- It will seem like a desperation play, which might make the media/voters discount it.
- Unless they have new tapes, it's not news, and literally everybody knows about it. Sure, reminding folks in Indiana and North Carolina who are leaning toward Obama about Wright would be bad news, but I do think that Obama has been successful in defusing the idea that he's a crazy radical. There's no way to tell unless it happens, though.
- Obama's camp could hit back in several ways--how about videos of Sarah Palin's nutty preacher, who believes in witchcraft? How about a little discussion of the Keating Five scandal? After Ayres and Wright become part of the conversation again, McCain has nowhere left to go, while Obama has a few aces up his sleeve.
- Maybe McCain has some residual sense of propriety? Okay, that was a silly one.
Ultimately, though, if McCain goes there the left can hit him for hypocrisy, since McCain vetoed ads from the Tennessee and North Carolina State Republican Parties on Wright before he decided he'd do anything to win. They can hit him hard on hypocrisy, and they'd have him dead to rights (pardon the expression). So I think there's more of a downside than an upside, but the McCain campaign has become so sleazy that I have no expectation that they will actually refrain, unless they figure the backlash would exceed any benefit. Based on these points, I believe that it would.
I also doubt that the campaign will become explicitly about race. I don't even know what that means anymore. The only thing McCain can do is what he's been doing, which is to bring it into the conversation subtly, like in the evil Franklin Raines/defenseless old White woman ad.
