Reboot!

Hey, look-ee! After telling us yesterday that he would not have any more proposals this week unless developments call for some, turns out McCain DOES have a plan to share with us. Drum roll if you please.....

In a plan in which most of the benefits would go to older voters, Mr. McCain proposed that people 59 and up who withdraw money from IRAs or 401(k) retirement plans in 2009 and 2010 pay a tax rate of 10 percent on the money rather than their higher normal rates. That part of the plan would cost $36 billion, based on the McCain campaign's internal estimates.

In addition, Mr. McCain proposed a reduction in the tax on long-term capital gains to 7.5 percent from 15 percent in 2009 and 2010 at an estimated cost of $10 billion; an acceleration in the tax write-off for stock losses, allowing Americans to deduct $15,000 in losses a year for the tax years 2008 and 2009 (current rules allow deductions up to $3,000 in losses); a suspension on the tax on unemployment insurance benefits in 2008 and 2009; and a government guarantee on 100 percent of all savings accounts for six months.

I especially loved this part of the McCain speech, which unveiled the plan in Blue Bell, PA.

Mr. McCain sharply criticized Mr. Obama for his fiscal policies and said repeatedly that his rival, who has pledged tax cuts for 95 percent of American families, would in fact raise taxes.

"He is an eloquent speaker, but even he can't turn a record of supporting higher taxes into a credible promise to cut taxes," Mr. McCain said. "What he promises today is the opposite of what he has done his entire career. Perhaps never in history have the American people been asked to risk so much based on so little."

Oh. As opposed to you, Mr. Consistency, who just voted for the regulations you've been trying to dismantle, lo, these many years. We can trust you to do what you say you would because you're the guy who "suspended" his campaign til the financial crisis was fixed, then "unsuspended" it, even though clearly, things are not "fixed" now. The guy who said he wouldn't resort to smear tactics, then did. The guy whose campaign people said he'd have an economic plan yesterday, then said you "would not have any more proposals this week unless developments call for some," and then announced your new plan the next day. You even lied to David Letterman. Oh yeah. YOU'RE reliable. We can take a risk on you.

Obama's people come back with their retort, which is much more on point than mine above, I grant you: "John McCain's latest gambit is a day late and 101 million middle-class families short. McCain's plan would spend $300 billion to bailout the same irresponsible Wall Street banks that got us into this mess without doing anything to help jumpstart job growth for America's middle class. His plan continues to provide no tax relief at all to 101 million hardworking families, including 97 percent of senior citizens, and it does nothing to cut taxes for small businesses or give them access to credit. Senator McCain also shows how little he understands the economy by offering lower capital gains rates in a year in which people don't have an awful lot of capital gains. His trickle-down, ideological recipes won't strengthen our economy and grow our middle-class, but Barack Obama's pro-jobs, pro-family economic policies will," said Obama-Biden campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

In spite of all, though, McCain's campaign continues to put a bright face on a bleak poll-number situation. McCain's people continue to hope that their boy can pull off the same kind of "come-from-behind" magic that Ronald Reagan did in 1980, but at WaPo, they point out that in the weeks leading up to the election, Carter actually did not maintain a large lead over Reagan and didn't have the kind of momentum we're seeing for Obama. "A post-election summary of polls by then-CBS News pollster Warren Mitofsky shows that at no point over the final two weeks did Carter have a lead bigger than three percentage points.