1am US EST/Oz 4.15pm

Well, a hell of a night for Obama – the half hour vid, which led into a joint appearance by Obama and Bill Clinton in Florida – and the One was simultaneously on the Daily Show, which I’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see because this damn hotel doesnt have Comedy Central, though the transcript indicates it wasn’t a yukfest – except for a joke about how, if the Bradley effect is right, his white half wont know who to vote for.  Overall, how did he do?

It’s hard to say, because no-one has done one of these half hour ad blocks before, and the last person who had a go was Ross Perot in 1992, complete with a bunch of pie graphs on an easel. Prior to that you had to go back to the 70s to a time when it was assumed that people could sit through a whole half an hour, without someone calling someone else a nazi-episcopalian-anarchist.

(Must admit it was kinda funny when a coupla days ago FOX news doorstopped Bill Ayers – who was replete in a red star windcheater – and the self-described anarchist/communist told them to get off his property, and then called the police).

The very act of making one of these films was a rhetorical gesture itself – we’re the serious guys, it said, we’re focused on actual problems etc, not cheap shots – at the same time a it released another two cheap-shot ads, one focusing on Palin.

The film, like the Clinton appearance, like the Daily Show, was all very low-key, enough to make you tear your hair out. But I’m willing to presume by now that these guys know what they’re doing, don’t frighten anyone blah blah.

The major challenge that’s emerging in the final days is the accumulated impact of Obama’s personal associations.  The Rashid Khalidi stuff might – just might – get some traction. No-one’s accusing Rashid Khalidi of any crimes, but the whole hypocritical US thing about Palestine and the intifada is so tangled that the Obama-Ayers-Rashid circle of acquiantanceship /friendship in NY/Chicago can be made to look like some deep cover plot to take the Presidency.

The smoking gun would be the video the LA Times has and won’t release because of journalist-source confidentiality. But does any footage remain unreleased these days? To be sure, if it hit the streets on Sunday or Monday, and it’s Obama laughing when someone says ‘Intifada? hell I married her!’ or something, or even sitting there while someone goes on a great Satan rant, then that could be a killer.

Me, I’d love to have a friend of communists and Palestinian radicals in the white house, but that’s kinda why team Obama haven’t led with that angle.

Still it’s really weird that this was all there in plain sight – the LA Times report was in 2007 – and no-one on the right picked it up until a Wall Street Journal writer added it to the Ayers material about a fortnight ago. The right keeps going on about silencing by the media, but FOX, and Limbaugh et al could have been running it for yonks.

Possibly they were dissuaded by the fact that McCain’s International Republican Institute gave the guy a half million dollars – enough money to look kinda dumb, compared to having dinners with him. But since McCain has nothing to lose well, he’s got nothing to lose.

You’d be a fool to think it ain’t a bit of a worrreeee….