In case you missed it, here's the pre-taped portion of Barack Obama's big commercial that played on NBC, CBS and Fox Wednesday night. Each ended with a live segment from a rally in Florida (although the Fox version was not truly live, as they waited until after the conclusion of Game 5 of the World Series to broadcast the ad).

I think this ad did more good for the Obama campaign than bad.

The negatives? It's another opportunity for John McCain to label Obama as an untested, camera-ready celebrity who's flaunting campaign finance rules by dropping millions of dollars on an informercial with less than a week before Election Day.

Do these negatives actually stick though? McCain has yet to really tie the massive fundraising figures Obama has received to any nefarious subjects; he's gone down the ACORN fraud route but hasn't hit it home as much as most of his conservative constituents would hope he would.

The positives? Obama deflects part of the "celebrity" knock against him by highlighting the stories of average Americans (dare I say, the proverbial Joe the Plumber?). At the same time, Obama can claim he's not so "unknown" and mysterious when he bought a self-aggrandizing 30-minute commercial spot on three of the four major broadcast networks.

For all the Obama devotees who have grown weary of hearing the words "Ayers," "socialist" and "untested" over the past few weeks, I think the commercial was a reminder of what they saw and heard at the DNC at Invesco Field.... at the 2004 DNC during the keynote address. They rediscovered Obama the Communicator, the Obama they fell in love with weeks, months and years ago.

This election is no longer John McCain versus Barack Obama. This election is between Barack Obama winning a majority and Barack Obama winning a mandate for his much-heralded "change."

Let's wax a little economic, shall we? When publicly-traded companies release earnings reports and other economic data each quarter, the short-term fate of their respective stocks rests solely in the hands of the expectations of The Street. If you beat expectations, it's payday because everyone backs up the truck (as Jim Cramer would say) and goes straight to TRIPLE BUY. If you only meet or miss those same expectations, you are adrift as an organization and investors lose confidence faster than a Kansas City Chiefs quarterback.

What does it all mean? It means that unless Barack Obama doesn't win in something close to an Electoral College landslide, he's Barack Obama, the guy half the country hated. If he scores uncontested victories in states like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Missouri, Ohio and Montana, he's Barack Obama the Unifier -- a true man of the majority with the backing of a decidedly Democrat Congress that can do what it wants, when it wants to whomever it wants to. Drill, baby, drill? Only if it's on teeth as part of an Obama-approved healthcare reform package.

Of course, this is assuming Obama plays by "the rules" -- rules that say your political swagger is dictated by your margin of victory. These rules were officially broken in 2004 when George W. Bush decided that beating John Kerry by about 30-something electoral votes. Honestly, you could make the case that when the President of the United States is a half-black guy raised by his grandparents who is widely believed (among certain circles) to be an Arab Muslim, the very fact he was able to get elected in a nation where racism still runs rampant and unashamed (within certain circles) is reason to act like you've got political capital to last you through your lifetime.

But those rules, as I said, are broken and left in shambles for Obama to either piece together and repair -- or to walk all over, just as Bush did. If the rules still applied, the Democratic surge in Congress would have brought an end to the military surge in Iraq along with the rest of the American military occupation of a nation at war not only with itself but also its occupier. Of course, we committed more lives and resources toward Iraq despite a broad slate of new congressmen and congresswomen elected mostly on the promise of bringing an end to the war in Iraq and the reining-in of Generalissimo Bush and Imperator Cheney.

Obviously Obama is not content to just win. This campaign is not going to "run the clock out" on John McCain and Sarah Palin -- I won't call it bloodlust, but they are definitely hungry for the complete and utter humiliation of the Republican ticket at the polls -- red states, blue states and all places in between. Need any evidence of this? After not saying a word about Sarah Palin when asked directly about her qualifications during one of the three presidential elections, the Obama campaign came out with the following ad:



John McCain willingly climbed into the campaign coffin and layed down when he chose Sarah Palin despite her inexperience, without regard for her questionable travel expenses, her husband's secessionist views, her underage daughter's pregnancy and her decidedly non-maverick political beliefs -- the question now is how many nails Obama and Biden can find and hammer into the lid of that coffin between now and Nov. 4.