You already knew that two of McCain's closest campaign allies, senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are set to visit Georgia, apparently on McCain's behalf.

Now key Obama ally Joe Biden is also set to visit Georgia this weekend.

The Democratic National Committee brought in more money for July than the Republican National Committee did, the first time this whole cycle that such a thing has occurred. That and other political news in today's Election Central Saturday Roundup.

July fundraising total for Obama: $51 million.

(Compare: McCain raised $27 million.)

From TPM Reader NV ...

I have to take issue with TPM reader OA's statement that "[c]onceding Ukraine to Russia's sphere of interest would be a disaster for Ukraine--it would surely lead to civil war and would destabilize all of Eastern Europe (the Poles and the Balts aren't going to sit idly by)...." I think this overstates things quite a bit. I don't know what OA is suggesting the Poles and the "Balts" (who are they?) are going to do, if not sit idly by.

I was born in eastern Ukraine and moved to the U.S. when I was 11 years old. I still have family in Ukraine and I visit them every year or two.

I think reader OA overstates whatever animosity may exist between people residing in western and eastern Ukraine. What can be considered the core of eastern Ukraine contains 30% of the country's population, and as the polls you cite suggest, opposition to NATO membership extends far beyond that core population. And I think dismissing that opposition as one based on semantics (i.e, if only they changed the name of NATO) is too simplistic and actually borders on the ridiculous. If "every Soviet citizen was told NATO was the enemy," as OA would have it, perhaps the U.S. and various European countries should have changed their names too. Or was this indoctrination limited to the word NATO and excluded all references to America, capitalism, etc.? There is a lot more going on here than the purported continued inability of Ukrainians to overcome Soviet indoctrination, to which, incidentally, people ceased being exposed to since at least Glasnost in the late 1980s.

As for the assertion that conceding Ukraine to Russia (as if the only option for Ukraine is falling totally within Russia's influence or joining NATO) will be disastrous and "surely lead to civil war," that seems extremely remote to me. Recent civil wars in Eastern Europe, as most civil wars, have pitted various ethnic and religious groups against each other. Ukraine is quite monolithic in both its religious and ethnic composition. The talk of two Ukraines is quite overblown and is very much a simplification, as anyone living in Ukraine will tell you. These are not distinct cultures in the same way as Albanians and Serbs are, for instance. There are differences, to be sure. For example, the East is industrialized, more developed, and relatively more prosperous. It accounts for a huge proportion of Ukraine's GDP. The West, on the whole, is rural, less developed, and more poor.

Further, I don't think that the defeat of Ukraine's prime minister in his 2004 presidential race can be attributed to the failure of "multi-vector" foreign policy. It's not clear that this was a policy failure in the first place, and it has worked out quite well for other former republics that have much less in common with Russia, both historically and culturally, such as Kazakhstan.

One must also understand that the relationship between Ukraine and Russia cannot at all be analogized to the relationship between Georgia and Russia. They are unique. The historic and cultural ties between Russia and Ukraine are extensive. Kiev, after all, was the cradle of Slavic civilization.

Finally, OA gets a fact wrong (not dispositive of his argument, but still an important point). The previous Ukrainian president was not "dumped" during the Orange Revolution. He did not run for reelection. To the extent anyone was dumped, it was the sitting prime minister who was the candidate for president supported by many in the east and ostensibly by Russia.

Having said all this, I agree with OA's conclusions. He's right in saying that "the only hope (for all) in the long run is to repair U.S.-Russian relations." And he's also right when he says that "the problem for Ukraine and Ukrainians is how to prevent the interference of the West AND the Russians in domestic politics."

Some bracingly good sense and -- mirabile dictu! -- real on the ground knowledge about the Georgia situation by Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post.

A lot of you have probably seen this video. It's an amateur/independent pro-Obama, anti-McCain ad. There are a few elements -- tonal stuff -- that would have to be changed for a campaign to run something like this. But it's very good. The makings of a killer ad ...

From TPM Reader OA ...

I want to say something about the polling data on NATO and Ukraine--I am a historian who has worked and visited Ukraine many times, both before and after the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of the biggest mistakes made by the U.S. and its allies after 1991--and I thought so at the time--was to retain the name "NATO" even as the mission was redefined. In the Soviet Union, every citizen was taught that NATO was the enemy. It's a name that continues to carry the most negative connotations. It's as if U.S. citizens were polled on whether they thought the country needed a KGB.

