The Gauntlet Has Been Thrown

Chris Cillizza at WaPo takes a shot at HousingGate and comes up with an assessment:

It's On.

Let's revisit the events of the last 24 hours.

The initial question, put to McCain during an interview in Las Cruces, N.M., seemed to catch the Arizona senator off guard. "I think -- I'll have my staff get to you," McCain said. "It's condominiums where -- I'll have them get to you." That's not exactly the sort of definitive language that politicians and their handlers like to use when dealing with the media.

Democrats, sensing an opportunity to show McCain as out of step with voters, quickly began blasting away.

"I guess if you think that being rich means you've got to make $5 million and if you don't know how many houses you have, then it's not surprising that you might think the economy was fundamentally strong," said Barack Obama during a rally this morning in Chester, Virginia. "But if you're like me, and you've got one house, or you are like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so they don't lose their home, you might have a different perspective."

The Obama campaign quickly produced an ad noting that McCain actually owns seven homes worth $13 million; as an image of the White House is shown, a narrator intones: "Here's one house America can't afford to let John McCain move into."

The onslaught by the Obama campaign was greeted in kind by McCain.

"Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?" asked McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. "Does a guy who worries about the price of arugula and thinks regular people 'cling' to guns and religion in the face of economic hardship really want to have a debate about who's in touch with regular Americans?"

The McCain campaign also promised to put Obama's ties to Tony Rezko front and center in the race now, insisting that the Illinois senator's decision to attack on the home front (heyooo!) made a discussion of his ties to the convicted real estate developer fair game.

WOW.

Anytime you hear such heated rhetoric from the campaigns, you can assume that the issue being debated is one where both sides want/need badly to win.

Whoever's the elitist last, loses, folks. The campaign has officially begun.