DAY’S END ROUNDUP

A new John McCain ad featuring former Fannie Mae Chairman Frank Raines has bloggers arguing Friday over whether McCain is or isn’t interjecting race into the campaign. Conservatives express frustration over the government’s Wall Street bailouts, and Barack Obama seems to recouped his pre-Sarah Palin lead over McCain, others say.

The indirect approach most campaigns take to make race an issue makes McCain’s new ad suspect, as it makes repeated mention of Raines, who is black, without mentioning Obama’s closer tie to former Fannie Mae and Countrywide head Jim Johnson, who is white, writes Swampland’s Karen Tumulty. The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack disagrees with Tumulty, pointing out that the ad rests more on a Washington Post story about Raines than anything else.

Announcing massive government bailouts, President Bush said this is a “pivotal moment” for an economy that is facing “unprecedented challenges,” The Swamp reports. Despite the current crisis and Bush’s justifications, Michelle Malkin calls the move “the death of fiscal conservatism” and wonders why this bailout will help more than the previous supposedly crucial bailouts that didn’t stop the bleeding.

And with economic issues playing in his favor, Obama once again leads McCain in the major tracking polls, MyDD’s Jonathan Singer writes.

FROM THE BLOGS:
Obama Meanders Through Wall Street – RedState
Hell to Pay – SusanG, Daily Kos
Mark Foley Case Closed – Top of the Ticket
WaPo Editors: Obama Being Deceptive – Ed Morrissey, Hot Air
Karen Tumulty Sees Racist People – Erick Erickson, RedState
Conservative Think Tanks on Bailouts – Marc Ambinder
Obama Releases In-Your-Face Hounds – Michelle Malkin
Federal Govt. Bails Out Wall Street – Big Tent Democrat, TalkLeft

OTHER NEWS SOURCES:
Finger-Pointing in Financial Crisis Is Targeted at Bush – Washington Post
Campaigns Target Each Other’s Advisers – Associated Press
Congress, Administration to Prop Up Wall Street – The Hill