national greatness and unity in the aftermath of 9/11 through its divisive tax policies and the war in Iraq.

Bush did not invent our enemies, Wittmann writes. “But, despite all his bravado and swagger, he has made it more difficult to build a domestic and international political coalition to ultimately prevail against our terrorist adversaries. He has bred distrust by driving a cynical partisan agenda that seeks to reward the wealthy, while branding his political adversaries as vaguely unpatriotic.”

”….But there is no remaining shred of doubt that another four years of a Bush presidency would have a toxic effect on American politics. If George W. Bush is re-elected, unlimited corporate power, cynicism and division will ride high in the saddle.”

Wow. Of course, McCain’s saying this doesn’t reflect his own viewpoint, blah blah blah. But I’d bet my soul that it really does. Tragic, that politics won’t allow him to say so himself.

Kerry comes back, just as he did in the primaries, where he was written off as a loser before his famous bounce-back. From Newsweek

With a solid majority of voters concluding that John Kerry outperformed George W. Bush in the first presidential debate on Thursday, the president’s lead in the race for the White House has vanished, according to the latest NEWSWEEK poll. In the first national telephone poll using a fresh sample, NEWSWEEK found the race now statistically tied among all registered voters, 47 percent of whom say they would vote for Kerry and 45 percent for George W. Bush in a three-way race.

Removing Independent candidate Ralph Nader, who draws 2 percent of the vote, widens the Kerry-Edwards lead to three points with 49 percent of the vote versus the incumbent’s 46 percent. Four weeks ago the Republican ticket, coming out of a successful convention in New York, enjoyed an 11-point lead over Kerry-Edwards with Bush pulling 52 percent of the vote and the challenger just 41 percent.

It’s the debate, stupid.

Among the three-quarters (74 percent) of registered voters who say they watched at least some of Thursday’s debate, 61 percent see Kerry as the clear winner, 19 percent pick Bush as the victor and 16 percent call it a draw. After weeks of being portrayed as a verbose “flip-flopper” by Republicans, Kerry did better than a majority (56 percent) had expected. Only about 11 percent would say the same for the president’s performance while more than one-third (38 percent) said the incumbent actually did worse that they had expected. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans felt their man out-debated the challenger but a full third (33 percent) say they felt Kerry won.

So let’s be careful before writing our eulogies for John Kerry. It’s still uphill for the Democrats, but that hill has suddenly become a lot less steep, and it’s not at all insurmountable.

Check out this wonderful analysis of our little debate last night. Sample:

This was supposed to be the debate that played to the strengths of Bush and his administration. Foreign policy in general and the protection of the United States from terrorism in particular, according to all the polls and every talking head within earshot, are the areas where George supposedly commands the high ground. That illusion came crashing down on the stage in Coral Gables.

How else can one describe the demeanor and behavior of Bush, as seen by 40,000,000 television viewers and heard by millions more radio listeners? Shrill. Defensive. Muddled. Angry, very angry. Repetitive. Uninformed. Outmatched. Unprepared. Hesitant. Twenty four minutes into the debate, Bush lost his temper, and spent the remaining hour and six minutes looking for all the world as though he were sucking on a particularly bitter lemon…..

No amount of spin will be able to undo the reality of what took place in Florida on Thursday night. What happened on that stage was an absolute, immutable truth. Bush looked bad. Worse, he looked uninformed, overmatched and angry. Worst of all, he’s going to have to go through it two more times.

I have no iullusions. Karen and Karl are working right now to prep bush for the next debate. They’ll work (again) on that agonizing smirk and tortured chimp grimaces. They’ll have him armed with barbs and zingers. Luckily, Kerry knows they’re prepping bush and he’ll be prepared. He has one vast advantage, and it’s called intelligence. And needless to say, shrub is painfully vulnerable on domestic issues; he can’t try to blame it all on 911 as he does (or tries to do) whenever we talk about Iraq.

Ryan Lizza delivers the goods in a wonderfully lucid and insightful examination of why Kerry won.

The first inkling that the Bushies know their man didn’t do so well comes minutes after the debate ends when Karl Rove walks into the press filing center. Like a game of telephone, the conventional wisdom that Kerry won the debate is already seeping out across the sea of journalists in the room. Into this skeptical ether, Rove tries out a line: “It was one of the president’s better debate performances and one of Kerry’s worst.” Vince Morris of The New York Post stares at Rove and asks, “Can you say that with a straight face?”

It gets better. Point by point, Lizza shows why bush lost so badly (and how it might not have happened if he and James Baker hand’t insisted on rules they thought would trip Kerry up).

They always say you don’t win the debate the night it’s held, but in the days afterwards based on how it’s spun. So far, it looks like it’s going to be a major victory for Kerry, and I’m ashamed that I first thought it was closer to a draw than a big upset. Now we know — bush was demolished.

From last night

In Iraq, no doubt about it, it’s tough. It’s hard work. It’s incredibly hard.

It’s-and it’s hard work. I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is. But it’s necessary work.

We’re making progress. It is hard work.

You know my hardest, the hardest part of the job is to know that I committed the troops in harm’s way and then do the best I can to provide comfort for the loves ones who lost a son or a daughter or husband and wife. [sadly, no one asked my question]

Her husband, P.J., got killed-been in Afghanistan, went to Iraq. You know, it’s hard work to try to love her as best as I can knowing full well that the decision I made caused her, her loved one to be in harm’s way.

Yeah, we’re the job done. It’s hard work.

Understand how hard it is to commit troops. I never wanted to commit troops. I never – when I was running – when we had the debate in 2000, never dreamt I’d be doing that, but the enemy attacked us, Jim, and I have a solemn duty to protect the American people, to do everything I can to protect us.

Hmmmm. I thought Osama Bin Laden attacked us, not Saddam Hussein. Details.

Anyway, if it’s so hard for him, maybe he should do us all a favor and resign.