In other words, the situation is more complicated than you allow. Ukraine, after all, elected (and will likely reelect) a President in 2004 who favoured integration with NATO and the European Union--even as polls then showed that most people were opposed to Ukraine joining NATO. The problem for Ukraine and Ukrainians is how to prevent the interference of the West AND the Russians in domestic politics. The previous President--the one who was ceremoniously dumped during the Orange Revolution--followed a "multi-vectored" foreign policy, essentially playing off the Russians and the West. That didn't work out so well. Conceding Ukraine to Russia's sphere of interest would be a disaster for Ukraine--it would surely lead to civil war and would destabilize all of Eastern Europe (the Poles and the Balts aren't going to sit idly by); but having Ukraine join NATO in the current political climate would be no less of a disaster and would be seen by the Russians as a provocation of the highest order.

Ultimately, the only hope (for all) in the long run is to repair U.S.-Russian relations. What has happened in Georgia is the result of the incompetence of the Bush administration. It's a terrible black eye for the U.S., though no one in Washington is willing to say it out loud at the moment. The November elections can't come quickly enough, as far as I am concerned.

As I told this reader in my private response, I don't think we're very far apart. In fact, what he says sounds extremely sensible to me. His point that the Ukrainians are electing leaders who favor integration with NATO is a very good one.

Yesterday I read a blog post at another site that summarized my position as a Realist stance believing that we should concede all of the states of the former Soviet Union and perhaps some of the former Warsaw Pact countries to a Russian sphere of influence, and simply be done with it. Needless to say, that is not my position at all. And I think it is a sign of how dangerously monochromatic this discussion has become that there is apparently only the option of allowing the complete Russian domination of Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states or driving our military alliance right up to what are still in many cases Russia's disputed borders. I think we can mobilize a lot of our and Europe's soft and hard power to insure that these states remain independent, open economies -- existing on the model of interstate relations of contemporary Western Europe rather than some ugly amalgam of late 19th and early 20th century Europe. But I also don't want to see bad actors of the Scheunemann and McCain variety get us jacked up into some enduring and dangerous posture of confrontation with the Russians over a couple separatist regions of Georgia -- something that I don't think is either necessary or at all in our interests. The truth is that the US screwed up here in a big way. This isn't to excuse the Russians. But we pumped the Georgians up as our big Iraq allies, got them revved up about coming into NATO, playing all this pipeline politics, all of which led them to have a much more aggressive posture toward the Russians than we were willing, in the final analysis, to back up. So now they've gotten badly mauled. And we have to decide whether to double down on the moronic policy (McCain position) or try to unwind and loosen this knot, walk this thing back to something like the status quo ante and then try working the whole nestle of problems in a very different way. Like I've said a few times, see the last paragraph of this post by Greg Djerejian where he discusses a difficult but sensible way forward.

Todd Gitlin muses at TPMCafe: If only "An American President Who Inspires America" fit on a bumper sticker.

Earlier I noted polling data suggesting that most Ukrainians actually oppose the country's entrance into NATO. I've now gotten hold of some more private polling data, based on a survey of a thousand people around the country last June. The interviews were conducted face to face in both Russian and Ukrainian. Let me run down some key numbers.

Do you support Ukraine joining the NATO alliance?

Yes 22%
No 66%
Don't Know 11%

Do you think it is very important, somewhat important, somewhat unimportant or not at all important for Ukraine to join the European Union?

Very Important 18%
Somwhat Important 36%
Somewhat unimportant 18%
Not at all important 11%
Don't know 15%

Other questions about whether it is important for Ukraine to integrate with Russia or the West either politically and economically, show majorities for integration with Russia, about a third supporting integrating with both and only very small minorities for integrating with the West.

Many of you are familiar with Andrew J. Bacevich, the retired Army Colonel and International Relations expert, who's become one of the most insightful critics of contemporary American militarism. By most historical standards Bacevich is a conservative. But his criticism of America's post-Cold War military posture, particularly the Iraq War, have made him an ally of many on the left. And in a tragic turn of events his son, First Lieutentant Andrew J. Bacevich, was killed last year in Iraq -- a war his father had been making the case against for half a decade.

Bill Moyers is interviewing Bacevich tonight at 9 PM on PBS in about the Imperial Presidency, American militarism and their challenge to American democracy. We got some advanced excerpts of the show, which we're going to be posting shortly.

Late Update: Here's the video:

John McCain says: "My friends, we have reached a crisis, the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War. This is an act of aggression."

Let's run-down the list. Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, followed by the US expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait. Collapse of Yugoslavia and subsequent wars of aggression between successor states. US invasion of Afghanistan. US invasion of Iraq. There are a slew of other examples of serious international crises over last 16-18 years.

One of the great threats we face is the personal sense of grandiosity of the lead foreign hands who shape the course of our role in the world. Not national grandiosity, but personal grandiosity. Because if you're a foreign policy hand or political leader your own quest for greatness is constrained by whether or not you live in times of grand historical events.

There's a lot of this nonsense floating around today by pampered commentators who want to find a new world historical conflict to write bracing commentary about before we're done with the one from last week. But John McCain might be president in six months. And whether it's his own shaky judgment, temperament or just the desire to find a campaign issue, this loose cannon is a real threat to this country.

You've probably heard a lot about how, in the wake of the Georgia crisis, we need to allow Ukraine into NATO. This is from the International Herald Tribune back in June ...

According to polls conducted recently by the independent Democratic Initiatives Foundation in Kiev, 59 percent of Ukrainians would vote against joining NATO, up from 53 percent last December, while 22 percent would vote in favor, down from 32 percent.

Other polls have shown similar levels of support.

Now, one point to bear in mind. There's a profound division between east and west in Ukraine -- with the east leaning strongly toward Russia and the west leaning toward further integration with the West. So in western Ukraine, support undoubtedly runs much higher. Still, to the extent we're dealing with Ukraine as a unified country, which we are if we're planning on agreeing to go to war with Russia over Ukraine, then the fact that NATO membership has very thin support in the country should play into the calculus.

It seems Georgian President Saakashvili's tear of international showboating continues unabated. In a press conference with Secretary Rice currently being televised he is claiming that Europe is to blame for the Russian invasion because of the failure to grant NATO entry to Georgia. This is followed by some odd arguments about why Georgia didn't at the least give Russia a robust pretext by launching into South Ossetia last weekend. It's Czechoslovakia (1938 & 1968), Poland, Kuwait, Afghanistan and several other crises of the past rolled into one and we don't greet this like standing up to Hitler and Stalin our honor is lost today and our freedom tomorrow.

I know there are a lot of people out there whose sense of personal grandiosity wants to puff this guy up into some sort of world historical figure. But he's trouble. And to our great national misfortune the same cabal responsible for scheming the US into Iraq is working hand and glove with him to pull this country into deeper misfortune. And one of them might be president in 6 months.

Just how odd is John McCain's move in sending his own delegation to Georgia? That and the day's other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

From the Post ...

Standing behind a lectern in Michigan this week, with two trusted senators ready to do his bidding, John McCain seemed to forget for a moment that he was only running for president.

Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: "If I may be so bold, there was another president . . ."

He caught himself and started again: "At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America's advocacy for democracy and freedom."

I am curious how this interlude in the campaign ends up playing. McCain's stance on this issue shows him to be close to certifiable -- not only on specific policy points but also in what I guess I would call affect. But it's not lost on me that people without much background on what actually happened might think this shows him at his strongest, best, etc. On the other hand, he really has gone considerably beyond what's ever been considered appropriate or acceptable for a presidential candidate. He's worked at fairly evident cross-purposes with the president of his own party. He's been in several times a day phone contact with one of the key players in the drama. He's dispatching his own faux diplomatic delegations to the scene. Probably it's all too much inside baseball to register with anyone who's not already watching closely and decided. But who knows?

Late Update: On the other hand, the Times gets wobbly in the knees over McCain flexing his credentials.

An informed observer writes in ...

Here's the first reaction from the Obama side to the Wall St Journal article bruiting McCain's tech plan: It appears he plans to give a $2 billion cash handout to 10 companies (the big employers of engineers). We can't be sure right away how many have hired the lobbyists on the McCain campaign team.

Might be worth checking which of McCain's lobbyists helped him put this plan together.

This is one I'm really looking forward to. The Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side) has a new film in the works on Jack Abramoff. It's not expected to be released until 2009, but when we caught up with Gibney last month in Austin, where he was previewing the film at Netroots Nation, he was already well-versed in the arcana of the Abramoff scandal. We got a chance to talk with Gibney about Jack and the other colorful characters in that circle: Ralph Reed, Grover Norquist, and ... Dolph Lundgren:

Full-size video at TPMtv.com.

McCain promises a "dramatically different relationship" with Russia if he becomes president.

Bernard Avishai, William Hartung and Dr. C.A. Rotwang weigh in at TPMCafe.