So we have McCain today getting his crowd riled up asking who Barack Obama is and then apparently giving a wink and a nod when one member of the crowd screams out “terrorist.”

And later we have Sarah Palin with the same mob racket, getting members of the crowd to yell out “kill him“, though it’s not clear whether the call for murder was for Bill Ayers or Barack Obama. It didn’t seem to matter.

These are dangerous and sick people, McCain and Palin. Whatever it takes. Stop at nothing.

Pennsylvania GOP calls Obama “a terrorist’s best friend.”

CNN: Obama 53%, McCain 45%
NBC/WSJ: Obama 49%, McCain 43%
CBS/NYT: Obama 48%, McCain 45%

See full results at our TPM Poll Tracker page.

Debate! That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

From WaPo …

McCain had said that racially explosive attacks related to Obama’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are off limits. But Palin told New York Times columnist Bill Kristol in an interview published Monday: “I don’t know why that association isn’t discussed more.”

Worse, Palin’s routine attacks on the media have begun to spill into ugliness. In Clearwater, arriving reporters were greeted with shouts and taunts by the crowd of about 3,000. Palin then went on to blame Katie Couric’s questions for her “less-than-successful interview with kinda mainstream media.” At that, Palin supporters turned on reporters in the press area, waving thunder sticks and shouting abuse. Others hurled obscenities at a camera crew. One Palin supporter shouted a racial epithet at an African American sound man for a network and told him, “Sit down, boy.”

If you’re gonna strap on your stilettos and take off the gloves — or whatever her combative wardrobe maneuver is — at least own up to what you’re doing and take responsibility for it.

In what was apparently her first local TV interview, Sarah Palin told Keith Cate of WFLA in Tampa yesterday that her Ayers line of attack on Obama was just her response to the “news of the day” from the New York Times:

The latest polls from Ohio show it sliding into the Obama column.

Everyone knows the second presidential debate is tonight. But I’m not sure everyone knows this one is in the townhall format. As a general matter, I’m not sure which of the two candidates is better in that format. What I do know is that townhall-style debates are almost always rough going for the candidate who’s on the attack. Partisans like attack politics. And while persuadable or independent voters may be affected by harsh attacks, they seldom ‘like’ it when they see it. And that puts McCain in something of a box, because he’s the one who needs to shake things up in a big way.

So my question is whether it’s going to be the tooth-n-claw McCain who shows up tonight or the ‘honor song-n-dance’ McCain.

Who do you think we’ll see?

TPM Reader RW:

The media keep talking about how McCain’s slide in the polls is “out of his control” because of the economic collapse (see Dana Milbank today for one example). That’s silly, and sets people up to somehow feel sorry for poor, poor John McCain. His position in the polls is completely within his control, just as it is for Obama. If McCain actually had a plan on the economy outside of cutting taxes and FURTHER deregulation, if he focused on how to fix it every day, rather than on Bill Ayers and terrorists and Rev. Wright, if he talked about the issues that matter to most Americans, the polls might be trending in his favor.

As we saw yesterday, John McCain’s latest gambit is to juice up his and Palin’s crowds into calling Obama a “terrorist“, hurling racial epithets at black reporters (presumably, there aren’t many in attendance as supporters), or just random calls for murder. This morning there was more …

In the latest instance of inflammatory outbursts at McCain-Palin rallies, a crowd member screamed “treason!” during an event on Tuesday after Sarah Palin accused Barack Obama of criticizing U.S. troops.

“[Obama] said, too, that our troops in Afghanistan are ‘air raiding villages and killing civilians,'” Palin said, mischaracterizing a 2007 remark by Obama. “I hope Americans know that is not what our brave men and women in uniform are doing in Afghanistan. The U.S. military is fighting terrorism and protecting us and protecting our freedom.”

Shortly afterward, a male member of the crowd in Jacksonville, Florida, yelled “treason!” loudly enough to be picked up by television microphones.

Late Update: The video: