Groping toward the truth but still utterly delusional. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews has been doing a pretty decent job being candid and straight-up about the sleazy campaign the McCain camp is running. But he still thinks ‘the McCain camp’ is doing this behind McCain’s back since he’s too honorable and straight-talking to stand for this kind of sleaze.

Matthews: “I do have a tremendous amount of faith in John McCain’s integrity. He used to be on the show all the time … I don’t believe he’d sit where you’re sitting and call his opponent or say his opponent called his running mate a pig. I don’t believe he’d say that. So i wonder why his people agreed to do that … This is a claim I don’t think the candidate himself would make.”

Joe, you’ve seen the light on this guy, right?

TPM reader and film director James Mangold scripts what he wishes Obama had said today:

So. I’m talking about John McCain’s economic policies, and I say: “This is more of the same, you can put lipstick on a pig but it’s still a pig.” And suddenly they say, “Oh, you must be talking about the governor of Alaska.” And now they’re making this big fuss and, you know — here’s where most Democrats in the past would carefully and earnestly explain how I meant nothing of the kind.

Heck, I was about to do that. Yesterday, I didn’t mean anything but a comment on their policies, one that was obvious to anyone who was there. But today is different. Today I am here to tell you that I am flip flopping. I’ve changed my mind.

Pig in lipstick. I meant it any way they want to take it.

For weeks we’ve all watched their low-ball ads and listened to their lies and twisted innuendo, attacks on my family and our values, community service and patriotism, all of it wrapped in our flag– and last night I thought to myself, Barack, CHANGE isn’t letting someone kick you over and over again. CHANGE doesn’t mean that the only response to blatant lies, extremism and intolerance is thoughtfulness.

Maybe the reason they think they’ll get away with this is they think I’m such a big lofty “celebrity” that I can’t get down on the ground and fight like a man. Well, they are wrong. Lies are lies. Not untruths. Not misstatements. Not “questionable” facts. Lies. And lies dishonor our nation.

A great country, the world’s greatest country, should not waste its time with trivialities — but a wise leader cannot pretend the world is as he wishes it was. If this is the kind of fight they want, then I will give it back to them.

So let me be clear what I meant yesterday.

McCain and Palin, their policies and their demeaning campaign are A PIG IN LIPSTICK.

They are OLD FISH IN A NEW WRAPPER.

They are a threat to our future. Because they are the past, masquerading as the future.

You want to go backward — vote for them.

Did Biden forget to mention to Obama that he was retiring from public life in September?

WaPo editorial: “John McCain is a serious man who promised to wage a serious campaign. Win or lose, will he be able to look back on this one with pride? Right now, it’s hard to see how.”

WSJ: In confidential letter, one-time Palin ethics advisor warned her that Trooper-gate scandal was “grave” and recommended she and her husband publicly apologize for their actions.

New Quinnipiac polls give Obama leads in Ohio and Pennsylvania but show McCain ahead in Florida. That and the day’s other political news in the TPM Election Central Morning Roundup.

Former AZ Sen. Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) on why the press’s judgment problem about McCain ….

[McCain] has a problem of judgment. I think that has been clear, as the campaign goes on, that his judgment is flawed. He paints it as a “maverick” position, but in fact he has a problem finding good judgment and staying with it.

He likes to paint himself as a man of convictions that stays with it. But if you served with him, as I did, and if you have followed him since I have left, and I have done that, you see his positions changed [with] whatever is needed. Whether it’s on taxes, income tax cuts; whether it’s on drilling in Alaska, or offshore, or you name it — and John McCain has been all over the map.

And he will continue to do that, and that’s why he has been able to be successful because, in my judgment, mostly. not all of the media, but much of the media kind of lets him get away with it.

From an Obama supporter who’s gunning for a fight …

3.2 million for Seal DNA?

People love this. One thing that captures the imagination. It’s the new Bridge to Nowhere. That should be the talking point. 3.2 Million for Seal DNA? Is that the kind of change we need? “Do I hear lipstick on a seal?”

James Carville still mourns the McCain he once knew — and is struggling to move past the denial phase:

Can anyone else think of a major political figure who’s done only Barbara Walters-style prime time celebrity interviews rather than appearing on actual news shows? I can’t. And really a political campaign will do whatever it can get away with. But what news organization has ever done that? What an embarrassment.